CfP: Global Knowledge, Global Legitimacy? Transatlantic Biomedicine since 1970
When
the French pharmaceutical company Roussell Uclaff, a subsidiary of the
German chemical giant Hoechst AG, was ready to introduce an abortion
pill in 1988, American activists flooded the company’s headquarters near
Frankfurt with protest letters. In response, the company’s German CEO
mandated to stop the project. But the French state – a Hoechst minority
shareholder – took the idea across the border, patented it, and embarked
on medical trials for the new product in France.
Ten years
later, scientists in the United States successfully isolated human
embryonic stem cells. The country’s regulatory framework had left them
free to let the cells proliferate indefinitely. But researchers adopted
concepts implemented in Britain to limit the cells’ growth to 13 days
after gestation.
Such examples illustrate the transnational
implications of controversies arising from scientific research and
therapies evolving in academic settings and in companies coordinating
their efforts globally. Global research practices have raised questions
about the reach of regulations. Scientific findings and technologies
have prompted support and resistance informed by beliefs and worldviews,
some with transnational scope and with an impact on national laws as
well as on the regulation of research and therapy. Cultural, moral, or
religious considerations have affected the ways in which scientific
insights or technologies were enabled, received, or restricted. Concerns
about the availability of therapies sparked public debates and led to
national and global responses by advocacy groups, foundations, political
parties and governments. This conference will focus on the
national/global nexus through the prism of biomedicine and its context
since 1970.
The role of biomedicine has shifted over the past
half-century. It was shaped by economic and political developments and
it prompted cultural and political responses. Many of these developments
were considered central to the transatlantic world in a global context,
and this provides us with an opportunity to use biomedicine as a prism
for investigating the history of the past half century. Such efforts can
build on research in different subfields: Economists and legal scholars
have been interested in evolving industries, concepts of intellectual
property, or the impact of legislation such as the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act on
American universities. Political scientists have focused on the
challenges to ethics and regulation of global research in national
contexts. Historians of science and medicine have dealt with the debates
sparked by cognitive developments in specific fields and the
ramifications of shifting structures within biomedical and clinical
research. Scholars of contemporary history have emphasized the cultural,
social, and political implications of medical advances such as the
pill, assisted reproduction, PID, or DNA testing in societies on both
sides of the Atlantic and beyond. For this conference, we would like to
bring together colleagues from relevant fields to discuss the shifting
role and impact of biomedical science and medical therapy since 1970 and
to develop from it larger themes for writing the history of this
period.
One key focus concerns the relationship between the global
setting for research, transnational public debates about its
implications, and the political responses in nation-states including the
US. While public as well as private research is global in scale, its
moral implications frequently play out in debates that are coordinated
or echo across borders, with political consequences that are shaped by
national governments and sometimes coordinated with supranational
organizations such as the EU or the UN. While biomedical research has
been global in nature, its regulation has stubbornly resisted
integration with a globalized narrative historians have sought to
develop. What narratives evolve from a history of biomedicine and its
uses on different national, transatlantic, and global levels? How do we
relate advances in biomedical research to the history of legitimizing
it? How has this relationship changed since 1970? We invite papers that
identify larger themes for the history of the past fifty years from
concrete examples in the history of biomedicine.
Topic areas may include:
- Changes in the global and national settings for research such as universities, private or public research institutions, and industry
- Responses to research and medical options and their significance for changing cultural, moral, or religious beliefs
- The transnational and national roles of individual researchers, professional associations, expert panels, foundations, advocacy groups (including patients), politicians, and religious communities
- Larger shifts in the intellectual framework for assessing such changes, including discourses on markets, individual responsibility, and justice
- The role of supranational actors such as the WHO, the EU or the UN in national and global publics
- Case studies such as the national and global dimensions of debates about the beginning of life, the value of the individual, family and gender norms, or the relationship between humans and nature
We aim
to publish the papers presented at the conference as an edited book or
as a special issue of a journal. Confirmed conference participants
include Susan Lederer (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Bruno
Strasser (University of Geneva and Yale University).
The
conference will be held at the GHI Washington. Travel and accommodation
costs will be covered by the institute. The deadline for proposals (for a
25-minute paper) is December 15, 2018. Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short CV (1-2 pages) in one single PDF document to biomed@ghi-dc.org. For further information about the conference, please contact Claudia Roesch (roesch@ghi-dc.org).
Contact Info:
Conference held at the German Historical Institute, Washington DC
Conveners: Axel Jansen; Claudia Roesch (roesch@ghi-dc.org)
Contact Email: biomed@ghi-dc.org