Bodemer Lecture brings expert on traumatic brain injury to speak on survivors’ problems

“Traumatic Brain Injury: Medical Successes and Social Failures. Where Do We Go From Here?” is the topic for this year’s Charles W. Bodemer Lecture, sponsored by the Department of Medical History and Ethics. Dr. William Winslade will give the lecture at 4 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 16, in Hogness Auditorium of the Health Sciences Center. The presentation is free and open to the public, with a pre-lecture reception at 3:30 p.m.

Winslade is a professor of preventive medicine/community health and of psychiatry/behavioral sciences and James Wade Rockwell professor of philosophy of medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He is also a member of the Institute for the Medical Humanities there.

William Winslade

An expert on traumatic brain injury and survivor of a serious childhood brain injury, Winslade is internationally known for his lectures, workshops, television and radio appearances, publications and consulting work on traumatic brain injury and its prevention.

The medical community has developed increasingly effective responses to traumatic brain injury, he notes, through faster care at the scene and life-saving emergency room treatment. Secondary brain injuries have also been reduced through the use of barbiturates, cooling the brain and careful monitoring of intracranial pressure.

But as more people survive severe brain injuries with better treatment, many are left with devastating disabilities. Although rehabilitation and re-education help many brain injury survivors, others lack needed chronic, or even life-long, care and social services. Inadequate private insurance and/or public funding often put overwhelming burdens on vulnerable patients and family caregivers.

Winslade maintains that more medical, social and educational services are needed to enhance the quality of life for brain injury survivors and reduce the financial and emotional burden on families. He proposes creative funding alternatives to establish these services, since he sees political responses as inadequate.

He is also a vocal advocate for better efforts to prevent traumatic brain injury through changing attitudes and behaviors that put people at risk. Systematic, sustained public attention and education is essential, he stresses.

Winslade holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Northwestern University and a law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He also received a degree in psychoanalysis from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, a prestigious bioethics group, and has been a consultant to the Law in a Free Society Project. He is also a member of the board of directors of Choice in Dying.

His most recent book is Confronting Traumatic Brain Injury: Devastation, Hope and Healing, published in 1998 by Yale University Press. He is also the author of books on clinical ethics and the insanity plea, and of Choosing Life and Death, written for patients, their families and health professionals.

The lecture is named for Charles Bodemer, founder and chair of the UW Department of Biomedical History from 1967 to 1985. Trained in anatomy, Bodemer had a distinguished career as a research scientist before dedicating his energies to his other love, the history of medicine. A prolific writer and dynamic teacher, he used his understanding of medicine’s evolution to provide both students and faculty with a deeper appreciation of the human and social dimension of medical practice. The Bodemer Lecture honors his work in the development of medical history and ethics at the UW,

For more information on the lecture, contact Marilyn Barnard, manager of the Continuing Education Program, at 616-1864.¶