2010 Symposium on the topic: Health | Justice | Power

Keynote speakers:
Pierre-Yves Maillard, Emmanuel Hirsch, Marcela Iacub, Frédérick Keck, Patrick Lagadec, Bernard Edelman

Scientific Committee:

Dr. Thémélis Diamantis, President of the Scientific Committee
Christophe Calame, President of the Swiss Philosophical Society
Prof. Dr. Lazare Benaroyo, Head of the Ethics Unit at the CHUV
Prof. Dr. Jacques Gasser, Head of the Humanities Committee at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine, University of Lausanne (UNIL)
Prof. Dr. Jean-Bernard Daeppen, Head of the Alcohol Treatment Centre
Dr. Alain Kaufmann, Head of the Science–Society Interface at UNIL
Dr. Hugues Poltier, MER at the Philosophy Section of UNIL
Dr. Michel Vanni, Lecturer in Philosophy
Corinne Noth, Deputy to the Medical Directorate of the CHUV
Philip Clark, Vice-President of the Vaud Group of the Swiss Philosophical Society
Gabriel Dorthe, Vice-President of the Vaud Group of the Swiss Philosophical Society

Das Symposium wurde in Zusammenarbeit veranstaltet mit:
Das akademische Hospitalzentrum des Kantons Waadt (Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois: CHUV)
Die Geisteswissenschaftskommission an der Fakultät für Biologie und Medizin der Universität Lausanne
Interface Wissenschaft-Gesellschaft der Universität Lausanne
Veröffentlichung:Die ausgewählten Beiträge wurden in der Studia philosophica veröffentlicht.

Argument:

The technological progress of recent years, and in particular the ideas and conceivable possibilities generated by these new technologies, have brought about a fundamental shift in what has previously been considered the limits of human existence. In the future, interventions in the areas of birth and death will become possible that will permanently alter the weight of destiny traditionally associated with these two concepts. The prospect of a bodily health extending into eternity is no longer a mere chimera. The very identity of the human subject may undergo transformations that further expand the boundaries of human existence.

However, such an expansion also brings about changes in the institutions responsible for defining and controlling precisely these limits. Political and legal authorities must redefine the scope of their application in order to keep the consequences and risks for the population under control.

The aim of this symposium was to examine, at the intersection of health, justice, and power, the entirety of the practices brought about by these transformations. The objective cannot be to reactively oppose these practices with a hypothetical human essence that must not be transcended, but rather to raise reflection to a level commensurate with this challenge.

The symposium consisted of three parallel seminars, designed to approach the subject from three different yet interconnected perspectives. The fundamental issue at stake was the possibilities available to human beings to radically reshape themselves in relation to their bodies, institutions, and laws.

Half a day was organized in collaboration with the Humanities Committee of the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at the University of Lausanne. It consisted of a discussion on healing practices between clinicians and philosophers.

I. TRANSFORMATION OF THE BODY:

Does medicine even have limits? Today, these limits are undoubtedly shifting, moving towards the Cartesian perspective of a complete mechanization of the human body, and thus towards an endlessly extendable process of repair culminating in the hypothesis of immortality. Will medical technology lead to a further fusion of artefact and living being? Will the transhuman condition of the 21st century follow the superhuman aspirations of the terrible 20th century? These questions do not concern human beings alone, but rather all living beings within the diverse relationships imposed upon them by humanity (consider, for example, the case of mad cow disease).

II. LOGICS OF POWER:

Is medical care a form of power? The globalization of risks and risk management imposes new demands on institutional structures and on representatives of states. How should they respond to climate change, population shifts, new pandemics, and so on? Responsibility for these risks, as well as for bodies themselves, requires a redefinition of the role of the state and of its capacity to intervene and anticipate. To what extent will citizens accept state coercion in the name of health and security?

III. THE CORRECTNESS OF LAWS:

What kind of justice do we need when access to healthcare differs according to social groups? The issue of access to medical care arises on two levels: on the one hand, in relation to risks, disasters, pandemics, and so forth; on the other hand, in response to new demands for well-being made possible by techniques of transformation and creation (cosmetic surgery, artificial insemination, and so on). The challenge is to enshrine in law the progress and the new conditions that have emerged from it. To what extent are we prepared to accommodate demands such as motherhood at an advanced age, fertilization using the sperm of a deceased donor, the desire of homosexual couples to have a child, or drastic bodily transformations through surgical means, and what legal conditions should be imposed upon them?

Medicine has long defined health through the famous concept of the silence of the organs. Classical biopolitics consisted in treating this silence as something positive: as long as the population neither died nor suffered, the state, as administrator of souls and goods, had fulfilled its role. Yet, through a long and irreversible transformation, our society appears to be developing new demands that concern both the appearance of individuals and their performance, personal life as well as the organization of the community.

After this long silence, the organs now suddenly seem to speak, if not to roar: in sport and nutrition, in pleasure and care, in the distribution of medical means and resources, all the way to birth and death. The body speaks again. Like in the carnival, it is staged in public. More than merely being a body, we now want to possess and maintain a body: trained, customized, tattooed, pierced everywhere, and soon transformed through new achievements in neurology and genetics.

Perhaps the healthiest body will soon be the one that speaks the most, and that compresses its entire, perhaps unlimited, life into its own substance. It is essential to reflect on such an expression of the body and of health at the intersection of philosophical thought and the disciplines directly engaged in practical application.