2018 President's lectures
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon
Date: 29 November 2018
In her second President's lecture, Joanna provides an update on her first talk a year previously. She talks about her unusual route to becoming a doctor, and how she used creative writing as an antidote to life, once she arrived on the wards.
Joanna, who wrote her first book 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' for fun, discusses the challenges and pressures of developing her second book, Three Things about Elsie, which was published in January 2018.
40 years of Psychiatry, and how it can inform the next 40 by Professor David Nutt
Date: 23 November 2018
Synopsis
Professor David Nutt has spent over 40 years practicing and researching psychiatry with involvement in national and international organisations involved in the development of new treatments and improving policies.
David broadcasts widely to the general public both on radio and television; highlights include being a subject for The Life Scientific on BBC radio 4, several BBC Horizon programs and the Channel 4 documentaries Ecstasy and Cannabis Live.
In 2010 The Times Eureka science magazine voted him one of the 100 most important figures in British Science, and the only psychiatrist in the list. In 2013 he was awarded the Nature/Sense about Science John Maddox prize for Standing up for Science and in 2016 an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Bath for contributions to science and policy.
This talk reflected on some key learnings from the different elements of David's career.
Becoming human: an idiosyncratic guide to 1,000 million years of the evolution of consciousness by Dr Derek Tracy
Date: 23 October 2018
Synopsis
Dr Tracy’s talk tracks 1,000 million years of the evolution of nervous systems in a single hour, taking an idiosyncratic approach to how our brains developed, what made us human, and how that links in with psychopathology.
It leaps from basic multicellular organisms with primitive sensory responses, through primal drivers of appetite and sex, to look at the emergence of emotion and memory in the brain.
The talk considers how humans differed from other hominids, especially Neanderthal, and what that tells us about who we are today, and our unique abilities, particularly at mentalisation.
It asks what other forms of consciousness might exist, and whether we could even recognise them if they do.
Professor Dame Sue Bailey, OBE, DBE: Back to the future - on the road less travelled
Date: 21 March 2018
Synopsis
We all know that where we live will impact radically on the quality of our lives. Across the world the challenge of achieving values and evidenced based, affordable, sustainable health care for all, has become so overwhelming we increasingly risk becoming crisis junkies.
Are we currently condemning prevention and sustainability to the too difficult to do box? How do we deal with diverse views as to whether increased utilisation of Artificial Intelligence in health care will make all things possible, threaten the livelihoods, remove all semblance of citizen confidentiality and rights or deliver the data patterns, that can advance the science of medicine and improve patient outcomes?
Musings of a kidney doctor by Professor Peter Mathieson
Date: 25 January 2018
In the first President's Lecture to be held in Scotland, Professor Wendy Burn invited Professor Peter Mathieson to give a talk at the Scotland Winter Meeting.
The cannabis revolution: implications for society, by Professor David Nutt
Date: 23 January 2018
Synopsis
On 1 November 2018 cannabis products changed in legal status from a controlled drug without medical use to a Schedule 2 medicine has significantly implications for psychiatry. Some of these will be good, e.g. the potential to liberate new treatments for disorders such as schizophrenia and PTSD, but others may be bad such as the possible increased risk of psychotic experiences.
My talk will explore the facts around cannabis products and try to describe a sensible path for research and clinical interventions in this new era.
Biography
Professor David Nutt has spent over 40 years practicing and researching psychiatry with involvement in national and international organisations involved in the development of new treatments and improving policies.
He is currently the Edmund J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Centre for Academic Psychiatry in the Division of Brain Sciences, Dept of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London. He is also visiting professor at the Open University in the UK and Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
After 11+ entry to Bristol Grammar he won an Open Scholarship to Downing College Cambridge, then completed his clinical training at Guy's Hospital London. After a period in neurology to MRCP he moved to Oxford to a research position in psychiatry at the MRC Clinical Pharmacology Unit where he obtained his MD. On completing his psychiatric training in Oxford, he continued there as a lecturer and then later as a Wellcome Senior Fellow in psychiatry. He then spent two years as Chief of the Section of Clinical Science in the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in NIH, Bethesda, USA.
He returned to England in 1988 to set up the Psychopharmacology Unit in Bristol University, an interdisciplinary research grouping spanning the departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, before moving to Imperial College London in December 2008 where he leads a similar group with a particular focus on brain imaging and translational medicine studies on these disorders.
David has edited the Journal of Psychopharmacology for over twenty five years and acts as the psychiatry drugs advisor to the British National Formulary. He has published over 500 original research papers and a similar number of reviews and books chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 31 books, including one for the general public, ‘Drugs Without the Hot Air’, which won the Transmission book prize in 2014 for Communication of Ideas.
David broadcasts widely to the general public both on radio and television; highlights include being a subject for The Life Scientific on BBC radio 4, several BBC Horizon programs and the Channel 4 documentaries Ecstasy and Cannabis Live. David is much in demand for public affairs programs on therapeutic as well as illicit drugs, their harms and their classification. In 2016 he was advisor to the BBC Religious affairs dept on their ground-breaking programme on psychedelics in religion.
He also lecturers widely to the scientific and medical communities as well as to the public e.g. at the Cheltenham Science and Hay How the Light Gets In Festivals, Glastonbury and other music festivals as well as many Café Scientifiques and Skeptics in the Pub. He also speaks regularly to schools.
In 2010 The Times Eureka science magazine voted him one of the 100 most important figures in British Science, and the only psychiatrist in the list. In 2013 he was awarded the Nature/Sense about Science John Maddox prize for Standing up for Science and in 2016 an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Bath for contributions to science and policy.