A01=Cathy Gere
aids activism
animal rights
Author_Cathy Gere
behavioural economics
biomedicine
Category=N
ends justify the means
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
ethics
eugenics
experiment
greater good
healthcare
history
hobbes
human subjects
informed consent
jeremy bentham
kahneman
medical trials
medicine
mengele
moral improvement
national act of 1974
nazi scientists
nonfiction
nudge
pain
patients
philosophy
pleasure
poverty
psychology
race
science
scientific research
suffering
sunstein
surveillance
syphilis
testing
thinking fast and slow
tuskegee
utilitarianism
Product details
- ISBN 9780226501857
- Weight: 567g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 19 Oct 2017
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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How should we weigh the costs and benefits of scientific research on humans? Is it right that a small group of people should suffer in order that a larger number can live better, healthier lives? Or is an individual truly sovereign, unable to be plotted as part of such a calculation? These are questions that have bedeviled scientists, doctors, and ethicists for decades, and in Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good, Cathy Gere presents the gripping story of how we have addressed them over time. Today, we are horrified at the idea that a medical experiment could be performed on someone without consent. But, as Gere shows, that represents a relatively recent shift: for more than two centuries, from the birth of utilitarianism in the eighteenth century, the doctrine of the greater good held sway. If a researcher believed his work would benefit humanity, then inflicting pain, or even death, on unwitting or captive subjects was considered ethically acceptable. It was only in the wake of World War II, and the revelations of Nazi medical atrocities, that public and medical opinion began to change, culminating in the National Research Act of 1974, which mandated informed consent.
Showing that utilitarianism is based in the idea that humans are motivated only by pain and pleasure, Gere cautions that that greater good thinking is on the upswing again today and that the lesson of history is in imminent danger of being lost. Rooted in the experiences of real people, and with major consequences for how we think about ourselves and our rights, Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good is a dazzling, ambitious history.
Cathy Gere is associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.
