Duke Divinity School’s Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative is co-sponsoring a public conversation titled “Do No Harm?: Perspectives from Cultural Ethics on the Opioid Crisis” with Dr. Carl Elliott, professor in the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, and Dr. Brett McCarty, St. Andrews Fellow in Theology and Science at the Divinity School.

They will discuss how their work in cultural ethics illuminates the contemporary opioid crisis. Building off his work on consumerism in modern healthcare, Elliott will examine the roles played by physicians and pharmaceutical companies in causing the opioid crisis. Drawing from interviews conducted in southern Appalachia, McCarty will describe how medicine often hinders the agency of those living with pain and addiction.

In order to respond to the contemporary opioid crisis in fitting ways, they argue that modern healthcare first must take seriously how it has helped make this crisis possible.