Medical Hedonists in the Kingdom of Ends: Patient Autonomy since the National Research Act

In this talk, Cathy Gere of the University of California, San Diego, will examine the multiple transformations of the concept of patient autonomy after the mandating of informed consent in 1974. From the publication of the so-called Bible of Bioethics, through the AIDS epidemic, to the end of the Cold War and the rise of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, the informed patient of 1974 turned into the empowered consumer of the mid-1990s. During the same period, the discipline of psychology underwent a matching makeover, courtesy of the new field of behavioral economics, with health, addiction, and personal responsibility acting as central reference points for a new neoliberal model of personhood perfectly aligned with the transformed ideal of medical autonomy.

This event is part of Princeton's History of Science Colloquium.