SCWA October Program

Thomas J. Bollyky

Plagues and the Paradox of Progress:

Why the World Is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways

Date:  Thursday, October 17, 2019

Time:  Membership Social at 7:30 p.m.  Program at 8:00 p.m.

Location: SKIDAWAY ISLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
50 DIAMOND CAUSEWAY, SKIDAWAY ISLAND. Directions and Map

Access: Open to the public and free for members, students and accompanying family members, educators, and active military and their dependents. $10.00 charge for non-members.

  Thomas J. Bollyky

Abstract:

Thomas Bollyky will explore ‘Why the news about the global decline of infectious diseases is not all good’.  There is a paradox in global health: the extraordinary progress being made in overcoming the bacteria, viruses, and parasites that were pervasive in poor societies is causing new sources of instability and impoverishment that threaten to undo all the good that has occurred.  In his new book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways  he writes “For the first time in recorded history, parasites, viruses, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death and disability in any region of the world, but the news is not all good”.

Speaker’s Biography:

Thomas Bollyky is the director of the global health program and senior fellow for global health, economics, and development at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University.  Mr. Bollyky directed the first CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force devoted to global health, entitled The Emerging Global Health Crisis: Noncommunicable Diseases in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. He is also the author of the book “Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways”.

Prior to coming to CFR, Mr. Bollyky was a fellow at the Center for Global Development and a director at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), where he led the negotiations on medical technology regulation in the U.S.-Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement and represented USTR in the negotiations with China on the safety of food and drug imports. He was a Fulbright scholar to South Africa, where he worked as a staff attorney at the AIDS Law Project, and an attorney at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where he represented clients before the International Court of Justice and the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Bollyky is a former law clerk to Chief Judge Edward R. Korman and was a health policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He has been a consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a temporary legal advisor to the World Health Organization

Mr. Bollyky received his BA in biology and history at Columbia University and his JD at Stanford Law School, where he was the president of the Stanford Law & Policy Review. He is a member of the New York and U.S. Supreme Court bars.