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Dr. William S. Silvers Holocaust, Genocide, and Contemporary Bioethics Lectureship

Annual Lectureship on Holocaust, Genocide, and Contemporary Bioethics 

Find the most recent iteration of IUCB's Dr. William S. Silvers Holocaust, Genocide, and Contemporary Bioethics Lectureship here.

The IU School of Medicine and IU Center for Bioethics are pleased to host the Dr. William S. Silvers Holocaust, Genocide, and Contemporary Bioethics Lectureship.  The Silvers lectureship addresses bioethical issues raised by the Holocaust and other cases of genocide.  Funding for this lectureship was provided by Dr. Silvers, a graduate of IU School of Medicine and a faculty member for over 30 years at University of Colorado School of Medicine.  

The purpose of the Silvers Lectureship is to offer space annually for physicians and other community leaders to consider the impact of their work and apply the ethical lessons of the Holocaust. The lectureship strives to focus healthcare workers on the morality of their actions and to ground contemporary conflicts in the lessons of history.

The program each year will bring in a visiting scholar to provide a lecture at IU School of Medicine and lead a community event. This year, the visiting professor will be Amber Comer, JD, PhD, Director of Ethics Policy at the American Medical Association, Associate Professor of Medicine at the IU School of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor at the McKinney School of Law. 

Donor

Dr. Silvers completed his education at Indiana University School of Medicine in 1974, and has served on the faculty at the University of Colorado for more than thirty years. During his tenure, he has received numerous awards for his excellence in teaching and clinical care. The IU School of Medicine thanks Dr. Silvers for his vision in creating this lectureship and its benefit to the Indiana University community.

Past Events

The program each year will bring in a visiting scholar to provide a lecture at IU School of Medicine and lead a community event.

In 2019, the visiting scholar was Matt Wynia, MD, MPH, FACP.  Dr. Wynia is the director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities and a Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Colorado School of Public Health. Dr. Matt Wynia presented, " How Healers Became Killers: Nazi Doctors and Modern Medical Ethics."

In 2020, the visiting professor was Sabine Hildebrandt, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  She is an anatomy educator and conducts research on the history and ethics of anatomy, specifically the history of anatomy in National Socialist Germany. Dr. Hildebrandt presented, "Nazi Anatomy: Restoration of the Victims' Biographies."

In 2022, professor Richard Gunderman, MD, PhD at the IU School of Medicine gave a talk titled, "Man, Descending: Eugenics in Indiana and Germany." Eugenicists in the United States, building on the breakthroughs of Darwin and Mendel, aimed to protect the human gene pool by preventing “inferior” human beings from reproducing. What they unleashed, however, was a terrible tide of dehumanization and inhumanity, both here at home in Indiana and in far-away Germany. The lessons of their efforts, though difficult to contemplate, must never be forgotten.

In 2023, on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), Dr. Alex Kor, DPM, MS, gave a talk titled, “The Lessons of the Holocaust for Healthcare: Personal, Professional, and Historical Reflections.” Dr. Kor relates the story of three people: his mother, Eva Kor, who was a victim of Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz; Dr. Hans Muench, a physician at Auschwitz who found a way to protect prisoners there; and himself, a podiatrist and cancer survivor. These stories yield important lessons about memory, forgiveness, and the ethical practice of medicine.

In 2024, Stacy Gallin, D.M.H., presented "The Value of Bioethics and the Holocaust for Medical Education". Dr. Gallin is the Founder and Director of the Ferencz Institute for Ethics, Human Rights and the Holocaust. This lecture discussed how healthcare providers in Nazi Germany were deeply complicit in the Holocaust not because they were forced to do evil but because they were convinced it was right, focusing on what they saw was best for the German people overall. 

For the 2025 annual lecture, Amber Comer, JD, PhD will present "Social Darwinism, Nazi Experiments, and the Birth of Modern Bioethics." Amber is the Director of Ethics Policy at the American Medical Association, an Associate Professor at the IU School of Health and Human Sciences, Associate Professor of Medicne at the IU School of Medicine, an Adjunct Professor at the Robert H, McKinney School of Law, and a Faculty Investigator at the IU Center for Bioethics. In this lecture, Dr. Comer will discuss how the atrocities committed by Nazi doctors during the Holocaust resulted in the formation of modern Bioethics.