Behind Closed Doors

by Stark, Laura

• ISBN13: 9780226770871
• ISBN10: 0226770877
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-12-26
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Although the subject of federally mandated Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) has been extensively debated, we actually do not know much about what takes place when they convene. The story of how IRBs work today is a story about their past as well as their present, and Behind Closed Doorsis the first book to meld firsthand observations of IRB meetings with the history of how rules for the treatment of human subjects were formalized in the United States in the decades after World War II. Drawing on extensive archival sources, Laura Stark reconstructs the daily lives of scientists, lawyers, administrators, and research subjects working-and “warring”-on the campus of the National Institutes of Health, where they first wrote the rules for the treatment of human subjects. Stark argues that the model of group deliberation that gradually crystallized during this period reflected contemporary legal and medical conceptions of what it meant to be human, what political rights human subjects deserved, and which stakeholders were best suited to decide. She then explains how the historical contingencies that shaped rules for the treatment of human subjects in the postwar era guide decision making today-within hospitals, universities, health departments, and other institutions in the United States and across the globe. Meticulously researched and gracefully argued, Behind Closed Doorswill be essential reading for sociologists and historians of science and medicine, as well as policy makers and IRB administrators.

Author Biography

Laura Stark is assistant professor in the Science in Society Program and the Department of Sociology at Wesleyan University.

Table of Contents

Introduction Behind Closed Doors	p. 1
Irbs In Action
Everyone's an Expert? Warrants for Expertise	p. 21
Local Precedents	p. 41
Documents and Deliberations: An Anticipatory Perspective	p. 57
Setting Irbs in Motion in Cold War America
An Ethics of Place	p. 81
The Many Forms of Consent	p. 113
Deflecting Responsibility	p. 137
Conclusion The Making of Ethical Research	p. 159
Acknowledgments	p. 167
Appendix: Ethnographic Methods	p. 171
Abbreviations	p. 173
Notes	p. 175
Bibliography	p. 209
Index	p. 223
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