David S. Jones continues Seminar Series with “Must Innovators Study the Unintended Consequences of New Therapies? Lessons from Cardiac Therapeutics” on March 11
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Baltimore, MD 21287
David Jones, the A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard University, will continue the 2018-19 Berman Institute Seminar Series with his talk, “Must Innovators Study the Unintended Consequences of New Therapies? Lessons from Cardiac Therapeutics,” on March 11.
When medical researchers develop new therapies, they work harder to determine whether or not the treatment produces the desired outcomes than they do to catalogue the unintended adverse effects. Dr. Jones’s talk will ask if researchers have an ethical obligation to ascertain all the side effects of their interventions and, if they do, how far does this obligation extend? Case studies drawn from the history of cardiac therapeutics demonstrate both why this obligation exists and how hard it can be to fulfill it.
Trained in psychiatry and history of science, David Jones is the A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard University. His research has focused on the causes and meanings of health inequalities (Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality since 1600) and the history of decision making in cardiac therapeutics (Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care, 2013). He will soon complete two other projects: an analysis of the evolution of coronary artery surgery, and a history of heart disease and cardiac therapeutics in India.
His teaching at Harvard College and Harvard Medical School explores the history of medicine, medical ethics, and social medicine.