Gere, Cathy (Author)
How should we weigh the costs and benefits of scientific research on humans? Is it right that a small group of people should suffer in order that a larger number can live better, healthier lives? Or is an individual truly sovereign, unable to be plotted as part of such a calculation? These are questions that have bedeviled scientists, doctors, and ethicists for decades, and in Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good, Cathy Gere presents the gripping story of how we have addressed them over time. Today, we are horrified at the idea that a medical experiment could be performed on someone without consent. But, as Gere shows, that represents a relatively recent shift: for more than two centuries, from the birth of utilitarianism in the eighteenth century, the doctrine of the greater good held sway. If a researcher believed his work would benefit humanity, then inflicting pain, or even death, on unwitting or captive subjects was considered ethically acceptable. It was only in the wake of World War II, and the revelations of Nazi medical atrocities, that public and medical opinion began to change, culminating in the National Research Act of 1974, which mandated informed consent. Showing that utilitarianism is based in the idea that humans are motivated only by pain and pleasure, Gere cautions that that greater good thinking is on the upswing again today and that the lesson of history is in imminent danger of being lost. Rooted in the experiences of real people, and with major consequences for how we think about ourselves and our rights, Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good is a dazzling, ambitious history.
...MoreReview Tim Lewens (2020) Review of "Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good: From the Panopticon to the Skinner Box and Beyond". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences.
Review Katja Guenther (2020) Review of "Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good: From the Panopticon to the Skinner Box and Beyond". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences.
Review Cathy Gere (2020) Review of "Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good: From the Panopticon to the Skinner Box and Beyond". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences.
Review Rob Boddice (2019) Review of "Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good: From the Panopticon to the Skinner Box and Beyond". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 534-535).
Review Javier Moscoso (2019) Review of "Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good: From the Panopticon to the Skinner Box and Beyond". HOST: Journal of History of Science and Technology (pp. 125-127).
Review Fenneke Sysling (2018) Review of "Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good: From the Panopticon to the Skinner Box and Beyond". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 818-819).
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Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR
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Erika Dyck;
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A Eugenics Experiment: Sterilization, Hyperactivity and Degeneration
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Larry Stewart;
Erika Dyck;
(2016)
Introduction: Humans as Subjects and Objects
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Paul Weindling;
(2016)
Nazi Human Experiments: The Victims’ Perspective and the Post-Second World War Discourse
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Experiments in Democracy: Human Embryo Research and the Politics of Bioethics
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Shira Dina Shmuely;
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The Bureaucracy of Empathy: Vivisection and the Question of Animal Pain in Britain, 1876-1912
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Paola Bertucci;
(2016)
Shocking Subjects: Human Experiments and the Material Culture of Medical Electricity in Eighteenth-Century England
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Food Fights: Human Experiments in Late Nineteenth-Century Nutrition Physiology
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Erika Dyck;
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The Uses of Humans in Experiment: Perspectives from the 17th to the 20th Century
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The Subject as Instrument: Galvanic Experiments, Organic Apparatus and Problems of Calibration
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Rob Iliffe;
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Galvanic Humans
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Katherine Zwicker;
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Experimenting with Radium Therapy: In the Laboratory & the Clinic
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Pneumatic Chemistry, Self-Experimentation and the Burden of Revolution, 1780–1805
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The Hermphrodite of Charing Cross
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Paul A. Lombardo;
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Anthropometry, Race, and Eugenic Research: “Measurements of Growing Negro Children”
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Public Health, Laboratory Experiment, and Asymptomatic Carriers in Japan, ca. 1920–1950
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Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research
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Davide Orsini;
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"Gli animali soffrono per l'uomo": I sieroproduttori e l'Istituto Sieroterapico Vaccinogeno Toscano
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Skloot, Rebecca;
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The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
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