October 11, 2002: Volume 56, Number 5

Journalist Laurie Garrett speaks on collapse of health care

Laurie Garrett, the award-winning journalist and author of Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, will speak on Tuesday, Oct. 15, at 7:30 p.m., in the Nott Memorial.

Her talk, titled "Betrayal of Trust," is part of Union's Perspectives at the Nott lecture series. It is free and open to the public.

Garrett's new book argues that public health systems are extremely fragile, that the wealth gap exacerbates public health stress and that health systems are too costly and narrowly focused. "Western models of individualized medicine are too costly and offer little benefit in terms of life expectancy. They fail to address the fundamental roots of bad health in poor countries such as un-clean water and lack of vaccines," she writes on her web site.

Garrett is the only writer ever to have garnered all three of the "big Ps" of journalism: the Peabody, Polk (twice), and Pulitzer.

She is a medical and science writer for Newsday, where she has won numerous honors for her work. She was an award-winning science correspondent on National Public Radio, and has appeared frequently on national television, including ABC Nightline, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, Oprah Winfrey, and Dateline.

Garrett also is the author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance.

For more on Garrett, visit:  http://www.lauriegarrett.com.

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