DATE: 8 a.m.-noon April 12, 2006.

EVENT:” Does the Animosity Between the Legal and Medical Professions Undermine Patient Care?”

Sen. George Mitchell will deliver the inaugural Arthur F. Southwick Lecture at this half-day event exploring the consequences to patient care of the distrust between attorneys and physicians and ways to repair that relationship.

Mitchell, who served in the U.S. Senate 1980-1995 and as Democratic majority leader from 1989 to 1995, is chairman of the global board and co-chair of the government controversies practice group in the law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. Mitchell chaired the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland, mediating a peace agreement there, and co-chaired an international fact-finding committee on violence in the Middle East. Author of the book” Making Peace,” he will speak about finding common ground between groups with disparate goals.

Other participants slated to speak are:

• Brenita Crawford, chief operating officer, Regional Medical Center in Memphis, Tenn.
• Dr. Donald J. Palmisano, president of the American Medical Association in 2003.
• William H. Thompson, shareholder in Hall, Render, Killian, Heath and Lyman, a law firm specializing in the health care field.

Evan Caminker, dean of the University of Michigan Law School, will moderate a panel discussion, and Peter D. Jacobson, director of the Center for Law, Ethics and Health, will offer closing remarks. Jacobson, who has both a law degree and a master’s in public health, is author of the 2002 book” Strangers in the Night: Law and Medicine in the Managed Care Era.”

PLACE: Pendleton Room in the Michigan Union, 530 S. State on U-M’s Central Campus: http://www.umich.edu/news/Maps/ccamp.html

REGISTER: Register by April 1 by going to the Web site: http://www.lawethicshealth.org.

EVENT CONTACT: Jenifer Martin, (734) 615-7197 or martinjj@umich.edu

SPONSORS: Hall, Render, Killian, Heath and Lyman is founding sponsor of the center. Other sponsors include Kitch, Drutchas, Wagner, Valitutti and Sherbrook; Sullivan, Ward, Asher and Patton; William H. Thompson; U-M President Mary Sue Coleman’s Initiative on Ethics in Public Life; U-M Office of the Vice President for Research; and the U-M School of Public Health.

Related Links:

• Center for Law, Ethics and Health