Pitts Lectureship to address violence
When people attack people, the connection to health care seldom
becomes as apparent as it did a year ago, when Meducare’s Tony Pirraglia
was gunned down as he arrived at the scene of a car crash to assist the
victim.
In a bizarre twist of circumstance, it was the emergency responder who became the emergency. Pirraglia was killed and nurse Mandy Larson seriously wounded. The attack also left a differently wounded MUSC to cope with its loss and to try to sort out how two of its finest could be so brutally attacked when their only motive was to give aid.
“As a result, Dr. Greenberg asked what we in medicine could do to take a more active role in reducing violence,” said Robert Sade, M.D., professor of surgery and director of MUSC’s Institute of Human Values in Health Care.
Sade
chairs the committee that plans and organizes the annual Thomas A. Pitts
Memorial Lectureship, this year to be held Sept. 19 and 20 and titled:
“When People Attack People: Ethics, Law, and Policy of Violence.”
“We have invited eight of the nation’s leading experts on various aspects of aggressive behavior and violence to speak at the Pitts Lectureship, a day and a half of panel discussion, debate, lecture, and questions and answers.” Sade said that the first speaker, Franz de Waal, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Emory University, is a primatologist whose major interest is in aggressive behavior in primates, and will lead off the opening session Friday morning with a presentation, “Evolutionary Ethics, Aggression, and Violence: Lessons from Primate Research.” He will be followed by David Wasserman, J.D., University of Maryland, speaking on “Violent Behavior: Genetic Predisposition, Individual Character, and Social Responsibility.”
A panel discussion will follow each session.
Session two will present starkly opposing positions on gun control, one by Franklin Zimring, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, “Gun Control Laws are Indispensable for Preventing Violent Crime,” and the other, “Gun Control is a Recipe for Increasing Violent Crime” by Lance Stell, Ph.D., Davidson College.
Session three will deal with “Preventive Confinement for Violent Offenders,” Stephen Morse, J.D., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania Law School, and “Publication of Manuals for Criminals and Terrorists: Law and Ethics,” Lillian R. BeVier, J.D., University of Virginia Law School.
Session four will cover “Implications of Interpersonal Violence for Public Policy,” Dean Kilpatrick, Ph.D., of MUSC and “Public Health Strategies for Preventing Violent Crime,” by Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D., Harvard School of Public Health.
Session five from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday will be an opportunity for the lecture’s faculty to present their impressions and clarifications and to entertain an open discussion with the audience and faculty.
The annual lectureship is named for Thomas Antley Pitts II, M.D., 1893-1991, who served as a member of the MUSC Board of Trustees for 36 years and served as its chairman for 25 of those years. He left a substantial bequest to the Medical University to endow “a series of lectures on medical ethics.” The series has been held annually since 1993.
The lectureship requires no registra-tion fee from MUSC faculty, students and staff, but does require a fee of those attending from outside MUSC.
Requests for information should be directed to Robert Sade, M.D., or
Sharon Kest at 792-5278 or e-mail, values@musc.edu. A registration form
can be found on page 15, or visit http://www.values.musc.edu.
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