Dean Jack D. Sobel, M.D., invites all students, faculty and staff to join him for special guest lectures and seminars that will be given by visiting professor Solomon R. Benatar, MBChB, MRCP, FRCP, FACP, DSc., on June 25 and June 26. 
Tuesday, June 25
Lecture: Health of 21st Century – Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?
1-2:30 p.m.
Green Lecture Hall
Seminar: Global Medicine
3-4:30 p.m.
1328 Scott Hall
Wednesday, June 26
Seminar: Critical Reflections on Medical Education
9-10:30 a.m.
Margherio Family Conference Center
Lecture: Virtue in Medicine
12-1:30 p.m. (pizza will be provided)
Margherio Family Conference Center
Dr. Benatar is emeritus professor of Medicine and founding director of the University of Cape Town (South Africa) Bioethics Centre. He was professor of Medicine from 1980 to 2007, when he took mandatory retirement, and chair of the University of Cape Town's Department of Internal Medicine and chief physician at Groote Schuur Hospital from 1980 to 1999. He was a visiting professor of Medical Ethics at University College London Medical School in the late 1990s, visiting professor of Public Health Sciences and Medicine at the University of Toronto (2000 to 2007), chair of the Interim National Health Research Ethics Committee in South Africa and past-president of the International Association of Bioethics (2001 to2003). During the 1994-95 academic year, he was a fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University and visiting professor at Harvard Medical School. He was director of a National Institutes of Health (Fogarty International Center)-funded program for capacity building in International Research Ethics in southern Africa (2003 to 2010), and is now professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto.
After graduating from the University of Cape Town in 1965 and spending time in family practice, Dr. Benatar trained first in Anesthesia and then in Internal Medicine in Cape Town and London. His academic interests have ranged from respiratory medicine, academic freedom, medical ethics and the humanities in medicine, to human rights, health care systems, health economics and global health. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on these topics.
A sample of Dr. Benatar’s published work is available below:
- Explaining and Responding to the Ebola Epidemic
- Global Disparities in Health and Human Rights
- Global Health and the Global Economic Crisis
- Meeting Threats to Global Health a Call for American Leadership
He is a corresponding member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Human Rights and a member of several multi-disciplinary, international research groups. He has been an invited lecturer at many medical schools in South Africa, the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Brazil. He recently advised UNAIDS (Geneva), the HIV Trials Prevention Network (U.S.) and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).
He is an elected Foreign Associate Member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, Honorary Foreign Member American Academy of Arts and Sciences and fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa.