Tuesday 26 March 2013

Venue: Royal Society Of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, LONDON, W1G 0AE

James Le Fanu is a Doctor, columnist, social commentator and historian of science and medicine. He studied the humanities at Ampleforth College before switching to medicine, graduating from Cambridge University and the Royal London Hospital in 1974. He subsequently worked in the Renal Transplant Unit at Cardiology Departments of the Royal Free and St Mary’s Hospital in London.

For the past twenty years he has combined medical practice with writing a twice weekly column for the Sunday and Daily Telegraph as well as contributing reviews and articles to The Times, Spectator, Prospect, The Oldie, The British Medical Journal and Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

His (much acclaimed) ‘The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine’ charts the change in fortunes of medicine over the past sixty years from the supreme achievements of its ‘Twelve Definitive Moments’ to its current discontents. His most recent book ‘Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves’ investigates the paradox where the major developments in genetics (including the Human Genome Project) and neuroscience of the past two decades have inadvertently revealed the limits of an exclusively scientific account of the form and attributes of the living world and the exceptionality of the human mind.

The Easter Lecture at the RSM is designed to give school students a snapshot of just one of the hundreds of different careers within medicine.

This event is free of charge but booking is essential. Register below to avoid disappointment.