Humanity Plus is a new club founded by senior Nikhil Delahaye that serves to inspire students to engage in the medical field.
“I started it [Humanity Plus] the summer before my senior year, so right before this year,” Delahaye said. “The main reason I created it is because I noticed there is a significant shortage of doctors in the medical industry and I wanted to make something where I could help inspire people to pursue a medical career. A lot of my peers think that they can’t afford medical schools, or that it’s impossible [to get in], and I wanted to raise questions and have an environment for intellectual thought.”
Humanity Plus club meetings center on a group discussion that concerns an aspect of the medical industry.
“Humanity Plus is a group of people getting together talking about medical concerns, the future of medicine, where it can go, and what ethical issues may arise from the extreme medical adaptations that are starting to become prevalent,” advisor Antony Sharp said. “Really it’s a discussion group for people that are interested in medicine, and certainly for those students who are interested in a career of medicine where these sort of things will be the questions that arise when they become doctors.
Members of Humanity Plus delve into ethical issues that accompany medical technology as it continues to advance.
“What would happen if we could have artificial limbs that are better than the limbs we have now?” Sharp said. “Would it be ethical for someone to deliberately take someone’s arm off and put a prosthetic one in that’s better than the original one? The club isn’t all about ethical issues, however, that is a big part of what we do.”
Humanity Plus plans on forming future connections with different clubs such as Model United Nations and Debate.
“Recently we’ve been reaching out to other clubs, and we are currently organizing a mock MUN [Model United Nations] conference.” Delahaye said. “We’ll do topics like human augmentation, now and in the future. It would be a joint effort by Model United Nations and Humanity Plus. We’re also planning on a merger with Debate as well where we’ll have Humanity Plus topics in a mock debate conference.”
The club also serves to support the community.
“There’s something called the H-Plus Initiative, which is an outreach program where we go to other schools to tutor kids in science and inspire them to become doctors,” Delahaye said.
Furthermore, this club plans to go to Johns Hopkins in order to listen to a talk by Dr. Ben Carson [a neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital] and maybe get some hands-on work at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
