University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
HEALTH LAW & POLICY WORKSHOP
presents
Chidi Oguamanam
Director, Law & Technology Institute
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law
Dalhousie University Law School
The Future of Personalized Medicine and Personalizing the Medicine of the Future
Thursday, March 6, 2008
12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Solarium (room FA2)
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
84 Queen's Park
Therapeutic intervention and health care delivery options are continually explored in our open ended inquiry to understand and deal with disease and affliction. In the recent times, the genetic subjectivity of disease and affliction or the science of genomics in some ways foist a shift in the focus of modern biomedicine from the universalistic claims and scientific objectivity that have shaped its evolution. As the medicine of the future and the future of modern medicine grasp with the promises of genomics or personalized medicine, I explore what lessons or insights, if any, could be gleaned from complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM). Fundamentally, the CAM is premised on a therapeutic ideology that attempts to balance a holistic approach to health and healing with the imperative for contextual or situational exigencies of both the patient and our understanding of health. I ponder whether or to what extent the concept of personalized medicine can provide a meeting ground for biomedical orthodoxy and CAM.
Dr. Chidi Oguamanam practiced intellectual property law in Lagos, Nigeria, in one of that country’s top corporate law firms before moving to the University of British Columbia for graduate studies. He served in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Technical Expert Working Group on Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs). He is a graduate fellow of the Canada Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Training Program in Ethics of Health Research and Policy. As a professor in the Dalhousie Law School, Dr. Oguamanam teaches courses in Contracts and Judicial Rule-Making, Sale of Goods, Law and technology, Advanced Intellectual Property, which are aspects of his diverse research interests. In January 2007 he became the Acting Director of the Law and Technology Institute to which he is primarily affiliated in the Dalhousie Law School and was appointed the substantive Director of the Institute in July 2007. Dr. Oguamanam is also a Faculty Associate of the Marine and Environmental Law Institute and the Health Law Institute in the Law School
A light lunch will be served.
Jointly sponsored by the Faculty of Law and the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto.
For more information about this workshop, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca
