Current Projects
IN PLAIN SIGHT
A film and advocacy project on global health disparities, that will feature ordinary people who refuse to accept the common wisdom about the limits of global health. The project will include a series of short films for education as well as a feature documentary film that touches people emotionally, intellectually and artistically in order to motivate them to make change in health policy for global health disparities.
CITIZEN SCIENTISTS
This film will document the rise of patient advocacy groups, and their increasingly dramatic impact on the nature and scope of scientific research. In the last 10 years, the parents of children with genetic disorders, often connecting through the internet, have founded blood and tissue banks that give them the leverage to work with the scientific community, and change the direction of their research. Energized by the drive to save their own children, the groups' goal is to focus research in directions leading most rapidly to treatment. The accomplishments are astounding: genes for several disorders have been found (with advocates names on some of the papers and patents), genetic tests are on the market, and now some treatments are beginning clinical trials. But what does this mean for scientists? What is the relationship and obligation of the researchers to their subjects?
CITIZEN SCIENTISTS will follow three groups at different stages in their quest for a treatment - one at the beginning stages of formation, one whose gene discovery has lead to a genetic test, and one group at the beginning of a clinical trial. The film will explore the way that these groups are dramatically changing the traditional model of scientific research, and look at the ethical and social issues raised by this change.
SCBE's Program in Biomedical Ethics and Film is working in collaboration with scholars in the Center for Integration of Research on Genetics and Ethics (CIRGE) to make CITIZEN SCIENTISTS into a dramatic teaching tool that will engage students and scientists to think about the ethical, philosophical and social issues involved in their research.
Other Documentary Film Projects
VISUALIZING EMOTION
"Visualizing Emotion" is a film installation exhibit scheduled to open at Stanford University's Cantor Art Museum. The exhibit invites audiences to experience the new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology that is able to measure the biology of emotion and to consider its far-reaching implications. Groundbreaking imagery of the brain in states of compassion, hope, fear, and disgust will be juxtaposed with microphotography of facial and bodily expressions of these feelings and evocative sights and sounds used to stimulate these emotional responses. The exhibit will include a Town Hall meeting with a range of speakers to engage the public in a dialogue about what this new technology means for us as a society.
Films By Other Program in Bioethics and Film Staff
SENTENCED HOME
Sentenced Home is co-directed by Nicole Newnham and David Grabias. Raised as Americans in inner-city projects near Seattle, three young Cambodian refugees each made a rash decision as a teenager that irrevocably shaped their destiny. Now facing deportation back to Cambodia years later, they find themselves caught between a tragic past and an uncertain future by a system that doesn't offer any second chances. Sentenced Home will broadcast nationally on PBS Independent Lens on May 15, 2007. Screenings and outreach activities will take place in April, 2007.
HEALTH BY RIVER AND ROAD: DOCTORS IN RURAL ECUADOR
Health By River and Road is produced and directed by Mike Seely. Dr. Edgar Rodas has dedicated his life to improving the health conditions for underserved communities in his native Ecuador. Health by River and Road follows the doctor and his dedicated team of doctors as they treat patients in Ecuador's underserved coastal areas, indigenous regions and jungle communities with their mobile hospital truck and boat. The film poigniantly illustrates the challenges and successes of reaching patients in remote, impoverished areas with little or no access to basic health care.
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