Lecture: Sue Halpern Book Tour

Going to readings and lectures is something I’ve heavily avoided doing, even in college. But, after the plays and movie screenings et al. I thought it’d be nice to change it up a little. Sue Halpern, famous author & magazine contributor, was speaking at Columbia University Medical Center at 168th & Broadway last Wednesday, April 12.

The lecture mainly focused on excerpts from her new book, Can’t Remember What I Forgot, and discussed “normal memory loss”. Even I, at 22, cannot seem to figure out what my memory drifts in and out, some exaggerations, some mistakes–I cannot figure it out. On the opposite end, my grandmother is having horrible memory loss. Repeating simple questions, forgetting the ingredients to dishes she’s made millions of times — for someone who has a Ph D. in History and was a professor, I can’t imagine being in her shoes…unless I’m going in that direction myself.

The excerpts also detailed many personal experiences Halpern shared with the “memory loss” scientists she worked with, experimental memory procedures she went through, and her father’s experiences with memory loss. From a non-scientific perspective, seeing a human perspective on memory loss is better then the mumbo-jumbo scientists spill out. She espoused her desire for a “more open…collaborative” scientific community and a sort of “open source” scientific community. Doctors speaking with doctors about their findings? What a novel concept. Maybe this is a good start to the kind of change our medical professions (and our wallets) could really use.