Urban Wiesing has been professor of Ethics in Medicine at University of Tübingen since 1998, previously he was an assistant at the Institute for Theory and History at the University of Münster.

His research focuses on medicine and philosophy, new techniques in medicine, the relationship between medicine and time, as well as medical ethics and research ethics.

Prevention has a strong reputation. It is always considered good, but basically too little is done for it. This must be questioned, with special reference to the idea of ‘time’. Prevention differs from other medical interventions by its special relationship to time. It anticipates certain negatively evaluated conditions before they materialise. Prevention offers a person a specific opportunity to shape the formative temporality of his or her own life. By behaving in the present, it can prevent the occurrence of certain phenomena that do not yet exist. But what does prevention do to our lives? And what does it do with our experience of time? What happens to our lives when it is seen as a collection of risk factors that must be avoided in order to achieve the most successful quantitative extension of lifetime? These questions are becoming more relevant in the age of accelerated sciences and accelerated change in society and the living environment.

Urban Wiesing’s collaboration partners are Prof. Dr. Philipp Osten, Debuty Head of the Institute of History and Ethics in Medicine, and Prof. Dr. Martin Scherer of the Institute of General Medicine, both at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE).

Urban Wiesing’s HIAS Fellowship is funded by the Joachim Herz Foundation.