Harris Event

            When Dr. Harris stated that he would not be talking about healthcare as a human right, but rather his experiences as an astronaut and as an investor interested in new innovations in healthcare technologies, I was somewhat disappointed.  After all, as a student, my perspective on healthcare and how the goal of providing universal access to healthcare can be realized is clearly limited, and I believed that Dr. Harris who has had experience as a physician-astronaut-entrepreneur could provide further insight.  Despite this sudden change of events, I remained optimistic that Dr. Harris’s lecture would help me and all the other students interested in entering the field of health care something new about how the monster that is universal health care could be tackled in the US.

            However, Dr. Harris’s lecture was more of a pep talk than an insightful lecture.  He spoke about his journey to become an astronaut in the midst of the civil rights movement and his subsequent accomplishments as an entrepreneur and the founder of the Harris Foundation.  His life story was quite inspiring, and it was interesting to see how he became involved in such vastly different fields.  But although such a lecture has its benefits, it sharply contrasted with my expectations, and I feel that he did not delve into some areas he touched upon as much as I had hoped.

            For example, as the director of Vesalius Ventures, it was obvious how much hope Dr. Harris had for future technology in the context of healthcare, and he seemed excited about the examples he showed.  However, he did not address some pretty glaring issues considering these technologies.  The US tends to use expensive medical technologies more than other countries.  Expensive procedures like hip and knee replacements and diagnostic imaging like MRI, CT, and PET scans are used far more than other countries.  Furthermore, these technologies are not only used more in the US, but usage of these technologies is often times more expensive.  (Of course, this issue a ubiquitous aspect of US healthcare – procedures costs are highly variable across the US and are higher than other countries even when controlling for relative wealth of the US and pharmaceuticals are often much more expensive in the US than in other countries.)  Not only that, the increase in availability of technologies like diagnostic imaging has not only not led to a decrease in the cost of using these technologies, but in many cases, costs have gone up.  These trends lead me to believe that the new technologies would be just as expensive, just as overused, and ultimately just as inaccessible to people as current technologies.  If anything, it seems like the rise of new, expensive technologies will contribute to the disparity that exists between the levels of healthcare that the upper and lower class have access to.

            Overall, I believe that Dr. Harris’s lecture was a pep talk, and not much more.  He did not provide any insight into healthcare as a human right, nor did he address how exactly technology will improve the state of healthcare in the US.  While he seemed like an interesting person and had interesting points in his discussions leading up to the lecture, I feel that Dr. Harris’s lecture largely failed to meet our expectations concerning what we would learn from him about Science and the Common Good.