35th Annual Jonathan J. King Lecture
Join us on Tuesday, October 14th, 2025, for our 35th Annual Jonathan J. King Lecture, "When Care Comes First: A Radical Reimagining of Medical Ethics" featuring Dr. Arthur Kleinman.
Arthur Kleinman, MD, author of the acclaimed The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition, is a world-renowned expert and luminary whose influential career spans anthropology, global health, ethics, psychiatry as well as narrative and cultural medicine. Educated at Stanford and a distinguished professor at Harvard for nearly five decades, Kleinman has notably served as Chair of both Harvard’s Department of Social Medicine and Department of Anthropology and directed Harvard’s Asia Center. He is also the author of multiple books, including The Soul of Care and co-editor of seminal volumes such as Reimagining Global Health. Kleinman's prestigious accolades include membership in the National Academy of Medicine, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Franz Boas Award from the American Anthropological Association. A revered mentor, Kleinman has guided generations of scholars in transforming global perspectives on health and human suffering.
Stay tunned for registration links, coming soon!
The Vision of Jonathan J. King
Three weeks before his death, Jonathan King defined the key messages he wished to bring to the attention of the medical community through these lectures.
- The patient is your client and should be treated with respect. Seek out and give full weight to your patient’s suggestions and opinions on treatments. Never, ever treat your patient as an object or as a second class citizen.
- Empathize. Put yourself in your patient’s shoes as much as you can, recognizing that a fatal or harsh diagnosis separates the patient from “ordinary” people.
- Foster the patient’s feelings of control and hope, however small they appear scientifically.
- Base this on a foundation of honesty. In other words, tell the whole truth from the start, but don’t fear or disparage your patient’s drive for alternatives; help assure they are sensible.
- Help and urge the patient to build a support system. Urge the patient to bring a companion to office visits and other important events.
- Encourage the patient to consult other sources of information (including other doctors) and always make medical records available.
- Expect patients with a poor prognosis to alternate between “frantic” search for solutions followed by calm commitment to a plan. Be patient when your patient is frantic.
- Make every extra positive gesture. They boost morale enormously and ease the feeling of being alone. Thoughtless comments rankle, and are likewise magnified.
- Make physical surroundings and institutional arrangements — lighting, food, etc. — as pleasant as possible.
- Support efforts to speed up attempts to apply promising but unproven treatments for patients with a fatal diagnosis.
Jonathan King Videos:
FULL VIDEO:
SHORT VERSION OF VIDEO:
Full Version: Jonathan King Ethics Class
(audio will require headphones or turning up volume setting)
