July 11, 2007  

SIU Med School Sponsors Annual Pearson Medical History Lecture

The history of the Nobel Prize sperm bank is the topic for the twelfth annual Emmet F. Pearson Memorial Medical History Lecture at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.  The free, public lecture is at 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 24, in SIU’s South Auditorium (second floor), 801 N. Rutledge St. in Springfield. 

“The Genius Factory” will be presented by David Plotz.  He will discuss the coming age of genetic expectations as it relates to the history of the Nobel Prize sperm bank and the genetic possibilities of the future.

Plotz is the deputy editor of Slate, an online magazine of news and commentary on culture and politics, which launched in 1996.  He earned his bachelor’s degree in social studies from Harvard College (1992).  He is the author of “The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank.”

The event is jointly sponsored by the SIU medical humanities department, Friends of the Pearson Museum and Illinois Humanities Council.  Dr. Emmet F. Pearson, who is memorialized by the lecture, was a Springfield physician who was also a professor emeritus in the internal medicine and medical humanities departments at SIU.  He died in June 1996.  The medical museum at SIU is named in his honor.

For more information, call SIU’s medical humanities department, 545-4261 weekdays. 

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