La moralité médicale d'après-guerre

The Department of Social Studies of Medicine

invites you to a seminar with:

Dr.  Laura Stark

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health and Society, Vanderbilt University

“Declarative bodies and the making of a postwar medical morality: The case of research ethics committees “

WEDNESDAY MARCH 13th,   2013

3647 Peel Street

Don Bates Seminar Room 101

3:30 p.m.

Abstract: Ethics review committees, which approve studies that involve “human subjects,” are now ubiquitous at medical research sites in North America and beyond. While many recent participants in the research enterprise have criticized the seemingly capricious nature of localized ethics review and have pointed toward the obstacles it raises for the increasingly common practice of multi-site studies, there are no satisfying explanations for the origin of local review or the purposes it was meant to serve. This talk argues that the present model of localized committee review of prospective research by a panel of experts was not solely the consequence of research scandals in the 1970s, but was the outcome of a protracted process centered at the US National Institutes of Health during the 1950s and 1960s aimed at maintaining professional discretion. By exploring the public archives of federal agencies and church organizations, internal NIH documents, and patient medical records it is possible to see how the conventional account of the field of bioethics—as a subversive postwar movement among medical “outsiders” responsible for reining in the medical profession—overlooks the origin of ethics review committees among scientists at the core of postwar medical power. The theoretical aim of the paper is to develop the concept of “declarative bodies” using ethics review committees as an exemplar. Declarative bodies are groups of specialists legally-empowered to use their judgment in rendering decisions, such as FDA Data and Safety Monitoring Committees, EPA Science Advisory Boards, and NSF funding review panels. Drawing on JL Austin’s notion of performance, this talk shifts the emphasis from how laws have encouraged standardization and routinization to how they have also legitimated the use of discretion and personal judgment —specifically by empowered groups of outside experts to make decisions on behalf of government agencies, such as ethics review committees.

******ALL ARE WELCOME******

For more information consult our website http://www.mcgill.ca/ssom/upcoming-seminars-events