Held on Tuesday, 24 November 2026 at 6:30pm

Venue: Apothecaries' Hall, Black Friar's Lane, London EC4V 6EJ

Presenting Present Refusal, Future Relapse: Can AI justify earlier intervention in psychiatry? (Sydney Selwyn lecture)

To be given by Kristina Parkinson

Artificial intelligence may soon be able to predict psychiatric relapse while a patient is still able to refuse treatment. For clinicians, such predictions raise a difficult ethical dilemma. The lecture considers the resulting tension between autonomy and beneficence, and asks whether the possibility of preserving a patient’s future autonomy could ever justify earlier intervention.

Kristina Parkinson’s interests lie in the history and philosophy of medicine and medical ethics. She serves on the patient and public involvement panel of the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and has undertaken commissioned evidence-review work for the NHS, focusing on collaborative approaches to integrated health and social care. She is currently studying for an MSc in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Presenting: From Railway Spine to Not Fighting in a Warlike Manner: The Evolution of PTSD and Refusal to Fly in Bomber Command in WW 11. (Osler Lecture)

To be given by Daryl Godden 

The lecture describes the gradual appreciation that traumatic events, either in the civilian setting, such as railway accidents, or as a result of battle, may develop into what we now know to be Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Initially, in the civilian setting, these patients were seen as hysterical, and in the military setting, soldiers and airmen were seen as cowards. In the RAF, they were dealt with as a lack of Moral Fibre, a punitive term designed to discourage others. This lecture traces that narrative and how, over 120 years, PTSD became recognized as a genuine condition.

Daryl Godden: Initially qualified in Dentistry at Royal Dental Hospital London, then studied Medicine at Sheffield University; qualified in 1991

Trained in surgery in RAF/Army, FRCS 1997; 1998 left RAF and finished training in Maxillofacial Surgery on Manchester SpR rotation

2001-2024 Consultant Maxillofacial, Head and Neck Surgeon specializing in Head and Neck cancer surgery and reconstruction.