Reminder: Health, Culture and the Human Body (Mainz, Germany, 17-19 Sept. 2010)


Dear colleagues,

it is our pleasure to inform you that the final programme of the international "Health, Culture and the Human Body" conference in Mainz is now online, including a file containing abstracts for all talks.

For further information, please, follow the link below:


An international and interdisciplinary conference on

Health, Culture and the Human Body

Epidemiology, ethics and history of medicine, perspectives from Central Europe and Turkey

Mainz, Germany, 17-19 September 2010

New developments in medicine, preventive and therapeutic interventions are raising novel ethical questions in societies undergoing fast demographic change at home while participating in global interactions through travel and migration. Diverse value-cultures may affect the responses to well established themes in medicine, giving rise to complex ethical debates and different legal regulations.

This conference will focus on selected cases from Turkey, Germany, and other countries closely connected by substantial migration processes, and previously by medical sciences and clinical practice. These interactions will be analysed jointly from historical, epidemiological, and ethical perspectives, paving the way for the implementation of an interdisciplinary “medicine studies” approach in the field of intercultural and migration medicine.


The chosen thematic areas are:
* infectious diseases (e.g., plague, leprosy, cholera, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS)
* the end of life (e.g., patient autonomy vs. family autonomy, advance directives, active and passive euthanasia, palliative care)
* dealing with the human body (e.g., anatomical research, organ donation, biomaterial in international studies)
* migration and medicine