3233.0: Monday, October 22, 2001 - 4:40 PM

Abstract #31452

Past future imaginings, ideals, nightmares, and dreamworlds

Elizabeth Fee, PhD and Michael Sappol, PhD. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Chief, History of Medicine Division, Building 38, 1E 21, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894

How will public health shape our future? We explore a sampling of utopian writers—some of them representatives of 1848 dreamers and revolutionaries—to see what they have to say about the future of health and public health. We will examine the fantasies of fiction writers such as Mary Shelley, medical perfectionists like William Alcott, utopian socialists like Robert Dale Owen, public health reformers like Rudolf Virchow. We will discuss the appeal of Edward Bellamy and the Buck Rogers comic strip; Plato’s Republic and Starhawk’s ecofeminist paradise to their different times and different audiences. What do Thomas More, H.G. Wells and Marge Piercy have to suggest about the problems of their own societies and their dreams and fears of the future? How will our future bodies look? Will we be clones or cyborgs? Will we be wiped out by future plagues and pestilences, bred for healthy perfection, or monitored and manipulated from cradle to grave?

What can we learn from the rich history of utopian and dystopian imaginings? How do these authors see the relationship between public health and social equality? Between future health and technology? Between ecology and human health?

How do we in turn imagine the public health of the future?

Utopias and dystopias can help articulate our hopes and fears as well as serve as forms of critique of contemporary society. Even more important, we can explore whether it is possible in the early 21st century to dream compelling new dreams for the future.

Key words: future, plagues, utopia, revolutionaries, fantasies

Learning Objectives: 1. To be able to cite at least 3 utopian writers who have something interesting to say about the future of public health 2. To understand the usefulness of being able to conceptualize alternative visions of the future 3. To be stimulated to think about your own dreams and desires for the future of the planet

Keywords: , History

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

The 129th Annual Meeting of APHA