Stefán Hjörleifsson - MD, research fellow | |
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Section for General Practice, Department of Public Health and Primary Health Care, University of Bergen Norway Tel +47 55 58 61 37 |
| Position and academic interests |
I work half time as a general practitioner, in addition to holding a 50% position as a research fellow on a project about the societal reactions to and governance of the new genetics. Philosophical analysis of the medical encounter and the ethical obligations of the medical practitioner are essential to my understanding and practice of medicine. I have summarised my reflections on how a rather conservative university clinic in Norway prepares the student for his or her role as doctor in the presentation Doktorfabrikken. This presentation has also appeared in the Norwegian anthology Forstår du, doktor? about the nature of medical work, and in an extended version in the Icelandic journal Skírnir. After two years of hospital work I wrote about the relationship between technical know-how and moral wisdom in clinical practice in a paper titled Hvor dyktig er legen? The above topics are central to my teaching in ethics at the University of Iceland, where I will be giving lectures for 1st and 2nd year medical students for the second time this winter. At the macro level I am interested in how society reacts to medical technologies. In 2003 I arranged a conference about medicalization in Iceland, and a book based on the presentations at this conference will be published in Iceland in October 2004. In my introductory chapter, I make use of Ivan Illich's concept of clinical, social and cultural iatrogenesis. When liberated from Illich's negative interpretation, which is of course not especially constructive, I find this concept useful in the exploration of how novel diagnostic and therapeutic technologies influence society.
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| Decoding the language of life - A case study of deCODE genetics in Iceland |
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In my current research I am studying how the private research company deCODE genetics in Iceland influences its cultural environment, as well as the societal resources that have been evoked in Iceland to regulate and make sense of the technologies introduced by deCODE. The aim of this project is to identify and enhance the societal resources required to make wise decisions about the use of human genetic technologies. My supervisor is Associate Professor Edvin Schei, while Vilhjálmur Árnason, Professor in Philosophy at the University of Iceland is co-supervisor of my project. The first part of my thesis will be a theoretical framework, which aims to analyse the interaction between human genetic research and public concern about genetics on the one hand, and cultural strategies for dealing with many of the fundamental conditions of human existence on the other. I draw on philosophical and anthropological theories about culture's role in shaping the way people perceive and react to human vulnerability. Secondly, I rely on established sociological analysis of two prominent features of late modernity - i.e. individualisation and the contested management of risk - which I think are powerful determinants of the conceptual and ideological relationship between genetics and culture. Currently, I am analysing interviews that I have made with senior researchers at deCODE genetics. In these interviews the researchers identify a range of moral concerns about the technologies likely to be introduced as a result of research performed by deCODE and others. The scientists argue that these concerns should be met by focused measures at the societal level, and further they are of the opinion that the societal governance of genetics calls for resources which are positively different from the resources involved in genetic research itself. The opinions expressed in these interviews will serve as a point of departure for an analysis of the public debate and governance of genetics in Iceland.
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| Publications |
Department of Public Health and Primary Health Care, last updated 01.09.04 Hogne.Sandvik@isf.uib.no |
