Topic Summary

4th Dialogue on Science “Taboos – Opportunities”

The fourth Dialogue on Science organized by Academia Engelberg critically examines both the advances in healthcare and the nature of decision-making processes.

From 28 to 30 September 2005, representatives from the worlds of science, business, politics and society will be discussing how healthcare in western industrialized nations should have developed in 2010. The concrete questions that will form the focus of group work and plenary sessions are: “How long can the health service continue to be financed? Should everything which is possible in medicine and is vital for patients also be financed? How can a change be brought about in people’s expectations, which have grown over the decades?”

Changing decision-making processes

At the fourth Dialogue on Science, Academia Engelberg’s aims to change the familiar conference procedure. Participants will swap roles, will represent opposing opinions and thus be confronted with their own taboos. Play will be used as a way of breaking through forbidden ideas and temporarily accepting unaccustomed and unusual roles. Participants will question the automatisms associated with their own position. Alien and perhaps senseless positions are to be given careful consideration. Discussions in confrontation and rotation, which will bring new findings also for their own decision-making processes.