Control and the therapeutic trial : rhetoric and experimentation in Britain, 1918-48 / Martin Edwards.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Edwards, Martin, 1955 November 23-

Series:

Clio Medica 82.

Wellcome series in the history of medicine

Clio medica, 0045-7183 ; 82

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Drugs--Testing--History.

Drugs.

Clinical trials--Great Britain--History.

Clinical trials.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (228 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York : Editions Rodopi, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

How do doctors decide whether their drugs, or other treatments, actually work? In practice this can be fiendishly difficult. Nowadays the gold standard is the randomised controlled trial (RCT). But the RCT is a recent invention, and the story of how it came to dominate therapeutic evaluation from the latter half of the twentieth century involves acrimony, confrontation, and manipulation of the powerful rhetoric of ‘control’. Control and the Therapeutic Trial examines the development of the RCT from the eclectic collection of methodologies available to practitioners in the early-twentieth century. In particular, it explores the British Medical Research Council’s (MRC) exploitation of the term ‘controlled’ to help establish its own ‘controlled trials’ as the gold standard for therapeutic evaluation, and, ultimately, the MRC itself as the proper authority to adjudicate on therapeutic efficacy. This rhetorical power still clings, and is exploited today. Control and the Therapeutic Trial will be of interest not only to historians of twentieth-century medicine and practising clinicians who take therapeutic decisions, but to anyone who seeks a broader insight into the forces that shaped, and control, the modern controlled trial.

Contents:

Preliminary material / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Acknowledgements / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Note on National Archives Source Material / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Introduction / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

No Word is Innocent: The History and Rhetoric of Controlled Trials prior to 1948 / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Good, Bad or Offal? The Rhetoric of Control in the Evaluation of Raw Pancreas Therapy / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Bright Lights, Smoky Cities: Light Therapy in 1920's Britain / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Control and the MRC’s Evaluation of Serum Therapy for Pneumonia, 1929–34 / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Keeping it Controlled: The MRC’s Trials of Immunisation against Influenza / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Whose Words are they Anyway? The Contrasting Strategies of Almroth Wright and Bradford Hill to Capture the Nomenclature of Controlled Trials / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Conclusion: What’s Controlled about the Controlled Trial? / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Bibliography / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial

Index / Editors Control and the Therapeutic Trial.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

94-012-0494-2

1-4356-1639-1

OCLC:

714567262