What do we owe the triaged-against? An Interview with Dr. Margaret Battin

Event registration is now closed, but you can email cih@ucalgary.ca to request last-minute access and we'll do our best to accommodate you. 

You can also register for our June 3 Salon here: https://www.showpass.com/digitalsalon5/

Please join Layla Lavan for our fourth digital ethics and morality salon. An important interview on end-of-life issues arising from the pandemic.

Layla Lavan Digital Ethics and Morailty Salon # 4

What do we owe the triaged-against? 

Dr. Margaret Battin in conversation with Christina Frangou

Wed. May 27, 7 p.m.

Sidewalk Citizen Bakery, in collaboration with the Calgary Institute for the Humanities at the University of Calgary, has curated a weekly forty-five minute long conversation with philosophers, scholars and scientists addressing applied ethics questions arising from the pandemic.

The Salon will broadcast live every Wednesday at 7 p.m. (MT), starting May 6. The event is free. You will be able to log on 15 minutes earlier at 6:45 p.m. We will send you detailed instructions about how to access the live-stream on Zoom after you've RSVP'd. Each salon requires its own registration. 

Margaret Pabst Battin (nicknamed Peggy) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine, Program in Medical Ethics and Humanities, at the University of Utah.  She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, and holds an M.F.A. in fiction-writing and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California at Irvine.  The author of prize-winning short stories and recipient of the University of Utah’s Distinguished Research Award, she has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited some twenty books, among them a study of philosophical issues in suicide; a scholarly edition of John Donne’s Biathanatos; a collection on age-rationing in medical care; Puzzles About Art, a volume of case-puzzles in aesthetics; a text on professional ethics; Ethics in the Sanctuary, a study of ethical issues in organized religion; and a first collection of her essays on end-of-life issues, The Least Worst Death. She was engaged in research on active euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands. She has also published Ethical Issues in Suicide, trade-titled The Death Debate, as well as several co-edited or co-authored collections, including Drug Use in Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide;  Physician-Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate; Praying for a Cure, a jointly authored volume on the ethics of religious refusal of medical treatment; and Medicine and Social Justice.

In 1997 she received the University of Utah’s Distinguished Research award, and in 2000, she received the Rosenblatt Prize, the University of Utah’s most prestigious award.  She was named Distinguished Honors Professor in 2002-03. A second collection of her essays (and fiction) on end-of-life issues, entitled Ending Life, was published in spring 2005 by Oxford University Press. She is the lead author of two multiauthored projects, Drugs and Justice: Seeking a Consistent, Coherent, Comprehensive View (Oxford, 2008) and  The Patient as Victim and Vector: Ethics and Infectious Disease (Oxford, 2009). She is the general editor of The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources, Oxford University Press, September 2015, an extensive sourcebook coupled with an online Digital Archive hosted by the J. Willard Marriot Library at the University of Utah <ethicsofsuicide.lib.utah.edu/>.  She is currently completing Sex & Consequences, a book on large-scale reproductive issues, including world population growth and reproductive rights; work concerning the difference between “suicide” and “physician aid in dying”; a “personal anthology” of papers on real-world thought experiments with “normative force”; and a set of novel considerations about urban design in the light of ecological, environmental, resource-use, and social issues, called “How to Live in an Italian Hill Town and Still Get to Walmart.”   She has been named one of the “Mothers of Bioethics.”

Christina Frangou (Moderator) is a writer and journalist in Calgary, Alberta, who specializes in writing about health, medicine and social issues. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Maclean’s, Alberta Views, Reader's Digest and Chatelaine. She writes about topics like refugees, grief, loneliness and public health.