Thursday 6 December 2012

Medicine Unboxed:Belief A review


Medicine Unboxed: Belief


From the delightful slender flyer deriving beauty from three pictures of brain haemorrhages, to the accessible £45 conference fee to the 12 hours of intense debate tempered with literature, poetry, comedy, music and magic (and that was just Saturday!).

 

From the imaginative leap of Sam Gugliani, Oncologist, to realise there was an audience for this event to the effort and research it is evident he put into co-ordinating the fourth Medicine Unboxed, added to his ability to engage and question with such confidence, knowledge and dexterity.

 

Medicine Unboxed was nothing like I expected. Though I had no idea what to expect.

 

My particular highlights:

 

1) Poetry by Jo Shapcott and her honesty at not knowing exactly what imagination is and John Burnside being beamed in from Ireland.

 

2) Adam Kay's How to be a bogus doctor. Especially loved his idea of making a scan machine by cutting a washing machine in half and putting a lilo on either side and using masking tape to hide the facts and the cracks.

 

3) I returned on Sunday morning for Health and Justice, a debate I imagined would be dry and boring. This was the most engaging and surprising debate of the weekend and  this debate elevated itself above the people on the panel, the people in the Parabola Arts Centre and I feel every delegate carried the memory of this debate with them.

 

I was staggered by the scale and scope of this forum and delighted to have been part of this rewarding and massively ground-breaking experience.