Risk and medical innovation: A historical perspective

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

Volumn , Issue , 2005, Pages 1-17

  Schlich, Thomas ^a  

^a MCGILL UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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EID: 84908912984     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203337493     Document Type: Chapter

References (80)

1. Acknowledgments: I want to thank Silke Bellanger, Alberto Cambrosio, Katherine Frohlich, Jonathan Kimmelman, Ulrich Trohler, and George Weisz for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
2. R.C.Fox, "Medical Uncertainty Revisited", in G.L.Albrecht, R.F. and S.D.Scrimshaw (eds), Handbook of Social Studies in Health and Medicine, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage, 2000, pp. 407-25; see p. 409.
3. J.F.Short and L.Clarke, "Social Organization and Risk", in J.F.Short and L.Clarke (eds), Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, pp. 309-21; see pp. 317-18.
4. Fox, Uncertainty, pp. 410-11.
5. J.Gabe, "Health, Medicine and Risk: The Need for a Sociological Approach", in J.Gabe (ed.), Medicine, Health and Risk: Sociological Approaches, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, pp. 1-17; see p. 2;
6. M.V.Hayes, "On the Epistemology of Risk: Language, Logic and Social Science", Social Science and Medicine, 1992, vol. 35, pp. 401-7; see p. 403.
7. John-Arne Skolbekken, "The Risk Epidemic in Medical Journals", Social Science and Medicine, 40, 1995, pp. 291-305; see p. 292.
8. J.F.Short and Lee Clarke, "Social Organization and Risk"; see pp. 317-18.
9. Hayes, Epistemology; see p. 401.
10. N.Luhmann, Risk: A Sociological Theory, New York: Aldine de Gruyler, 1993, pp. 1-31.
11. Skolbekken, Epidemic.
12. Skolbekken, Epidemic, pp. 295-6.
13. J.V.Pickstone, "Introduction", in J.V.Pickstone (ed.), Medical Innovations in Historical Perspective, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, pp. 1-16;
14. I.Lowy, "Introduction: Medicine and Change", in I.Lowy (ed.), Medicine and Change: Historical and Sociological Studies of Medical Innovation, Paris: Les editions INSERM, 1993, pp. 1-19.
15. U.Beck, Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985.
16. T.Schlich, Surgery, Science and Industry: A Revolution in Fracture Care, 1950s-1990s, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003, p. 241.
17. A number of studies on the history of medical innovation focus on the benefit side. There is less on the negative side of dangers and risks that made new techniques harder to accept for contemporaries. On the resistance to innovation, see J.Stanton (ed.), Innovations in Health and Medicine: Diffusion and Resistance in the Twentieth Century, London, and New York: Routledge, 2002.
18. Pickstone, Introduction; see p. 16.
19. E.Magnello and A.Hardy, "Preface", in E.Magnello and A.Hardy (eds), The Road to Medical Statistics, Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2002, pp. iii-xi; see p. iv.
20. G.Gigerenzer et al., The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; see pp. 20-6.
21. W.G.Rothstein, Public Health and the Risk Factor: A History of an Uneven Medical Revolution, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2003; see pp. 61-2.
22. Gigerenzer et al., Empire, pp. 20-1.
23. A.Rusnock, " "The Merchant's Logick': Numerical Debates over Smallpox Inoculation in Eighteenth-Century England", in E.Magnello and A.Hardy (eds), The Road to Medical Statistics, Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2002, pp. 37-54; see pp. 40-50.
24. Magnello and Hardy, Preface, vi-viii.
25. U.Tröhler, "To Improve the Evidence of Medicine": The 18th Century British Origins of a Critical Approach, Edinburgh: The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2000; see pp.16-21, 69-72, 115-24.
26. Gigerenzer et al., Empire, pp. 17-18.
27. Rusnock, Logick, pp. 38-51.
28. G.Weisz, The Medical Mandarins: The French Academy of Medicine in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 159-188;
29. J.R.Matthews, Quantification and the Quest for Medical Certainty, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
30. Gigerenzer et al., Empire, p. 47.
31. E.Magnello, "The Introduction of Mathematical Statistics into Medical Research", in E. Magnello and A.Hardy (eds), The Road to Medical Statistics, Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2002, pp. 95-123; see pp. 107-8.
32. Magnello and Hardy, Introduction, pp. ix-x.
33. R.A.Aronowitz, Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society and Disease, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 111;
34. P.Jasen, "Breast Cancer and the Language of Risk, 1750-1950", Social History of Medicine, 2002, vol. 15, pp. 17-43; see p. 17.
35. Rothstein, Public Health, pp. 50-70, 261.
36. See Carsten Timmermann, Chapter 8 in this book.
37. Rothstein, Public Health, pp. 279-85.
38. Aronowitz, Making Sense, pp. 127-4l.
39. Gabe, Health, p. 3;
40. S.Hilgartner, "The Social Construction of Risk Objects: Or, How to Pry Open Networks of Risk", in J.F.Short and L.Clarke (eds), Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, pp. 39-53; see p. 47.
41. Aronowitz, Making Sense, pp. 112-18, 131-5; quote from p. 112.
42. Gigerenzer et al., Empire, pp. 236-7.
43. S.Jasanoff, "Cultural Aspects of Risk Assessment in Britain and the United States", in B. B.Johnson and V.T.Covello (eds), The Social and Cultural Construction of Risk: Essays on Risk Selection and Perception, Dordrecht: D.Reidel, 1987, pp. 359-97; see p. 359.
44. Gordon 1988, p. 283.
45. Rusnock, Logick, p. 49.
46. J.R.Matthews, "Almroth Wright, Vaccine Therapy and British Biometrics: Disciplinary Expertise Versus Statistical Objectivity", in E.Magnello and A.Hardy (eds), The Road to Medical Statistics, Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2002, pp. 125-47; see pp. 135-41
47. Weisz, Mandarins, pp. 159-88.
48. See Chapter 10 by Thomas Schlich in this book.
49. Gigerenzer et al., 1989, p. 261.
50. Aronowitz, Making Sense, p. 132.
51. Hilgartner, Social Construction, p. 47.
52. L.Levidov, "De-Reifying Risk", Science and Culture, 1994, vol. 20, pp. 440-56; see pp. 442-3.
53. Wynne 1995, p. 363.
54. Wynne 1995, p. 363.
55. Wynne, 1995.
56. Epstein, Steven: Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1996.
57. Levidov, De-Reifying Risk, p. 449.
58. James F.Short, Jr., "Defining, Explaining and Managing Risks", in James F.Short and Lee Clarke (eds), Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, pp. 32; see p. 10.
59. Stephan Hilgartner, "The Social Construction of Risk Objects: Or, How to Pry Open Networks of Risk", in James F.Short and Lee Clarke (eds), Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk, Boulder: Westview Press 1992, pp. 39-53; see p. 43.
60. Hilgartner, Social Construction, p. 39.
61. Hilgartner, Social Construction, p. 52.
62. Gigerenzer et al., Empire, p. 288.
63. M.S.Pernick, A Calculus of Suffering: Pain, Professionalism and Anesthesia in Nineteenth-Century America, New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
64. More generally on this see G.Weisz, "The Emergence of Specialization in the Nineteenth Century", Bulletin for the History of Medicine, 2002, vol. 77 (2003), pp. 536-75.
65. Levidov, De-Reifying Risk, pp. 440-1.
66. Cf. Hilgartner, Social Construction.
67. A.Cunningham and P.William (eds), The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
68. J.Abraham, "Scientific Standards and Institutional Interests: Carcinogenic Risk Assessment of Benoxaprofen in the UK and US", Social Studies of Science, 1993, vol. 23, pp. 387-444; see pp. 392-404.
69. Abraham, Standards, p. 417.
70. On nature and culture in the pronouncement of death, see T.Schlich, "Tod, Geschichte und Kultur", in T.Schlich and C.Wiesemann (eds), Hirntod: Zur Kulturgeschichte der Todesfeststellung, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2001, pp. 209-35.
71. See also A.Daemmrich, "A Tale of Two Experts: Thalidomide and Political Engagement in the United States and West Germany", Social History of Medicine, 2002, vol. 15, pp. 13758.
72. Jasanoff, Cultural, p. 359.
73. Daemmrich, Tale; B.Kirk, Der Contergan-Fall: eine unvermeidbare Arzneimittelkatastrophe? Zur Geschichte des Arzneiwirkstoffs Thalidomid, Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1999.
74. L.Clarke, "Context Dependency and Risk Decision Making", in J.F.Short and L.Clarke (eds), Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, pp. 27-38.
75. Pickstone, Introduction, p. 11.
76. Gabe, Health, p. 7.
77. M.Douglas and A.Wildavsky, Risk and Culture. An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982, p. 9.
78. Löwy, Introduction, pp. 1-2.
79. V.T.Covello and B.B.Johnson, "Introduction: The Social and Cultural Construction of Risk: Issues, Methods, and Case Studies", in V.T.Covello and B.B.Johnson (eds), The Social and Cultural Construction of Risk, Dordrecht: D.Reidel, 1987, pp. vii-xiii; see p. xii.
80. Gabe, Health, p. 11.