During the ceremony, professor Barona Vilar has presented the XIII Master lecture Andrés Laguna “From Medical Renaissance to Technological Medicine”.  He has also expressed that “the current challenge for medicine is to include technology without losing ethical and moral values”.  He also warned about the risk of technology generating inequalities and dehumanizing medical care if it does not take into account ethical values

Barona has reminded the importance of humanistic principles from the Renaissance in relation to technological improvements in modern medicine. He has also defended the power of words as a healer, as hyppocratic and galenics medicine defended. “Nowadays, technology tends to make an illness impartial and sets aside the doctor-patient communication. We need to recover human contact and remember that the patient is not an experimental object, but a human being that has feelings”, he has explained defending the importance of the values of humanism such as “respect, empathy and communication”.

The Laguna’s 2025 Council has named Master professor Barona, as a recognition to his career path, in which he has succeeded in integrating scientific and humanistic knowledge for the progress of society. “Professor Barona, as Laguna, stands out not only for his researches in History of medicine but also for his European devotion, due to his academic experience in institutions from Europe, America and Japan and his exemplary career in teaching and research”, has explained professor Dolores Ruíz-Berdún, in charge of the Laudatio.

Josep Lluís Barona

He is a full-time university professor of History of Science in the Universitat de València and a member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of the Valencian Community and the López Piñero Institute of History of Medicine and Science. He has been a visitor professor at the universities of Oxford, Bergen (Norway) and Kumamoto (Japan), as well as a visitor researcher at Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, in Germany and of Rockefeller Archive Centre, in New York. Barona Vilar is also a member of the Biology section of Institute for Catalan Studies and contributor to cultural magazines and newspapers. His research started with history of the physiology and with Spanish medical humanism in the 16th-17th centuries. Afterwards he focused on health policies and nutrition as international diplomacy in the beginning of the 20st century.  He has written more than 250 articles and more than thirty books that have been published by both, national and international publishers.

His main research is focused on contemporary Europe, specially on the social and political study of different areas such as health, famine and nutrition of between-wars period.  While being on the United Nations Fund, the WHO and FAO, he has analysed health policies and knowledge circulation during crisis.