In-between twiddling my thumbs for journals to produce production versions of some new papers and endless job market nonsense, I’m off to Berkeley in a couple of weeks to give a pair of talks. Both on medicine, both on history, but with different topic areas.
First-up, we have “The Life and Death of the Life and Death Committee” (25 September), over in the History department, which revisits the famous “God Squad” from early bioethics! As the blurb puts it:
The story of the Seattle Artificial Kidney Center’s “Life and Death Committee”, or “God Squad” - a lay panel tasked with deciding who received treatment, and correspondingly, lived and died - is a classic one within both the history of medicine and the history of bioethics. But much of what we know about it, how we conceptualize it, and correspondingly, the lessons we draw from it, is, Dr. Keyes argues, false. Drawing on newly-discovered archival resources, this talk revisits the shifting function and viability of the Life and Death Committee over time, demonstrating that its purpose was broader than often-conceived, and that its’ eventual fate calls into question many of the conclusions historians have drawn about it.
Then I’m giving a talk as part of a panel discussion at the Center for New Media (28 September) with the wonderful Jeff Nagy and Renée Cummings, where I apparently:
will ask what the history of computational psychiatry teaches us about the political economy of diagnostics. The role of AI in psychiatry is often framed as novel, and focused on improving efficiency and patient access to care. But neither is the case. AI has a long history in the upper echelons of psychiatry, as a field and a practice, and that history has consistently been entangled with broader political conflicts over who plays a role in shaping diagnosis and treatment., and under what conditions. Beginning with the start of computational diagnostics in the 1960s, he will trace out the history of how (and why) computational approaches to psychiatry have come in and out of vogue, arguing that the ultimate purpose of these diagnostic tools is to reshape the political economy of diagnosis and disability.
Both are going to be good fun; if you’re local, hope to see you there, and drop me a line if you want to say hi at any point that week (since I’ll be there the 23rd to the 30th).