Corporeality, Medical Technologies and Contemporary Culture engages the confusions and contradictions in current attitudes to, and practices of, the body. On the one hand, the body is where we turn for the certainties of nature; yet, on the other, it is the locus of a desire for permanent transformation and for constant reinvention. The body is at the same time worshipped and despised: so that now it has come to constitute not just an object of desire, but an object (...) of design. Addressing practices of corporeal ascesis- such as bodybuilding and dietetics - medical technologies - such as plastic surgery, prosthetics, and pharmacological interventions - and radical anatomical modifications- such as voluntary amputations, Francisco Ortega analyses how the body has become a screen for the projection of our ideas and imaginings about ourselves; and has also been turned into an object of suspicion, fear, anxiety, insecurity and discomfort. From the disembodied ideal of the digital purity of models - in which every little piece of fat is digitally eliminated - through the disembodiment implicit in social constructivist rejections of materiality, to the various projects of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and posthumanism, Corporeality, Medical Technologies and Contemporary Culture documents the ambiguous legacy of a western theoretical tradition that has always despised the body. (shrink)

Using ideas gleaned from the philosophy of technology of Martin Heidegger and Hans Jonas and the philosophy of health of Georges Canguilhem, I argue that one of the characteristics of emerging medical technologies is that these technologies lead to new conceptions of health. When technologies enable the body to respond to more and more challenges of disease, we thus establish new norms of health. Given the continued development of successful technologies, we come to expect more and more that our (...) bodies should be able to respond to ever-new challenges of environment and disease by establishing ever-new norms of health. Technologies may aim at the prevention and treatment of disease, but they also bring about modifications of what we consider normal for the human being. Thus, new norms of health arise from technological innovation. (shrink)

Although the use of new health technologies in healthcare and medicine is generally seen as beneficial, there has been little analysis of the impact of such technologies on people's lives and understandings of health and illness. This book explores how new technologies not only provide hope for cure and well-being, but also introduce new ethical dilemmas and raise questions about the "natural" body. Focusing on the ways new health technologies intervene into our lives and affect our ideas about normalcy, the (...) body and identity, New Health Technologies explores: how new health technologies are understood by lay people and patients how the outcomes of these technologies are communicated in various clinical settings how these technologies can alter our notions of health and illness and create "new illness." Written by authors with differing backgrounds in phenomenology, social psychology, social anthropology, communication studies and the nursing sciences, this book is essential reading for students andacademics of medical sociology, health and allied studies, and anyone with an interest in new health technologies. (shrink)

In this article we explore how diagnostic and therapeutic technologies shape the lived experiences of illness for patients. By analysing a wide range of examples, we identify six ways that technology can (trans)form the experience of illness (and health). First, technology may create awareness of disease by revealing asymptomatic signs or markers (imaging techniques, blood tests). Second, the technology can reveal risk factors for developing diseases (e.g., high blood pressure or genetic tests that reveal risks of falling ill in the (...) future). Third, the technology can affect and change an already present illness experience (e.g., the way blood sugar measurement affects the perceived symptoms of diabetes). Fourth, therapeutic technologies may redefine our experiences of a certain condition as diseased rather than unfortunate (e.g. assisted reproductive technologies or symptom based diagnoses in psychiatry). Fifth, technology influences illness experiences through altering social-cultural norms and values regarding various diagnoses. Sixth, technology influences and changes our experiences of being healthy in contrast and relation to being diseased and ill. This typology of how technology forms illness and related conditions calls for reflection regarding the phenomenology of technology and health. How are medical technologies and their outcomes perceived and understood by patients? The phenomenological way of approaching illness as a lived, bodily being-in-the-world is an important approach for better understanding and evaluating the effects that medical technologies may have on our health, not only in defining, diagnosing, or treating diseases, but also in making us feel more vulnerable and less healthy in different regards. (shrink)

Even though it is often presumed that the use of technology like medication administration technology is both safer and more effective, the importance of nurses' know‐how is not to be underestimated. In this article, we accordingly try to argue that nurses' labor, including their different forms of knowledge, must play a crucial role in the development, implementation and use of medication administration technology. Using three different theoretical perspectives (‘heuristic lenses') and integrating this with our own ethnographic research, we will explore (...) how nursing practices change through the use of medication technology. Ultimately, we will argue that ignoring (institutional) complexity and the various types of important knowledge that nurses have, will seriously complicate the implementation of medication administration technology. (shrink)

The 2018 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes that the constant monitoring of our health does more harm than good”. This annual debate between students from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge is now in its tenth year. This year’s debate was hosted at the Oxford Union on 8th of February 2018, with Oxford winning for the Opposition, and was the catalyst for the collation and expansion of ideas in this paper.New technological devices have (...) the potential to enhance patient autonomy, improve patient safety, simplify the management of chronic diseases, increase connectivity between patients and healthcare professionals and assist individuals to make lifestyle changes to improve their health. However, these are pitted against an encroachment of technology medicalising the individual and home, an exacerbation of health inequalities, a risk to the security of patient data, an alteration of the doctor-patient relationship dynamic and an infringement on individual self-identity. This paper will draw upon and develop these concepts, while contending arguments for and against constant health monitoring. This is not a review of medical devices and health monitoring, but a reflective development and more detailed elaboration of the main points highlighted in the 2018 Varsity Medical Ethics debate. (shrink)

The 2018 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes that the constant monitoring of our health does more harm than good”. This annual debate between students from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge is now in its tenth year. This year’s debate was hosted at the Oxford Union on 8th of February 2018, with Oxford winning for the Opposition, and was the catalyst for the collation and expansion of ideas in this paper.New technological devices have (...) the potential to enhance patient autonomy, improve patient safety, simplify the management of chronic diseases, increase connectivity between patients and healthcare professionals and assist individuals to make lifestyle changes to improve their health. However, these are pitted against an encroachment of technology medicalising the individual and home, an exacerbation of health inequalities, a risk to the security of patient data, an alteration of the doctor-patient relationship dynamic and an infringement on individual self-identity. This paper will draw upon and develop these concepts, while contending arguments for and against constant health monitoring. This is not a review of medical devices and health monitoring, but a reflective development and more detailed elaboration of the main points highlighted in the 2018 Varsity Medical Ethics debate. (shrink)

Summary This volume undertakes to determine the fundamentals and limits of an ethical assessment of the methods of modern medical technology with regard to the concepts of human dignity and human image, which are particularly important for this purpose. It shows that the philosophical-legal foundation of the term human dignity has not yet been clearly clarified; one even has to ask whether the term is (still) suitable for assessing ethical problems in medical technology. The term human image also (...) needs clarification and clarification in order to be taken seriously as a topos in the medical ethical discussion. The volume emerged from the work of an interdisciplinary and international research group at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld. It deals primarily with the theoretical foundation of the terms human dignity and human image and is supplemented by a volume, the contributions of which illustrate the problems of practice using examples from different areas of medical technology. (shrink)

In this article, transhumanism is considered to be a quasi-medical ideology that seeks to promote a variety of therapeutic and human-enhancing aims. Moderate conceptions are distinguished from strong conceptions of transhumanism and the strong conceptions were found to be more problematic than the moderate ones. A particular critique of Boström’s defence of transhumanism is presented. Various forms of slippery slope arguments that may be used for and against transhumanism are discussed and one particular criticism, moral arbitrariness, that undermines both (...) weak and strong transhumanism is highlighted. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of emerging medical technologies that promise transgression of temporal limits, this paper aims to show the importance that an individual lifetime’s finitude and fugacity have for the question of the good life. The paper’s first section examines how the passing of an individual’s finite lifetime can be experienced negatively, and thus cause “suffering from the passing of time.” The second section is based on a sociological analysis within the conceptual framework of individualization and capitalism, which characterizes (...) many modern individualized and consumerist societies and explains how the described problem of time’s passage is particularly relevant today. The paper then proceeds to show and discuss how individuals employ various, primarily medical, enhancement-technologies like social egg freezing, anti-aging-medicine and physical- and neuro-enhancement in an attempt to overcome time’s passing. Finally, the paper seeks to explain why such attempts fail and, moreover, why it is exactly the awareness of time’s passing that can constitute a prerequisite for a good life. (shrink)

The field of medicine is generally greeted with great enthusiasm. This can be witnessed in the immense support for medical progress, which is widely hoped to lead to a realization of idealized goals. Indeed, with the help of medicine the human body would be controllable and constructible, human nature perfectible. However, enthusiasm in favor of medical progress is first and foremost a sentiment and, like all sentiments, not necessarily a product of rational contemplation. People are capable of enthusing (...) about the realization of utopian notions, such as life without disease or with the perfect body, without requiring any concrete arguments to back them up. Enthusiasm alone is not a guarantee of ethical desirability, however. Hence, this book takes a closer look at four research fields often referred to in medical utopian literature: 'tissue engineering', 'bioelectronics', 'germ line genome modification' and 'interventions in the biological aging process'. They serve as a basis for analyzing whether ethical arguments can be found to support the euphoric advocacy of the further development of these fields. (shrink)

The current model of technology assessment treats ethics itself as just another problem‐solving technology. Ethics should resist this model to play a more critical role in technology assessment by better understanding the complex relationship between society, medicine, and technology—and by recasting how problems are defined.

The current model of technology assessment treats ethics itself as just another problem‐solving technology. Ethics should resist this model to play a more critical role in technology assessment by better understanding the complex relationship between society, medicine, and technology—and by recasting how problems are defined.

Biomedical practice can encode and perpetuate oppressive ideologies. This encoding and perpetuation, scholars like Liao and Carbonell (2023) convincingly argue, can occur not only via social practi...

First I discuss the rights as unavoidable part of the human dignity. There are four possible relations: dignity has a wider extension, the volume of both is equivalent, dignity includes in itself a bundle of rights, or it is just a simple right. There are good reasons to support the last two, even the last position. Then I evaluate some of the challenging innovations in the medical technology, if they are acceptable in front of this close connection. The focus (...) falls on three topics: PGD, cloning, and fusion of human-animal cells. Using moral principles such as non discrimination and non instrumentalization I look for some normative framing. (shrink)

This book brings phenomenology, the main player in the continental tradition of philosophy, to bioethics. Medical science and emerging technologies are examined as endeavours that bring enormous possibilities in relieving human suffering but also great risks in transforming our fundamental life views.

Medical technologies and assistive devices such as ventilators and power wheelchairs are designed to sustain life and/or improve functionality but they can also contribute to stigmatization and social exclusion. In this paper, drawing from a study of ten men with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, we explore the complex social processes that mediate the lives of persons who are dependent on multiple medical and assistive technologies. In doing so we consider the embodied and emplaced nature of disability and how life (...) is lived through bodies coupled with technologies and experienced as 'techno-body-subjects in situ'. Normative implications for theory and research, including bioethics research, are discussed. (shrink)

Medical technologies and assistive devices such as ventilators and power wheelchairs are designed to sustain life and/or improve functionality but they can also contribute to stigmatization and social exclusion. In this paper, drawing from a study of ten men with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, we explore the complex social processes that mediate the lives of persons who are dependent on multiple medical and assistive technologies. In doing so we consider the embodied and emplaced nature of disability and how life (...) is lived through bodies coupled with technologies and experienced as ‘techno-body-subjects in situ’. Normative implications for theory and research, including bioethics research, are discussed. (shrink)

Technological innovations are commonplace today and usually provide great social benefits. The case of medical technology is of prime interest, for though it seems to provide primarily advantages, it may unwittingly turn over to technocrats the governance of modem society. This essay warns against the pitfalls of the age of technocracy, and calls for the maintenance of democratic controls over the development and implementation of modem technology.

It is well-known that racism is encoded into the social practices and institutions of medicine. Less well-known is that racism is encoded into the material artifacts of medicine. We argue that many medical devices are not merely biased, but materialize oppression. An oppressive device exhibits a harmful bias that reflects and perpetuates unjust power relations. Using pulse oximeters and spirometers as case studies, we show how medical devices can materialize oppression along various axes of social difference, including race, (...) gender, class, and ability. Our account uses political philosophy and cognitive science to give a theoretical basis for understanding materialized oppression, explaining how artifacts encode and carry oppressive ideas from the past to the present and future. Oppressive medical devices present a moral aggregation problem. To remedy this problem, we suggest redundantly layered solutions that are coordinated to disrupt reciprocal causal connections between the attitudes, practices, and artifacts of oppressive systems. (shrink)

We describe a case of parents refusing a tracheostomy for an otherwise healthy newborn. The refusal was not honored because permitting the refusal would have violated state law, which required a child to have a qualifying condition (e.g. a terminal diagnosis, permanent unconsciousness, incurable condition with severe suffering) to remove or withhold life-sustaining treatment. However, this case strained the relationship between the parents and medical staff, who worried about sending the newborn home with a tracheostomy where she was not (...) wanted. While many ethical issues arise in treatment refusal cases like this, we focus on the opportunity for ethicists to help the medical staff reflect on the technological alienation of the parents, which may help foster empathy, reduce moral distress, and strengthen the quality of the doctor-parent-patient triad. (shrink)

This brief review of the efficacy, safety, and costs of IVF demonstrates that this procedure has become accepted medical practice without adequate scientific assessment. Its rapid proliferation especially in the market-oriented USA system, has preceded the type of outcomes research that is essential in order to protect both individual patients and the health care system. In addition, concern over the psychological costs borne by the vast majority of women who unsuccessfully pursue pregnancy through these techniques should warrant a level (...) of caution which to date has not been forthcoming. The demand for pregnancy, the organisation of medical specialties surrounding these procedures, the open-ended reimbursement and incentive structure, and powerful market forces make it unlikely that IVF and a whole range of medical technologies can be regulated without some semblance of a national health system. These findings clearly reinforce the themes raised by the Radical Statistics Health Group and illustrate some of the weaknesses of a market approach to medical care. (shrink)

As the number of medical and health humanities degree programs in the United States rapidly increases, it is especially timely to consider the range of specific disciplinary perspectives that might benefit students enrolled in these programs. This paper discusses the inclusion of one such perspective from the field of Science and Technology Studies The author asserts that STS benefits students in the medical and health humanities in four particular ways, by: challenging the “progress narrative” around the advancement of (...) biomedicine as scientific practice, evaluating the meaning of technology, especially in how technology orients us towards sickness and how health technology is in turn shaped by social and cultural values, assessing the plurality of biomedical epistemologies, rather than assuming biomedicine is one, cohesive body of knowledge that does not differ across contexts, and critiquing bias in biomedical practice and science, especially in the marginalization of women’s voices and in the racial and postcolonial trajectories of contemporary biomedicine. The paper discusses the theoretical importance of these four trajectories to the medical and health humanities, as well as the venues for inclusion of STS within coursework and programming at Case Western Reserve University. The paper also comments on how programming at other institutions might be adapted to incorporate STS scholarship. By drawing on numerous examples of research in the anthropology, sociology, history, and the philosophy of science, this article seeks to open a conversation about the value of science and technology studies to health humanities pedagogy. (shrink)

Este trabajo está dirigido a fundamentar cómo a través de un proceso de innovación tecnológica se establecieron relaciones entre la universidad, la sociedad y el sector empresarial. La introducción de los productos biológicos en los laboratorios de diagnóstico médico y su impacto en los servicios fue el elemento fundamental que identificó la relación universidad-sociedad, mientras que la transferencia tecnológica de la obtención de biológicos a la unidad productora y comercializadora articuló a la academia con el mundo empresarial. Los modelos seguidos (...) para la gestión de la actividad de innovación le otorgaron al proceso un carácter específico y aseguraron su pertinencia, por lo que constituyó un logro científico-tecnológico. Se demostró un caso peculiar y concreto de fortalecimiento de las capacidades de interacción de las universidades con entidades productivas y de servicios, de modo que se enriqueció la función extensionista del centro de altos estudios. This article is based on a process of technical innovation that allowed establishing a relationship in which the university, society and the managerial sector were involved. The introduction of the biological products in medical diagnosis labs and its impact on services were the main elements that distinguished the university-society relationship, while the technological transfer to the unit of the biologicals obtained, articulated the university and the managerial field. Models put into practice for innovation management granted the process a specific character and ensured its relevance, that´s why it is considered a scientific-technological achievement. The process demonstrated a peculiar case of interaction between the university and production entities. (shrink)

This article considers the medical drug as a technological object, in order to determine what philosophy of technology can bring to the study of pharmaceuticals and what the study of medical drugs can bring to the philosophy of technology. This approach will allow us to locate the differences between the medical drug and other objects that usually form the focus for studies in the philosophy of technology, and to discuss the problematic fit of the models proposed in (...) the field to pharmaceuticals. After reflecting on the origins of this problem in both the philosophy of pharmacy and the philosophy of technology, I propose an examination of medical drugs using an analytical schema developed by Andrew Feenberg. I expose several shortcomings of this ‘post-phenomenological’ philosophy of technology applied to medical drugs. Despite the various problems identified, I nevertheless argue that the philosophy of technology is useful for thinking about medical drugs, particularly because of the emphasis it places on the social and political dimensions of technology. In conclusion, I argue in favour of a more open, eclectic philosophical engagement with medical drugs that puts more emphasis on their economic, social and political dimensions. (shrink)

This article considers the medical drug as a technological object, in order to determine what philosophy of technology can bring to the study of pharmaceuticals and what the study of medical drugs can bring to the philosophy of technology. This approach will allow us to locate the differences between the medical drug and other objects that usually form the focus for studies in the philosophy of technology, and to discuss the problematic fit of the models proposed in (...) the field to pharmaceuticals. After reflecting on the origins of this problem in both the philosophy of pharmacy and the philosophy of technology, I propose an examination of medical drugs using an analytical schema developed by Andrew Feenberg. I expose several shortcomings of this ‘post-phenomenological’ philosophy of technology applied to medical drugs. Despite the various problems identified, I nevertheless argue that the philosophy of technology is useful for thinking about medical drugs, particularly because of the emphasis it places on the social and political dimensions of technology. In conclusion, I argue in favour of a more open, eclectic philosophical engagement with medical drugs that puts more emphasis on their economic, social and political dimensions. (shrink)

Modern health care relies extensively on the use of technologies for assessing and treating patients, so it is important to be certain that health care technologies perform their professed functions in an effective and safe manner. Philosophers of technology have developed methods to assign and evaluate the functions of technological products, the major elements of which are described in the ICE theory. This paper questions whether the standard of evidence advocated by the ICE theory is adequate for ascribing and assessing (...) technologies employed in health care. The paper proposes that the general problem with the standard of evidence embodied in the ICE theory is too permissive for assessing medical technologies, in that it does not take into account the relative benefit and harm of medical technologies in ensuring safe functional performance in patients. The paper illustrates how evidence-based medicine has demonstrated the value of clinical research methods, including observational studies, randomized and non-randomized clinical trials, and formal techniques, such as meta-analysis, to measure therapeutic effectiveness. I argue, therefore, that evidence from clinical research studies should take precedence over the testimonial evidence and other types of non-clinical evidence, in providing justification for health technologies. (shrink)

This paper describes a new course in Medical Technology and Critical Decisions, part of the Technology Studies Program at Wellesley College, established with the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's New Liberal Arts Program. The course uses the dramatic new options in medicine presented by technology to individuals and society as a vehicle for promoting general technological literacy in liberal arts students. The course motivates the study of the scientific principles on which the technology rests and the mathematical (...) principles of a methodology for making rational choices. A case in point is the decision of a pregnant woman whether or not to undergo amniocentesis, a procedure used to determine the genetic make-up of a fetus from cells in the amniotic fluid. The course introduces students to the underlying notions of genetics; the physical principles behind the ultrasound imaging technique used to position the needle that draws the fluid; the probability and statistics needed to understand the risks to the woman and fetus both of having and of not having the procedure; and the methodology of decision analysis, increasingly used by genetic counselors to help prospective parents incorporate their personal values into the decision-making process. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between medicine’s history and its digital present through the lens of the physician-patient relationship. Today the rhetoric surrounding the introduction of new technologies into medicine tends to emphasize that technologies are disturbing relationships, and that the doctor-patient bond reflects a more ‘human’ era of medicine that should be preserved. Using historical studies of pre-modern and modern Western European medicine, this article shows that patient-physician relationships have always been shaped by material cultures. We discuss three activities (...) – recording, examining, and treating – in the light of their historical antecedents, and suggest that the notion of ‘human medicine’ is ever-changing: it consists of social attributions of skills to physicians that played out very differently over the course of history. (shrink)

In 2017 and 2019, two research teams claimed ‘proof of principle’ for artificial womb technology (AWT). AWT has long been a subject of speculation in bioethical literature, with broad consensus that it is a welcome development. Despite this, little attention is afforded to more immediate ethical problems in the development of AWT, particularly as an alternative to neonatal intensive care. To start this conversation, I consider whether experimental AWT is innovative treatment or medical research. The research–treatment distinction, pervasive in (...) regulation worldwide, is intended to isolate research activities and subject them to a greater degree of oversight. I argue that there is a tendency in the literature to conceptualize AWT for partial ectogenesis as innovative treatment. However, there are sufficiently serious ethical concerns with experimental AWT that mean that it must not be first used on humans on the basis that it is a ‘beneficial treatment’. First, I outline the prospects for translation of AWT animal studies into treatment for human preterms. Second, I challenge the conceptualizations of experimental AWT as innovative treatment. It must be considered medical research to reflect the investigatory nature of the process and guarantee sufficient protections for subjects. Identifying that AWT is research is crucial in formulating further ethico‐legal questions regarding the experimental use of AWT. Third, I demonstrate that clinical trials will be a necessary part of the clinical translation of AWT because of requirements laid out by regulators. I consider the justification for clinical trials and highlight some of the crucial ethical questions about the conditions under which they should proceed. (shrink)

Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence are actively revolutionizing the healthcare industry. While there is widespread concern that these advances will displace human practitioners within the healthcare sector, there are several tasks – including original and nuanced ethical decision making – that they cannot replace. Further, the implementation of artificial intelligence in clinical practice can be anticipated to drive the production of novel ethical tensions surrounding its use, even while eliminating some of the technical tasks which currently compete with ethical (...) deliberation for clinicians’ limited time. A new argument therefore arises to suggest that although these disruptive technologies will change the face of medicine, they may also foster a revival of several fundamental components inherent to the role of healthcare professionals, chiefly, the principal activities of moral philosophy. Accordingly, “machine medicine” presents a vital opportunity to reinvigorate the field of bioethics, rather than withdraw from it. (shrink)

In the film Never Let Me Go, clones are forced to donate their organs anonymously. As a work of fiction, this film can be regarded as a negotiation of limited agency, since the clones are depicted as vulnerable individuals. Thereby, it evokes a confrontation with underprivileged positions in technocratic societies, encouraging the audience to take the perspective of the marginalised. The clones are situated in ‘privileged deprivation’; from the audience’s point of view, they are unable to evolve into autonomous agents—but (...) from their own perspective within the dystopian system, they are still ‘privileged’. In this paper, we analyse the depiction of the clones’ personal development. Further, we examine references to bioethical aspects as well as technologies that affect the human body both on a micro and macro level—cloning and its impact on the human embryo and organ donation practised on the full-grown human body. We argue that this film as a reference for the discussion in popular culture focuses on individuals who do not profit from modern technical progress or do not have enough agency to refuse it. To make this point, we analyse the film’s fictional story, set in a form of alternate history, as a negotiation of a historical context which brings out the idea of neglected voices. (shrink)

Modern health care relies extensively on the use of technologies forassessing and treating patients, so it is important to be certain that health care technologies (i.e., pharmaceuticals, devices, procedures, and organizational systems) perform their professed functions in an effective and safe manner. Philosophers of technology have developed methods to assign and evaluate the functions of technological products, the major elements of which are described in the ICE theory. This paper questions whether the standard of evidence advocated by the ICE theory (...) is adequate for ascribing and assessing technologies employed in health care. The paper proposes that the general problem with the standard of evidence embodied in the ICE theory (i.e.,testimony and evidence of mechanisms) is too permissive for assessing medical technologies, in that it does not take into account the relative benefit and harm of medical technologies in ensuring safe functional performance in patients. The paper illustrates how evidence-based medicine (EBM) has demonstrated the value of clinical research methods, including observational studies, randomized and non-randomized clinical trials, and formal techniques, such as meta-analysis, to measure therapeutic effectiveness. I argue, therefore, that evidence from clinical research studies should take precedence over the testimonial evidence and other types of non-clinical evidence, inproviding justification for health technologies. (shrink)