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Dr. Saul Green Memorial Lecture

Dr. Saul Green Memorial Lecture

The Dr. Saul Green Memorial Lecture was established for students at King’s through the generosity of the Green family. It is an annual lecture that addresses topics related to Judaism and medicine.

About Dr. Green

Dr. Saul Green was a graduate of Dalhousie University’s Medical School. He was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Canada as well as the American College of Surgeons. A founding member of the Shaar Shalom Synagogue, Dr. Green cared deeply about the relationship between Judaism, medicine and humanitarianism.

Shaar Shalom Synagogue is a conservative congregation providing egalitarian religious services, and educational and cultural programs that enhance Judaism for its individuals, its families and its community. Shaar Shalom is committed to learning, fellowship and community.

Upcoming Lecture

Past Lectures

“Vent: Disability Distributive Justice and the History of Ventilator Allocation Protocols.”

Dr. Mara Mills | March 18, 2025

Ventilators are one of the signal technologies of the COVID-19 pandemic. Debates about the fair allocation of this scarce resource dominated disability activism, news and social media for much of 2020—especially as hospitals around the world considered rationing protocols that excluded certain disabled people. New York was one of the first states to come up with a plan for allotting ventilators during pandemics; these guidelines, drafted in 2007, became broadly influential as healthcare centres and governments developed Crisis Standards of Care for COVID-19. Drawing on interviews and records from the New York Department of Health archives, Dr. Mills’ lecture reviews the history of debates among clinicians and ethicists that underpinned the preliminary New York State Ventilator Allocation Guidelines, and the public feedback that informed the revised guidelines of 2015. She also discusses more recent criticisms of the specific exclusion criteria and triage protocols (e.g. SOFA scoring) levied by disability bioethicists and activists during the COVID-19 pandemic. She argues that “ventilator allocation” is commonly misunderstood to refer solely to discrete devices and the rights of individual users. Moreover, a disability theory of distributive justice, informed by the disability justice movement, is required not only to eliminate ableism at the level of individual diagnosis and treatment, but to ensure broad access to ventilators with regard to class, race and region.

Imagining better health care: can counterfactual (“what if…”) learning by analogy from the bible help?

Dr. Abraham Rudnick | Oct. 23, 2019

Contemporary health care requires further transformation for improved effectiveness and efficiency. Creative and critical thinking is crucial for such transformation. A couple of promising aspects of creative and critical thinking that have not been sufficiently used for health care transformation are learning from counterfactuals (using what if… examples) and learning by analogy (referring to similar issues in other areas of life). This presentation integrates these aspects to learn from the bible how to consider health care transformation in Canada.

The Electric Composer: music, AI and being human

Dr. Sageev Oore | Oct. 10, 2018

In his lecture, Dr. Oore addressed these questions:

A neural network learns to generate music.

  • How does it do that?
  • How does it sound?
  • Is it music? & is that music—  human?

Médecins Sans Frontières: Medical Humanitarian Activism and the Tension Between Principle and Pragmatism

Dr. Bertha Fuchsman-Small | Nov. 2, 2017

In her lecture, Dr. Fuchsman-Small discussed how Médecins Sans Frontières uses its declared principles and evolving sense of its institutional role to address issues such as: when and where to intervene and to pull out; when to speak out and to whom; and how to balance integrity with cultural flexibility.

“Race,” Mental Health, and the Body Politic: Comments on Shakespeare’s Theatricalization of these Interlocking Concerns

Dr. George Elliott Clarke | Nov. 17, 2016

In his lecture, George Elliott Clarke examined several Shakespeare plays that scruple to dramatize “racial” difference, while also offering competing counter-narratives that align the experience of victimization with mental health disorders, and that, ironically may entertain the socio-political liberation of one group of subjugated persons, while welcoming (or ignoring) the continued suppression of others.