February 6, 2025
Clinicians receive little training in disability ethics, though disability intersects in critical ways with clinical practice, particularly in specialties concerned with the nervous system. This virtual panel explored different theoretical approaches to disability and what clinicians need to know about this evolving body of scholarship. Featuring two leading philosophers, Dr. Sara Goering and Dr. Ally Peabody Smith, alongside clinicians Dr. Monica Lemmon and Dr. Philipp Kellmeyer, this discussion bridged the conceptual and practical aspects of disability theory, including insights for clinical practice.
Virtual webinar was organized by the Clinical Neuroethics Affinity Group
Recording
Panelists
Sara Goering, PhD
Dr. Sara Goering, PhD, is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington (UW) and a core faculty member in both the Program on Ethics and the Disability Studies Program. She co-leads the ethics thrust at the UW Center for Neurotechnology and specializes in the ethics of neural engineering, neurotechnologies in cases of disability, and early exposure to philosophy education. She teaches courses in bioethics, philosophy of disability, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of medicine, and works with the UW Center for Philosophy of Children, bringing philosophical discussions to Seattle public schools.
Philipp Kellmeyer, MD, MPhil
Prof. Philipp Kellmeyer, MD, MPhil, is assistant professor for Responsible AI and Digital Health at the University of Mannheim and a neurologist at the University Medical Center Freiburg, where he leads the Human-Technology Interaction Lab in the Department of Neurosurgery. His research focuses on human-technology interaction in medicine with a focus on AI systems, robotics and neurotechnology. He is also an affiliated researcher at the Institute for Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University of Zurich, where he teaches biomedical ethics.
Monica Lemmon, MD
Dr. Monica Lemmon, MD, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Population Health Sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine, where she practices fetal and neonatal neurology. Her research focuses on shared decision-making, parent-clinician communication, and the development of interventions to support parents and clinicians in the collaborative care of critically ill children. In addition to her research, Dr. Lemmon serves as the Associate Dean for Scientific Integrity at Duke University School of Medicine.
Ally Peabody Smith, MA, PhD
Dr. Ally Peabody Smith, MA, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Lehigh University’s College of Health and a philosopher, focusing on the philosophies of health, medicine, and disability, with interests in moral status, capacity and communication, bioethics, and intellectual and psychological disabilities. As a mixed-methods researcher, she has qualitative projects on non-speaking human communication, the attitudes of clinicians towards different forms of cognitive disability, as well as collaborative projects on neuroethics methodologies, medical school ethics curricula improvements, and the ethics of organoid intelligence. She is currently developing an argument for a novel view of morally significant forms of communication in her book project, Love Without Language.