Introduction to Medical Humanities

Prof. Renzo Pegoraro graduated in Medicine at the University of Padua (1985). He studied Philosophy, Theology, and Bioethics, in Padua and Rome. In 1993 became Professor of Bioethics at the Faculty of Theology of Northern Italy and General Secretary of the Fondazione Lanza in Padova (Center of Advanced Studies in Ethics, Bioethics and Environmental Ethics). President of the Research Ethics Committee of the Venetian Institute of Oncology. 1998-2013 member of the Board of the European Society of Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care (ESPMH) and served as President in 2005-2007. Member of the Bureau of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics (EACME) and served as President between 2010-2013. He is a member of the International Association for Education in Ethics (IAEE). Since 2011 he has been Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome. He has published articles in journals and books on different issues in Biomedical Ethics, particularly on religion andbioethics, human experimentation, organ transplantation and clinical ethics.  Prof. Luciana Caenazzo is Associate Professor in Legal Medicine at the University of Padua (Italy). She has a Master’s Degree in Clinical Ethics and Consultation. Her research regards the personal identification in paternity analysis and biological stains by means of the study of DNA genetic markers and the application of the personal identification in the forensic field (Forensic Genetics) and for clinical purpose as the determination of sex with the techniques of molecular biology, and the follow up on the patients undergoing marrow transplantation. Her research interests also comprise: ethical questions of genetics, forensic genetics and justice, ethical aspects of the clinical use of genetics. In the last years, she also focused on ethical and legal aspects of governance in biobanks. On these last topics she has been collaborating with the Fondazione Lanza (Padova. Italy). Dr. Lucia Mariani achieved a B. A. in Human and Social Sciences (1992) - Major in Arts and Human Geography - and completed her Ph.D. program on “Man and Environment” in 1996. Her main field of activity has developed over the years, thanks to her continuous collaboration with the Fondazione Lanza, and it has been focusing mainly on Ethics, Bioethics, Medical Humanities, Arts, and Environmental issues. Her knowledge and expertise have been useful in the organization of international meetings and in the translation, editing and collecting of original material that has been published in several books. She is also the Coordinator of the Fondazione Lanza Research Project “Ethics and Emerging Technologies: a Population-based Health Monitoring Project”

• Introduction.- Chapter 1: The Medical Humanities.- Chapter 2: Clinical Ethics in the Context of Medical Humanities.- Chapter 3: Perspectives on "Mediterranean Bioethics".- Chapter 4: Medical Liability: Two Historical Cases from Padua.- Chapter 5: Medical Issues in Italian Frescoes.- Chapter 6: The Sculpted Body: Interferences between Beauty and Anatomy.- Chapter 7: Clinical Narratives. Stories and Ethics in Healthcare.- Chapter 8: Viral pandemics and the advent of a neo-Renaissance. A Lacanian reading of Dan Brown’s Inferno.- Chapter 9: Psychic Life and Things: Architecture, Urbanism, and Pan-diadromous.- Chapter 10: A Narrative Shift for Clinical Bioethics. The role of  Cinema.- Chapter 11: The Hunter Gracchus, a Franz Kafka story of death's dehumanization.- Chapter 12: Why not dream? Murano: Glass and Spirit.- Conclusions.