Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good
From the Panopticon to the Skinner Box and Beyond
$48.79
- Hardcover
304 pages
- Release Date
19 October 2017
Summary
How should we weigh the costs and benefits of scientific research on humans? Is it right that a small group of people should suffer in order that a larger number can live better, healthier lives? Or is an individual truly sovereign, unable to be plotted as part of such a calculation?
These are questions that have bedeviled scientists, doctors, and ethicists for decades, and in Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good, Cathy Gere presents the gripping story of how we have addressed them over time. Today, we are horrified at the idea that a medical experiment could be performed on someone without consent. But, as Gere shows, that represents a relatively recent shift: for more than two centuries, from the birth of utilitarianism in the eighteenth century, the doctrine of the greater good held sway. If a researcher believed his work would benefit humanity, then inflicting pain, or even death, on unwitting or captive subjects was considered ethically acceptable. It was only in the wake of World War II, and the revelations of Nazi medical atrocities, that public and medical opinion began to change, culminating in the National Research Act of 1974, which mandated informed consent. Showing that utilitarianism is based in the idea that humans are motivated only by pain and pleasure, Gere cautions that that greater good thinking is on the upswing again today and that the lesson of history is in imminent danger of being lost.
Rooted in the experiences of real people, and with major consequences for how we think about ourselves and our rights, Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good is a dazzling, ambitious history.
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226501857 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 022650185X |
| Author: | Cathy Gere |
| Publisher: | The University of Chicago Press |
| Imprint: | University of Chicago Press |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 304 |
| Release Date: | 19 October 2017 |
| Weight: | 567g |
| Dimensions: | 2mm x 16mm x 23mm |
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Critics Review
“This is a fascinating, beautifully-written history with genuine political and philosophical bite. Like a balanced and cheerful Foucault, or a literary Adam Curtis, Cathy Gere offers us a graphic genealogy of modern ethical reasoning in its benevolence and its blindness. Pleasure, Pain, and the Common Good shows how the upheavals of the 20th century set the stage for the rise of “informed consent”– respect for the autonomous choice and rights of the individual– as the gold standard of medical ethics. But where some have seen autonomy emerging within an ethical void, Gere explores the changing political and scientific stakes of its precursor: the utilitarian philosophy which provided the rationale for over two centuries of British and American medicine, and which connectsHobbes and Bentham to Sunstein’s Nudge and Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. Despite the victory of informed consent, she shows how utilitarian ethics, “bloodied but unbowed,” remains hardwired into medical policy. Gere grounds this doubled vision in architectures of surveillance and moral improvement, in the electric shocks and marshmallows of legendary experiments. Overflowing with lively characters and scenes, knotty puzzles and surprising laughs, this book is a sure spark for important discussions about how medicine justifies the pain it has provoked and the inequities it perpetuates. A gripping and eloquent, rigorous yet hopeful tour de force– immensely rewarding reading for anyone touched by the moral and political power of modern medicine and science.“–John Tresch, University of Pennsylvania
Cathy Gere
Cathy Gere is associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.
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