BIO
I am a historical sociologist who has written extensively about twentieth-century American medical institutions and biomedical science. For some time, my focus has been the framing of moral issues in the conduct of human research.
I earned my doctorate in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, with a concentration in historical analysis, and have served as Full Professor at both Vanderbilt University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. I have also had been a visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics, University Pennsylvania School of Medicine; the Institute for Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois; and the American Bar Foundation, a center for socio-legal scholarship. My funding awards include an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and a major grant and several University Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. For Dangerous Medicine, I received a multi-year award from the National Library of Medicine within the National Institutes of Health. I am currently Professor Emerita at University of Illinois at Chicago, and Lecturer at the Program in Medical Humanities and Bioethics, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University.
PREVIOUS BOOKS
Sydney Halpern. 2004. Lesser Harms: Morality of Risk in Medical Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Examines how mid-twentieth-century vaccine researchers and their sponsors assessed and handled research hazards when pursuing human tests of experimental immunizing agents. Winner of the Arthur J. Visiltear outstanding book award from the American Public Health Association, 2005.
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Sydney Halpern. 1988. American Pediatrics: Social Dynamics of Professionalism, 1880-1980. Berkeley: University of California Press. Follows the rise of a new primary-care specialty in response to parental demand for expertise in childhood diseases and for professional advice on guiding their youngsters’ early development.
SELECTED PAPERS
Sydney Halpern. 2008. “Hybrid Design, Systemic Rigidity: Institutional Dynamics in Human Subjects Oversight.” Regulation and Governance 2 (Mar): 85-102.
Renee Anspach and Sydney Halpern. 2008. “From Cruzan to Schiavo: How Bioethics Entered the Culture Wars.” In Advances in Medical Sociology vol. 9: Bioethical Issues, Sociological Perspectives, ed. Barbara Katz Rothman, Elizabeth M. Armstrong and Rebecca Tiger. Boston: Elsevier JAI, pp. 33-63.
Sydney A. Halpern. 2004. “Medical Authority and the Culture of Rights,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 29, no. 4-5 (Aug-Oct): 835-50.
Sydney A. Halpern. 2001. “Constructing Moral Boundaries: Public Discourse on Human Experimentation in Twentieth-Century America.” In Bioethics in Social Context ed. Barry Hoffmaster. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp, 69-89.