This project is an investigation of the issue of human biomedical enhancement, taking human growth hormone as a case study. Growth hormone is mainly used to increase the adult height of short children, and is also employed illicitly as an anti-ageing treatment. Both these applications are viewed by bioethicists as going beyond the scope of therapeutic medicine by enhancing normal human traits rather than treating diseases and as such are considered ethically suspect. This project adopts a comparative and retrospective stance, examining the socio-historical development of human growth hormone in the US, where much of the impetus for enhancement uses has originated, and also in the UK where the potential for enhancement uses of pharmaceuticals and other medical technologies is a growing concern. This project combines a social constructivist approach to bodies and disease categories with science and technology studies theory on the emergence and shaping of new (medical) technologies. Research focuses on the development of growth hormone as a medical technology and the construction of the diagnostic categories that define the illness it is employed to treat. A combination of archive material and contemporary interview data is used to investigate and identify factors that shape the way some applications of hGH have come to be viewed as legitimate, accepted practices while others remain unstable and controversial. Enhancement suggests an inappropriate use of biomedicine, but in the case of growth hormone at least, the determination of medical need and entitlement is shown to be more than a matter of instrumental measurements. It is a contingent and socially shaped procedure that is applied in heterogeneous ways at different sites in the networks of healthcare provision. This technique provides a different model for thinking about those biomedical practices labelled as enhancement, which does not share the limitations of that framing.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:493320 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Morrison, Michael |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10631/ |
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