Lesser Harms: Morality of Risk in Medical Research
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004
Examines how mid-twentieth-century vaccine researchers and their sponsors assessed and handled research hazards when pursuing human tests of experimental immunizing agents. Winner of the 2005 Arthur J. Viseltear Prize from the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association for outstanding work on the history of public health.
“In a concise and extremely well-written volume, Dr. Halpern . . . examines the moral traditions that govern the introduction of new medical interventions before and after the advent of federal regulation. To trace this evolution . . . she uses innovations in the field of vaccine research in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. . . Lesser Harms, while most certainly a scholarly work, provides a perspective on medical science that would also be appreciated by a broad audience. It would most certainly be of interest to physicians, both clinical and laboratory scientists, and those who design and participate in any aspect of human subjects research.”
Samuel C. Blackman, Journal of the American Medical Association
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American Pediatrics: Social Dynamics of Professionalism, 1880-1980.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Follows the rise of a new primary-care specialty in response to parental demand for expertise in childhood diseases and for professional advice on guiding their youngsters’ early development.
“Halpern has chosen a strategic research site and has exploited it with theoretical precision, with a good sense of empirical strategy, and with exceptionally clear writing. We have learned a good deal about pediatrics, a good deal about specialization, and a great deal about the strategy of study of the origins of institutions.”
Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Northwestern University
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SELECTED PAPERS
Sydney Halpern. 2008. “Hybrid Design, Systemic Rigidity: Institutional Dynamics in Human Subjects Oversight.” Regulation and Governance 2 (Mar): 85-102.
Renee Anspach and Sydney Halpern. 2008. “From Cruzan to Schiavo: How Bioethics Entered the Culture Wars.” In Advances in Medical Sociology vol. 9: Bioethical Issues, Sociological Perspectives, ed. Barbara Katz Rothman, Elizabeth M. Armstrong and Rebecca Tiger. Boston: Elsevier JAI, pp. 33-63.
Sydney A. Halpern. 2004. “Medical Authority and the Culture of Rights,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 29, no. 4-5 (Aug-Oct): 835-50.
Sydney A. Halpern. 2001. “Constructing Moral Boundaries: Public Discourse on Human Experimentation in Twentieth-Century America.” In Bioethics in Social Context ed. Barry Hoffmaster. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp, 69-89.