Accelerate Faculty

Alverno College is hosting a lecture by Alice Dreger, Ph.D., on March 2 from 6 - 7:30 p.m. The topic, “Should We Try to Engineer Physical ‘Normality' in Children?” looks at whether doctors should intervene when a child has a body that challenges social norms. Examples of these “normalizing” procedures include separating conjoined twins, surgeons operating on children born with atypical genitals, and endocrinologists offering growth hormone to healthy children who are short. The lecture, which takes place in the Bucyrus Conference Center, is free and open to the public.

Dreger is a bioethicist, author and featured speaker at TED Talks. Her recent book,“Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justicein Science,” draws on her background as an historian of medicine and patient advocate, and was named an Editor's Choice by New York Times Book Review. This lecture will look at the ethics of “normalizing” interventions, and offer suggestions for what might work better for patients.