Historian of Medicine Dr. Harry Wu answers the following questions for the History of Science ON CALL project:

1. What are the limits of science under the Covid-19 crisis?
2. How will Covid-19 transform science?
3. What message does Covid-19 convey to health sciences students regarding the history of medicine?
4. From a historical perspective, why isn’t WHO functioning well?
5. How can a historian of medicine inform the future?

Profile: Harry Yi-Jui Wu

Harry Yi-Jui Wu is Director of Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit at the Faculty of Medicine, and Assistant Professor in Medical Humanities at the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at The University of Hong Kong. Before becoming a historian, he was trained as a physician in Taiwan and briefly worked in psychiatry. In 2012, he obtained his DPhil in Modern History from the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford, where he was previously a Clifford Norton Student (Research Fellow) in the History of Science at The Queen's College. Before rejoining the University of Hong Kong, he had been teaching at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and the History Program at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Wu’s research work include the history of medicine and medical humanities. He is especially interested in agendas related to mental health, hazard exposure, and end-of-life care.

About the History of Science ON CALL Project

History of Science ON CALL aggregates and amplifies two streams of information—Research and Education—relevant to crises, including chronic disasters. The Research stream consists of short-format video interviews while the Education stream seeks to aggregate and introduce known resources and materials—scholarship and teaching tools—in order to amplify their reach.