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- Creators: School of Life Sciences
- Creators: Hurlbut, James B
Description
Leo Kanner first described autism in his 1943 article in Nervous Child titled "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact". Throughout, he describes the eleven children with autism in exacting detail. In the closing paragraphs, the parents of autistic children are described as emotionally cold. Yet, he concludes that the condition as he described it was innate. Since its publication, his observations about parents have been a source of controversy surrounding the original definition of autism.
Thus far, histories about autism have pointed to descriptions of parents of autistic children with the claim that Kanner abstained from assigning them causal significance. Understanding the theoretical context in which Kanner's practice was embedded is essential to sorting out how he could have held such seemingly contrary views simultaneously.
This thesis illustrates that Kanner held an explicitly descriptive frame of reference toward his eleven child patients, their parents, and autism. Adolf Meyer, his mentor at Johns Hopkins, trained him to make detailed life-charts under a clinical framework called psychobiology. By understanding that Kanner was a psychobiologist by training, I revisit the original definition of autism as a category of mental disorder and restate its terms. This history illuminates the theoretical context of autism's discovery and has important implications for the first definition of autism amidst shifting theories of childhood mental disorders and the place of the natural sciences in defining them.
Thus far, histories about autism have pointed to descriptions of parents of autistic children with the claim that Kanner abstained from assigning them causal significance. Understanding the theoretical context in which Kanner's practice was embedded is essential to sorting out how he could have held such seemingly contrary views simultaneously.
This thesis illustrates that Kanner held an explicitly descriptive frame of reference toward his eleven child patients, their parents, and autism. Adolf Meyer, his mentor at Johns Hopkins, trained him to make detailed life-charts under a clinical framework called psychobiology. By understanding that Kanner was a psychobiologist by training, I revisit the original definition of autism as a category of mental disorder and restate its terms. This history illuminates the theoretical context of autism's discovery and has important implications for the first definition of autism amidst shifting theories of childhood mental disorders and the place of the natural sciences in defining them.
ContributorsCohmer, Sean (Author) / Hurlbut, James B (Thesis advisor) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Laubichler, Manfred (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation shows that the central conceptual feature and explanatory motivation of theories of evolutionary directionality between 1890 and 1926 was as follows: morphological variation in the developing organism limits the possible outcomes of evolution in definite directions. Put broadly, these theories maintained a conceptual connection between development and evolution as inextricably associated phenomena. This project develops three case studies. The first addresses the Swiss-German zoologist Theodor Eimer's book Organic Evolution (1890), which sought to undermine the work of noted evolutionist August Weismann. Second, the American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope's Primary Factors (1896) developed a sophisticated system of inheritance that included the material of heredity and the energy needed to induce and modify ontogenetic phenomena. Third, the Russian biogeographer Leo Berg's Nomogenesis (1926) argued that the biological world is deeply structured in a way that prevents changes to morphology taking place in more than one or a few directions. These authors based their ideas on extensive empirical evidence of long-term evolutionary trajectories. They also sought to synthesize knowledge from a wide range of studies and proposed causes of evolution and development within a unified causal framework based on laws of evolution. While being mindful of the variation between these three theories, this project advances "Definitely Directed Evolution" as a term to designate these shared features. The conceptual coherence and reception of these theories shows that Definitely Directed Evolution from 1890 to 1926 is an important piece in reconstructing the wider history of theories of evolutionary directionality.
ContributorsUlett, Mark Andrew (Author) / Laubichler, Manfred D (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Brian K (Committee member) / Lynch, John (Committee member) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Smocovitis, Vassiliki B (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In the past century, a number of technological projects have been undertaken as grand solutions to social problems. In the so called century of biology, this technological world view focuses on biomedical advances. The President of the United States, who once called for nuclear weapons and space exploration, now calls for new biotechnologies, such as genomics, individualized medicine, and nanotechnology, which will improve the world by improving our biological lives. Portrayed as the Manhattan Project of the late 20th Century, the Human Genome Project (HGP) not only undertook the science of sequencing the human genome but also the ethics of it. For this thesis I ask how the HGP did this; what was the range of possibilities of goods and evils imagined by the HGP; and what, if anything, was left out. I show that the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) research program of the HGP was inscribed with the competencies of the professional field of bioethics, which had lent itself useful for governing biomedical science and technology earlier in the 20th century. Drawing on a sociological framework for understanding the development of professional bioethics, I describe the development of ELSI, and I note how the given-in-advance boundaries between authorized/unauthorized questions shaped its formation and biased technologically based conceptualizations of social problems and potential solutions. In this sense, the HGP and ELSI served both as the ends of policy and as instruments of self-legitimation, thus re-inscribing and enacting the structures for these powerful sociotechnical imaginaries. I engage the HGP and ELSI through historical, sociological, and political philosophical analysis, by examining their immediate context of the NIH, the meso level of professional/disciplinary bioethics, and the larger context of American democracy and modernity. My argument is simultaneously a claim about how questions are asked and how knowledge and expertise are made, exposing the relationship between the HGP and ELSI as a mutually constitutive and reciprocally related form of coproduction of knowledge and social structures. I finish by arguing that ELSI is in a better position than bioethics to carry out the original project of that field, i.e., to provide a space to elucidate certain institutionally authorized questions about science and technology. Finally, I venture into making a prophecy about the future of ELSI and bioethics: that the former will replace the latter as a locus for only formally rational and thin ethical debates.
ContributorsCarvalho, Tito (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin D (Committee member) / Hurlbut, James B (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This project focuses on the history of how teratogens, or agents which have the potential to cause birth defects, have been understood and tested for teratogenic potential in the US over the twentieth century. Prior to this time, teratogen studies were primarily concerned with cataloguing defects rather than exploring possible causes. At the turn of the twentieth century, experimental teratogen studies with the aim of elucidating mechanisms commenced. However, these early studies did not aim to discover human pregnancy outcomes and ways to prevent them, but simply focused on the results of exposing pregnant mammals to various physical and chemical insults. My project documents the change in understanding of teratogens over the twentieth century, the advancement of testing methods, and the causes of these advancements. Through the Embryo Project at Arizona State University (embryo.asu.edu), a digital encyclopedia for topics related to embryology, development, and reproductive medicine, I wrote ten encyclopedic articles that focused on chemical mechanisms of various teratogens, testing limitations in animal models, and legal and regulatory responses to well-known teratogens. As an extension of my previous work, this project bridges the current gap in research and focuses on contextualizing major events in the field of teratology to determine how these events led to various shifts in the understanding of birth defects and their causes, and how those conceptual shifts led to the creation of teratological testing guidelines. Results show that throughout the twentieth century, there are four distinct shifts in the understanding of teratogens: the first being 1900-1945, the second being 1946-1960, the third being 1961-1980, and the fourth being 1981-2000.
ContributorsTantibanchachai, Chanapa (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Laubichler, Manfred (Committee member) / O'Neil, Erica (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Background: Breast cancer affects about 12% of women in the US. Arguably, it is one of the most advertised cancers. Mammography became a popular tool of breast cancer screening in the 1970s, and patient-geared guidelines came from the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the US Preventative Task Force (USPSTF). This research focuses on ACS guidelines, as they were the earliest as well as the most changed guidelines. Mammography guidelines changed over time due to multiple factors. This research has tracked possible causes of those changes. Methods: Research began with an extensive literature search of clinical trials, the New York Times and the Washington Post archives, systematic reviews, ACS and USPSTF archives. Results and Discussion: ACS was the first organization to provide easily accessible patient geared mammography guidelines. The guidelines have changed six times since 1976. The first came after a large clinical trial, which screened 60,000 women and showed that mammography use decreased breast cancer deaths by 30%. During the 1980s and 1990s, anti-cancer lobbyists and health insurance companies were in conflict, as the former pushed for more frequent mammography screening while the latter pushed for less. The USPSTF published their first guidelines in 2002, separated women into different age groups, and suggested screening intervals, but also included a rating of evidence quality (A-I) that supported the screening recommendation. They changed in 2009 and 2016. The frequent changes had different, not all purely scientific and evidence-based causes. The political influence of anti-cancer activists, as well as media coverage, increased public interest in mammography, which in turn influenced changes in mammography guidelines, sometimes against scientific evidence. Most changes moved towards more frequent screening for women older than 40, and less frequently for younger women, probably because multiple clinical trials had found that mammography was not useful for younger women with no history of breast cancer. There was also growing evidence of overdiagnosis and overtreatment risks from frequent mammography use. Conclusions: The patient-geared mammography guidelines have changed due to multiple and not always well-grounded factors, such as public interpretations of mammography usefulness, social attention to mammography, and influence of different stakeholders at the time. Some changes have resulted solely from political and social factors, disregarding building scientific and clinical evidence against frequent mammography use.
ContributorsZiganshina, Dina Ayratovna (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Abboud, Alexis (Committee member) / Abboud, Carolina (Committee member) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Cervical cancer, which many physicians of 2019 consider to be a success in terms of establishing widely used forms of early preventative and diagnostic technologies, experienced a reduction in incidence rates in women by over fifty percent between 1975 and 2016. Cervical cancer does not often present in women with symptoms until it has entered a later stage of the disease. Because of this fact, in the early twentieth century, physicians were often only able to diagnose cervical cancer when either the woman reported complaints or there was a visual confirmation of lesions on the cervix. The symptoms women often reported included vague abdominal pain, bleeding after sex, and abnormal amounts of vaginal discharge, all of which are non-specific symptoms, making it even harder for women to be diagnosed with cervical cancer. This thesis answers the following question: How does the history of cervical cancer show that prevention helps reduce rates of cancer-related deaths among women? By studying the history of cervical cancer, people can understand how a cancer that was once one of the top killers of women in the US has declined to become one of the lowest through the establishment of and effective communication of early prevention and diagnostics, both among the general public and within the medical community itself. This thesis is organized based on key episodes which were pertinent to the history of cervical cancer, primarily within the United States and Europe. The episodes are organized in context of the shifts in thought regarding cervical cancer and include topics such as vaccine technologies like the Gardasil and Cervarix vaccines, social awareness movements that educated women on the importance of early detection, and analyses of the early preventative strategies and attempts at treating cervical cancer. After analyzing eleven key episodes, the thesis determined that, through the narrative of early attempts to treat cervical cancer, shifting the societal thought on cancer, evolving the importance of early detection, and, finally, obtaining a means of prevention, the history of cervical cancer does demonstrate that the development of preventative strategies has resulted in reducing cancer-related deaths among women. Understanding what it took for physicians to evolve from simply detecting cervical cancer to being able to prevent it entirely matters because it can change the way we think about managing other forms of cancer.
ContributorsDarby, Alexis Renee (Co-author) / Darby, Alexis (Co-author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Abboud, Carolina (Committee member) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor, Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05