Contested Medicine

“What is truly original about Contested Medicine is that, by using the science studies approach applied to a specific historical case, Kutcher shows not only how ethics were constitutive of the shape of experimental work on cancer at its inception but how both of these things were mutually changed over time.”

“Contested Medicine is an extremely interesting, thorough, and thoughtful consideration of the experimental treatments using whole-body radiation applied to cancer patients at the University of Cincinnati by Dr. Eugene Saenger and his colleagues. What makes this work especially valuable is the rich context provided for the studies as well as the case study method used in the analysis. It is quite nuanced and provides the social and historical context for the studies and the evolving bioethics of the time.”

“Gerald Kutcher uniquely combines high-level expertise in medical physics, the sociology of scientific knowledge, and medical history. In this elegant book he sensitively dissects a historical case study that biomedical ethics has made notorious. But Kutcher does not judge retrospectively; he seeks to recreate the tensions of the time. Clinicians, historians, and social scientists can all learn much from his example.”

“Beautifully written and filled with insights, Kutcher’s Contested Medicine movingly illuminates the ethical complexity of some of the most notorious biomedical research of the twentieth century. This is not a reclamation or an innocence project for the notorious Saenger and his colleagues, who irradiated and even apparently hastened the death of patients suffering from advanced cancer. Rather, it demonstrates in persuasive detail the vexing consistencies of Saenger’s research practices with those of his peers, and in the process it explains how and why Saenger could carry out this troubling research program over many years without being shunned and isolated by the scientific community. Kutcher’s sometimes passionate book is an extremely important contribution to our ongoing assessment of modern medicine and its ethical quandaries. It should be widely read.”