Nancy Wexler, Ph.D.
Weill Cornell's Humanities and Medicine Program presents "To Know or Not To Know" with neuropsychologist Nancy Wexler, Ph.D., and noted author Richard Powers on Wednesday, Jan. 9, at 5 p.m. in Uris Auditorium.
Having contributed signficantly to the work that led to the genetic marker for Huntington's disease, a disease that runs in her family, Dr. Nancy Wexler was faced with the painful dilemma of deciding whether to learn if she had inherited the disease. "To know or not to know? Is there a cost to our expanding search for knowledge?" These same questions arise in Richard Powers' novels, which strive to join narrative theory to scientific and other investigative discussion.
Dr. Wexler is the Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology in the Department of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Mr. Powers, a MacArthur Foundation Fellow (1989), is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels. He is the Swanlund Professor of English at the University of Illinois.
Richard Powers (Photo by Madeleine Marchaterre.)