Biomedicine in the Twentieth Century: Practices, Policies, and Politics

C. Hannaway, Caroline Hannaway

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781586038328
• eBook ISBN: 9781607503088
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Biochemistry in Medicine

Biomedicine in the Twentieth Century: Practices, Policies, and Politics is a testimony to the growing interest of scholars in the development of the biomedical sciences in the twentieth century and to the number of historians, social scientists and health policy analysts now working on the subject. The book is comprised of essays by noted historians and social scientists that offer insights on a range of subjects that should be a significant stimulus for further historical investigation. It details the NIH's practices, policies and politics on a variety of fronts, including the development of the intramural program, the National Institute of Mental Health and mental health policy, the politics and funding of heart transplantation and the initial focus of the National Cancer Institute. Comparisons can be made with the development of other American and British institutions involved in medical research, such as the Rockefeller Institute and the Medical Research Council. Discussions of the larger scientific and social context of United States' federal support for research, the role of lay institutions in federal funding of virus research, the consequences of technology transfer and patenting, the effects of vaccine and drug development and the environment of research discoveries all offer new insights and suggest questions for further exploration.

Table of contents

• Title page
• Contents
• Preface
• Inventing the Office of NIH History
• The Socialization of Research and the Transformation of the Academy
• Disease Categories and Scientific Disciplines: Reorganizing the NIH Intramural Program, 1945-1960
• The National Institute of Mental Health and Mental Health Policy, 1949-1965
• Radium and the Origins of the National Cancer Institute
• Transplant Nation: The NIH and the Politics of Heart Transplantation in the 1960s
• Mobilizing Biomedicine: Virus Research Between Lay Health Organizations and the U.S. Federal Government, 1935-1955
• Genes, Disease, and Patents: Cash and Community in Biomedicine
• The Critical Role of Laboratory Instruments at the Rockefeller: Biomedicine as Biotechnology
• Clinical Research in Postwar Britain: The Role of the Medical Research Council
• Towards a History of “The Vaccine Innovation System,” 1950-2000
• Molecularization and Infectious Disease Research: The Case of Synthetic Antimalarial Drugs in the Twentieth Century
• Scientific Discoveries: An Institutionalist and Path-Dependent Perspective
• Notes on Contributors
• Index