One of the first American epidemiological studies of cardiovascular disease, the Framingham Heart Study, is considered to have played a central role in identifying the major risk factors for heart disease and in introducing and diffusing a risk factor approach. Today, a risk factor is usually presented as an individual and biological parameter rather than as a social characteristic, and it is most commonly used as a predictive rather than a causal notion. This paper examines the specific contribution of this prospective study to framing what I call a `restrictive' concept of risk factor. I show that these characteristics owe much to some peculiarities of this study when compared to other contemporary cohort studies carried out in the USA and in the UK: in particular its conception as a large clinical study, its relationship to American constitutional medicine and the division of work between clinicians and statisticians.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Katrin Amelang;
Susanne Bauer;
(August 2019)
Following the algorithm: How epidemiological risk-scores do accountability
(/isis/citation/CBB077353059/)
Article
Cara Kiernan Fallon;
(2019)
Husbands' Hearts and Women's Health: Gender, Age, and Heart Disease in Twentieth-Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB952802278/)
Thesis
Pollock, Anne;
(2007)
Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference
(/isis/citation/CBB001560686/)
Article
Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen;
(2019)
Epidemiological State-Building in Interwar Poland: Discourses and Paper Technologies
(/isis/citation/CBB786351803/)
Book
Gaudillière, Jean-Paul;
Löwy, Ilana;
(2001)
Heredity and Infection: The History of Disease Transmission
(/isis/citation/CBB000101679/)
Thesis
Bales, Ellen;
(2009)
An Element of Uncertainty: Radon and the Quantification of Risk in 20th-Century America, 1945--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB001562876/)
Article
Giroux, Élodie;
(2011)
Origines de l'étude prospective de cohorte: Épidémiologie cardio-vasculaire américaine et étude de Framingham
(/isis/citation/CBB001036213/)
Book
Arwen Mohun;
(2013)
Risk: Negotiating Safety in American Society
(/isis/citation/CBB242291502/)
Article
Cacciatore, Michael A.;
Scheufele, Dietram A.;
Corley, Elizabeth A.;
(2011)
From Enabling Technology to Applications: The Evolution of Risk Perceptions about Nanotechnology
(/isis/citation/CBB001034664/)
Thesis
Davis, Frederick Rowe;
(2001)
Pesticides and Toxicology: Episodes in the Evolution of Environmental Risk Assessment (1937--1997)
(/isis/citation/CBB001562407/)
Thesis
Mauck, Aaron Pascal;
(2010)
Managing Care: The History of Diabetes Management in Twentieth Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB001561043/)
Article
Steel, Daniel;
(2011)
Extrapolation, Uncertainty Factors, and the Precautionary Principle
(/isis/citation/CBB001024020/)
Book
Jones, David S.;
(2013)
Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care
(/isis/citation/CBB001214282/)
Article
Choon Key Chekar;
Hyomin Kim;
(2022)
COVID-19 Exceptionalism: Explaining South Korean Responses
(/isis/citation/CBB527253772/)
Book
Horstman, Klasien;
(2001)
Public Bodies, Private Lives: The Historical Construction of Life Insurance, Health Risks, and Citizenship in the Netherlands, 1880-1920
(/isis/citation/CBB000101498/)
Book
Hoffman, Beatrix Rebecca;
(2012)
Health Care for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States since 1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001214588/)
Book
Terry, Jennifer;
(1999)
An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society
(/isis/citation/CBB000111997/)
Thesis
Swanson, Kara Weatherlee;
(2009)
Body Banks: A History of Milk Banks, Blood Banks, and Sperm Banks in the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB001561092/)
Chapter
Davidson, Roger;
(2001)
“The price of the permissive society”: The epidemiology and control of VD and STDs in late-twentieth-century Scotland
(/isis/citation/CBB000102675/)
Article
Goenka, Ajit H.;
(2007)
Rustom Jal Vakil and the Saga of Rauwolfia serpentina
(/isis/citation/CBB000831675/)
Be the first to comment!