Professor Andrea Tone of the McGill Department of the Social Studies of Medicine delivers an STS colloquium talk entitled “Spies & Lies: Ewen Cameron, the CIA, and Cold War Psychiatry” Thursday, September 13, 5:00-6:30 in Buchanan Tower 1197.
This talk revisits the political, legal, and medical controversy surrounding Ewen Cameron and the CIA-funded research/therapy he did on psychiatric patients at the Allan Memorial Hospital in the late 1950s. Drawing on newly available records, legal materials, and original oral histories it seeks to augment our understanding of the controversy itself while shedding light on what I call the “social lives of medical therapies”: how and why different constituencies (clinicians, researchers, patients, politicians, lawyers, and other groups) evaluate the safety, efficacy, and political viability of specific therapeutic interventions and research initiatives over time.
The STS series is supported by the UBC Situating Science Node.