Welcome. I'm Dr. Vinay Prasad. I'm a hematologist, oncologist, and I'm associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In my professional life, I see patients, I teach trainees, and I do research in health care policy. This is plenary session.

Plenary session is a podcast at the intersection of medicine, oncology, and health policy,

and you're listening to Season 3. On this week's episode. This week on Plenary session, I'm

joined by Alex John London. Alex John London is a professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University,

and he's going to talk about the role of philosophy, COVID-19,

and some interesting discussion about COVID exceptionalism.

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Email us your question at plenary session podcast at gmail.com.

I'm back in plenary session, joined via Zoom by professor, Alex John London.

Alex is a professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University.

He is somebody who does a fair bit of work at the intersection of philosophy, medicine,

clinical trials, the practice of medicine.

And he's somebody who I have admired for a long time now, and we've long had overlapping interests, I think, in the space of cancer drugs and clinical trials and portfolios,

a collaborator of, I think, a guest of this podcast, Jonathan Kimmelman.

And Professor London is somebody who's written a lot of very interesting things about, I think, the trials and how we think about trials when it comes to COVID-19, particularly the clinical side of it.

Alex John London, it's a pleasure to speak with you.

Thanks for having me.

I guess I should say a long-time listener, a first-time caller.

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