Book ID: CBB108849167

Ethics by Committee: A History of Reasoning Together about Medicine, Science, Society, and the State (2022)

unapi

How liberal democracies in the late twentieth century have sought to resolve public concerns over charged issues in medicine and science. Ethics boards have become obligatory passage points in today’s medical science, and we forget how novel they really are. The use of humans in experiments is an age-old practice that records show goes back to at least the third century BC, and it has been popular as a practice since the early modern period. Yet in most countries around the world, hardly any formal checks and balances existed to govern the communal oversight of experiments involving human subjects until at least the 1960s. Ethics by Committee traces the rise of ethics boards for human experimentation in the second half of the twentieth century.  Using the Netherlands as a case study, historian Noortje Jacobs shows how the authority of physicians to make decisions about clinical research in this period gave way in most developed nations to formal mechanisms of communal decision-making that served to regiment the behavior of individual researchers. This historically unprecedented change in scientific governance came out of the growing international wariness of medical research in the decades after World War II and was meant to solidify a new way of reasoning together in liberal democracies about medicine and science. But what reasoning together meant, and who was invited to participate, changed drastically over time. In detailing this history, Jacobs shows that research ethics committees were originally intended not only to make human experimentation more ethical but also to raise its epistemic quality and intensify the use of new clinical research methods. By examining complex negotiations over the appropriate governance of human subjects research, Ethics by Committee is an important contribution to our understanding of the randomized controlled trial and the history of research ethics and bioethics more generally.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB108849167/

Similar Citations

Book Benjamin Hurlbut; (2017)
Experiments in Democracy: Human Embryo Research and the Politics of Bioethics (/isis/citation/CBB656933386/)

Article Sarah Babb; (2021)
The Privatization of Human Research Ethics: An American Story (/isis/citation/CBB733380502/)

Article Hansson, Mats G.; (2006)
Combining Efficiency and Concerns about Integrity When Using Human Biobanks (/isis/citation/CBB000770739/)

Chapter Moreno, Jonathan D.; (2007)
Stumbling Toward Bioethics: Human Experiments Policy and the Early Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB000760187/)

Article Briggle, Adam; (2009)
The Kass Council and the Politicization of Ethics Advice (/isis/citation/CBB000953543/)

Thesis Stark, Laura Jeanine Morris; (2006)
Morality in Science: How Research is Evaluated in the Age of Human Subjects Regulation (/isis/citation/CBB001561436/)

Book Volker Roelcke; Sascha Topp; Etienne Lepicard; (2014)
Silence, Scapegoats, Self-Reflection: The Shadow of Nazi Medical Crimes on Medicine and Bioethics (/isis/citation/CBB361728556/)

Thesis Farkas, Nicole Elisabeth; (2002)
Bread, Cheese, and Expertise: Dutch Science Shops and Democratic Institutions (/isis/citation/CBB001562520/)

Article Daniel J. Hicks; (2017)
Genetically Modified Crops, Inclusion, and Democracy (/isis/citation/CBB212227086/)

Book Sweeney, Sean; Hodder, Ian; (2002)
The Body (/isis/citation/CBB000302165/)

Article Fedir Razumenko; (2021)
The Genesis and Development of Research Ethics Committees in Canada, 1960–1978 (/isis/citation/CBB954336261/)

Book Guerrini, Anita; (2003)
Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Galen to Animal Rights (/isis/citation/CBB000330970/)

Thesis McGuire, Amy L.; (2004)
Respect for Research Subjects: Reality or Rhetoric? (/isis/citation/CBB001561831/)

Authors & Contributors
Razumenko, Fedir
Hicks, Daniel J.
Kimmelman, Jonathan
Babb, Sarah
Jacobs, Noortje
Mbali, Mandisa
Concepts
Biology and ethics; bioethics
Human experimentation
Medicine and ethics
Science and ethics
Ethics
Research methods
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
Places
United States
Netherlands
Great Britain
West Germany
South Africa
Canada
Institutions
President's Council on Bioethics (United States)
National Institute of Health (U.S.)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment