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7th Annual John C. Burnham Lecture in the History of Medicine/Science

His Burnham lecture derives from a longstanding interest in tracing the connections between knowledge, politics, and the deeper structures of bureaucratic regulation.  Much contemporary analysis of the US Food and Drug Administration follows a well-trod ideological path, emphasizing the dangers of “excess” regulation (inhibits innovation and professional autonomy) or of “insufficient” regulation (needlessly endangers patient safety).   Marks’s lecture focuses instead on the enduring American belief in better “information” to remedy all ills in therapeutic practice, a belief deeply embedded in American political and medical culture.  Drug labeling, Marks argues, has been at the center of FDA regulation since the Progressive era, with enduring consequences for therapeutic practice and the medical political economy.  His lecture will emphasize the conflicts that this reliance on drug labeling has generated over the past sixty years.

Judy Wiener | Medical Heritage Center | 292-9273