This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
Focusing on Great Britain, Europe and the United States, the module examines the history of modern medicine and medical ethics, from the development of public health, social Darwinism and eugenics in the 19th century to contemporary issues of human rights in biomedicine in the 20th century. The module explores the role of the state, and assesses medicine and psychiatry in modern warfare. The course will chart continuity and change in medical practice and research in different national and ideological settings. Concepts such as the peoples' community, the Volksgemeinschaft, the race, the nation, the idea of National Socialism, mankind etc. were of importance in initiating and sanctioning German medicine. While an understanding of medicine in the Third Reich is important in charting the development of modern medical ethics, the module will give due considerations to evolving health systems elsewhere in Europe and the United States. The module assesses the extent to which political formations shaped the understanding of ethics and the code of conduct of the medical profession, and explores the origins of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. The module looks at the mechanisms to protect human rights in human experimentation since the beginning of the Cold War, and examines the political, professional and institutional factors which shaped the history of bioethics and the Human Genome Project.
60% Exam, 40% Coursework
ANNAS, G.J., GRODIN, M.A. (eds.) - 'The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code', (1992)
BERG, M., COCKS, G. (eds.) - 'Medicine and Modernity', 1997
COOTER, R., HARRISON, M., STURDY, S. - 'Medicine and Modern Warfare', 1999
MCCULLOUGH, L.M., BAKER, R. (eds.) - 'A Global History of Medical Ethics', 2008
MORENO, J.D. - 'Undue Risk. Secret State Experiments on Humans', 1999
SCHMIDT, U., FREWER, A.. (eds.) - 'History and Theory of Human Experimentation', 2007
TROHLER, U., REITER-THEIL, S. (eds.) - 'Ethics Codes in Medicine', 1998
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
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