The Risks of Medical Innovation: Risk Perception and Assessment in Historical Context

ISBN-13: 9781138867949 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 304 str.

Dr Thomas Schlich; Ulrich Trohler

Opis

The risks involved in introducing new drugs and devices are amongst the most discussed issues of modern medicine. Presenting a new way of thinking about these issues, this volume considers risk and medical innovation from a social historical perspective, and studies specific cases of medical innovation, including X-rays, the pill and Thalidomide, in their respective contexts. International cases are examined through the lens of a particular set of shared questions - highlighting differences, similarities, continuities and changes, and offering a historical sociology of risk. Particularly important is the re-conceptualization of dangers in terms of risk - a numerical and probabilistic approach allowing for seemingly objective and value-neutral decisions. Read together, these papers add to our understanding of the current debate about risk and safety by providing a comparative background to the discussion, as well as a set of generally applicable criteria for analyzing and evaluating the contemporary issues surrounding medical innovation.

Spis treści

Preface.  Risk and Medical Innovation: A Historical Perspective.  To Assess and to Improve: Practitioners? Approaches to Doubts Linked with Medical Innovations 1720-1920.  Anaesthesia and the Evaluation of Surgical Risk in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain.  Redemption, Danger, and Risk: The History of Anti-Bacterial Chemotherapy and the Transformation of Tuberculin.  As Safe as Milk or Sugar Water?: Perceptions of Risks and Benefits of the BCG Vaccine in the 1920s and 1930s in France and Germany.  From Danger to Risk: The Perception and Regulation of X-Rays in Switzerland 1896-1970.  The Population as Patient: Alice Stewart and the Controversy over Low-Level Radiation in the 1950s.  To Treat or Not to Treat: Drug Research and the Changing Nature of Essential Hypertension.  Hormones at Risk: Cancer and the Medical Uses of Industrially-Produced.  Sex Steroids in Germany, 1930-1960.  Assessment and Medical Authority in Operative Fracture Care in the 1960 and 1970s.  Assessing the Risk and Safety of the Pill: Maternal Mortality and the Pill.  Addressing Uncertainties: The Conceptualisation of Brain Death in Switzerland 1960-2000.  Risk on Trial. The Interaction of Innovation and Risk in Cancer Clinical Trials.  BioRisk: Interleukin-2 from Laboratory to Market in the United States and Germany.  The Redemption of Thalidomide: Standardizing the Risk of Birth Defects