Institutional Corruption of Medical Knowledge Production

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-144
Author(s):  
Anna Laskai
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Medical Knowledge

scholarly journals Reconfiguring health knowledges? Contemporary modes of self-care as ‘everyday fringe medicine’

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 508-523
Author(s):  
Pia Vuolanto ◽  
Harley Bergroth ◽  
Johanna Nurmi ◽  
Suvi Salmenniemi
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Medical Expertise ◽  
Medical Establishment ◽  
Complex Modes ◽  
Health And Well Being

The contestation of expertise is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in the field of health and well-being, on which this article focuses. A multitude of practices and communities that stand in contentious relationships with established forms of medical expertise and promote personalised modes of self-care have proliferated across Euro-American societies. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography in three domains – body–mind–spirit therapies, vaccine hesitancy and consumer-grade digital self-tracking – we map such practices through the concept of ‘everyday fringe medicine’. The concept of everyday fringe medicine enables us to bring together various critical health and well-being practices and to unravel the complex modes of contestation and appreciation of the medical establishment that are articulated within them. We find three critiques of the medical establishment – critiques of medical knowledge production, professional practices and the knowledge base – which make visible the complexities related to public understandings of science within everyday fringe medicine.

The Politics of Medical Translations and its Impact upon Medical Knowledge in the Habsburg Monarchy 1770–1830

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teodora Daniela Sechel
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Medical Schools ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Medical Translation

This article analyses the politics of medical translation and shows the complexity of knowledge production and circulation in the intercultural and multiethnic contexts of the Habsburg Monarchy. It argues that medical translations, including books, manuals, and brochures, were one of the important tools that contributed to the standardization of medical knowledge and practices in this region. Most of these books were authored by physicians and professors at medical schools in Vienna. They had a great influence upon medical knowledge and practices, thus Vienna was the authority approving what was taught and published. The usage of the same manuals and books implies that more or less the same medical knowledge was shared by the medical practitioners in the Habsburg Monarchy. The medical theories and practices transmitted reflect also the games of influence and power exercised by protomedici and professors at the Vienna University. It was a process of authorization and dissemination of knowledge from the “center” to the provinces.

scholarly journals Disrupting Lunar Cycles: Selling Seasonal Menses

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Dol
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Cultural Control ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Lunar Cycles ◽  
Biomedical Discourse ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
American Society

Women's embodied experience of menarche, menses, and menopause can reveal underlying misogynist biosocial assumptions embedded within medical and political policies and practices designed specifically for women based solely on our uniquely physiological embodied experiences. A new menstrual suppressing drug - Seasonale is the latest pharmaceutical insult/assault against women by the pharmaceutical industry capitalizing on the traditional Victorian misconceptions regarding the female body as being the diseased body in need of cultural control. This essay takes up Arthur Kleinman 's concept of 'explanatory models' to analyze the hidden issue of the gendered nature of biomedical discourse and the issue of medical knowledge production. The focus of this paper is on how biomedical discourses in the form of 'scientific' pharmaceutical rhetoric is actually constructing 'explanatory models' for women to practice and conform to a specific notion of the ideological woman in American society - the seasonal bleeder. I argue that well into the 21st century, the female body embodied in natural reproductive functions is produced discursively as an idiom of pathology ill the 'explanatory models' produced by Western biomedical discourse.

scholarly journals Witnessing Pandora

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Egg Production ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Research Gaps

Farmed animal sanctuaries rescue, rehabilitate, and care for animals bred for use in agriculture. Because of the structure of veterinary training, regulations on species considered agricultural, and for other reasons, rescued animals such as chickens fall out of spaces of veterinary care and medical knowledge production. Given these knowledge and research gaps, this paper investigates how sanctuaries develop medical knowledge about chickens, focusing on hens bred for egg production. I develop the concept of “witnessing” as it has been used in science studies, feminist theory, and animal activism, arguing that sanctuary science and medicine can be understood as queer witnessing. Then, I discuss how sanctuaries put queer witnessing into practice, through aspirational archiving, transposition, and reorienting health. Though queer witnessing has its limits and problems, it offers a way of doing activist science, at sanctuaries and beyond.

scholarly journals ‘By Merit Raised to That Bad Eminence’: Christopher Merrett, Artisanal Knowledge, and Professional Reform in Restoration London

2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Mauck
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal College ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Medical Regulation

AbstractThis article examines the career and reform agenda of Christopher Merrett as a means of evaluating the changing conditions of medical knowledge production in late seventeenth-century London. This period was characterised by increasing competition between medical practitioners, resulting from the growing consumer demand for medical commodities and services, the reduced ability of elite physicians to control medical practice, and the appearance of alternative methods of producing medical knowledge – particularly experimental methods. This competition resulted in heated exchanges between physicians, apothecaries, and virtuosi, in which Merrett played an active part. As a prominent member of both the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians, Merrett sought to mediate between the two institutions by introducing professional reforms designed to alleviate competition and improve medical knowledge.These reforms entailed sweeping changes to medical regulation and education that integrated the traditional reliance on Galenic principles with knowledge derived from experiment and artisanal practices. The emphasis Merrett placed on the trades suggests the important role artisanal knowledge played in his efforts to reorganise medicine and improve knowledge of bodily processes.

scholarly journals Predicting Success in the Embryology Lab: The Use of Algorithmic Technologies in Knowledge Production

2021 ◽  
pp. 016224392110571
Author(s):  
Alina Geampana ◽  
Manuela Perrotta
Keyword(s):  
Professional Practice ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Time Lapse ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Fertility Treatment ◽  
Use Of Time ◽  
Predicting Success ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
And Training

This article analyzes local algorithmic practices resulting from the increased use of time-lapse (TL) imaging in fertility treatment. The data produced by TL technologies are expected to help professionals pick the best embryo for implantation. The emergence of TL has been characterized by promissory discourses of deeper embryo knowledge and expanded selection standardization, despite professionals having no conclusive evidence that TL improves pregnancy rates. Our research explores the use of TL tools in embryology labs. We pay special attention to standardization efforts and knowledge-creation facilitated through TL and its incorporated algorithms. Using ethnographic data from five UK clinical sites, we argue that knowledge generated through TL is contingent upon complex human–machine interactions that produce local uncertainties. Thus, algorithms do not simply add medical knowledge. Rather, they rearrange professional practice and expertise. Firstly, we show how TL changes lab routines and training needs. Secondly, we show that the human input TL requires renders the algorithm itself an uncertain and situated practice. This, in turn, raises professional questions about the algorithm’s authority in embryo selection. The article demonstrates the embedded nature of algorithmic knowledge production, thus pointing to the need for STS scholarship to further explore the locality of algorithms and AI.

Physician Anthropologists

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire L. Wendland
Keyword(s):  
Medical Anthropology ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Clinical Case ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Quality Health Care ◽  
Quality Health

Physician anthropologists have contributed extensively to the anthropology of biomedicine, as well as to other aspects of medical anthropology. Their use of detailed clinical case narratives allows elucidation of what is at stake for individuals and communities in the course of any given illness. Biomedically informed observations of bodies illustrate the connections between microscopic harm and macrosocial arrangements, while observations of clinical spaces and medical knowledge production contribute to current debates over evidence, metrics, migration, and humanitarianism. In moving away from culturalist explanations for illness, physician anthropologists have drawn attention to the manifold workings of structural violence—and have often sacrificed the possibility of deep epistemological challenges to biomedicine. While raising a note of caution about the moral authority of physician anthropologists, I recognize that much of this scholarship has laid the intellectual groundwork for a movement toward equity that refuses to justify poor-quality health care for poor people.

scholarly journals Medizin, Recht und das Wissen vom «zivilisierten» Krieg im langen 19. Jahrhundert

Gesnerus ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-230
Author(s):  
Svenja Goltermann
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Diagnosis And Treatment ◽  
Treatment Of Wounds ◽  
Medical Competence

The aim to ‘civilize’ warfare accompanied Medicine and International Law ever since the mid-19th century. However, the entanglement of Medicine and Law, crucial for such an endeavour, has not been taken into consideration so far; likewise, the huge importance of medical knowledge for the perception of wars and their ramifications did not garner much attention in historical research. Hence, by focusing on the ‘long’ 19th century, this paper shows, firstly, that the production of surgical knowledge during warfare aimed at measuring the effects of combat on human bodies in order to develop prognostic medical knowledge for future wars, as well as maintaining the combat strength of soldiers. Moreover, this knowledge production during warfare strived for the enhancement of medical competence in the diagnosis and treatment of wounds in general. Secondly, I show that this medical knowledge was not only relevant for warfare, but also crucial for the design of International Law: it served to nourish the debates among the so called ‘civilized’ nations about legitimate and illegitimate weaponry and warfare.

Hospital

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 573-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan S. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Medical Research ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
General Function ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Historical Origin ◽  
Medical Faculties ◽  
Private Corporations ◽  
The University

Hospitals are traditional sites, not only of care, but of knowledge production. The word ‘hospital’ is derived from ‘hospitality’, and is also associated with ‘spital’, ‘hotel’ and ‘hospice’. In medieval society, the hospice was a place of rest, security and entertainment. The Knights Hospitallers were an order of military monks that took its historical origin from a hospital founded in Jerusalem in 1048. Before the rise of the modern research hospital, these spitals had a more general function as charitable institutions for the care and maintenance of the aged, infirm and impoverished. Hospitals were important in the historical emergence of the university, but with the dominance of bio-medical sciences medical faculties have become increasingly separated geographically and administratively from other faculties. Medical research is dominated by private corporations and increasingly medical knowledge exists outside the conventional procedures and norms of scientific research.

Care, Labor and Medical Knowledge: Access to Health and Work in the Global Arena

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil Khanna ◽  
Suzanne Morrissey ◽  
Amarah Niazi ◽  
Mirabelle Fernandes-Paul ◽  
Michele Gamburd ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Access To Health ◽  
Care Labor ◽  
Global Arena ◽  
Knowledge Access
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document