Description of Focus

Science and technology are the fundamental driving forces behind modernisation and innovation. Since its very beginnings, modern medicine has stood in close relation to technical innovation. Advances in medicine are unthinkable without continual progress in gaining new scientific insights/knowledge and without the development of new technical procedures. At the same time, science and technology continually instigate – often because of their incontrovertible and indispensable successes – questions and conflicts concerning potential consequential impacts.
With the development of medical biotechnology, not only are we once again experiencing another innovations boom in medical research, but also in clinical practice. Besides the ethical considerations that have already been publicly debated on a large scale in the natural and social sciences, the innovations boom also gives rise to questions concerning (up until now rather unnoticed) changes in the daily practice of medicine, the doctor-patient relationship and social patterns of interpretation of health, sickness, subjectivity and physicality while also vice versa, new discourses are creating these social patterns of interpretation. One thinks of interest groups, which are actively working under the motto of public and private healthcare in Public-Health-Genetics or research with bio-banks. Here is where (or at least one can assume) the model of legitimating and guiding principles for advances in technology are generated and tested in social communication.

Hence we assume that a complex interplay is taking place between technological innovation and social legitimation, marked by a cause and effect relationship in both directions. The doctorate focus programme in biomedicine takes both aspects of this interplay into consideration. The hypothesis is that these social patterns of interpretation and technologies emerge through a tight social co-production and therefore, cannot be studied separately.

Not only issues of ethics, but also questions concerning the political and legal regulation within the context of technology genesis and impact, arise out of this interplay between technology innovation and social patterns of interpretation.
These far-reaching and future-relevant questions stand before a backdrop of an elaborate ethics debate on the one hand and an established interdisciplinary science and technology research on the other hand. The concept behind the doctorate programme focus in biomedicine builds on both established traditions and continues with the advancement of biomedicine while taking into account new problem areas. It is based on the observation that currently a diffusion of technology in daily medical practice is taking place from which the hypothesis is drawn that as a result new questions are being raised that go beyond the already wide-ranging ethics debate. These questions, which seem perhaps at first small scale, may have potentially far-reaching consequences on our daily lives / may potentially produce far-reaching changes to our daily lives. Five possible dissertation topics arise from this approach:

Perfecting Human Traits and Abilities
Change in the Understanding of Sickness and Health
Public Legitimation and Technology Innovation
Profession and Professionalism
Social Justice and Political Regulation

The doctorate focus deals with these complex questions in a tightly linked – modelled in the direction of a post-graduate program – co-operation between the doctoral candidates under continuous advisement. Within this outlined subject area, there are many possible fields of work for a dissertation. The following list offers only some guiding suggestions:

Sociology of Knowledge Reconstruction Genetically Defined Concepts of Diseases
Geneticisation of Diseases and their Meaning in Practice
Process of Geenticisation: Convergence Electronic Data Processing and Advance Genome Analysis (Gen-Chips und Biobanken)
Genetic Determinism and Modern Biomedicine
Boundaries of Health and Sickness: Impact on the Healthcare System
Bio-policies/politics: Self-discipline and the Emergence of New Responsibilities, Formation of New Concepts of Body and Self
Implications/Effects of Enhancement and Lifestyle Medicine
Legitimation Biomedical Practice in Public Discourses
Public Debates and Regulations of Biomedicine
Public versus Individual Interest in Public Debates about Biomedicine
Prevention and Monitoring: Patterns of Legitimation of Public Health Genetics
Biomedicine and “Technocratisation” Governing Medicine
Scientification of Biomedical Diagnosis and Approaches to Therapy as well as a Technocratic Image of Patients
Medical Professionalism in University Education/Higher Education
Professionalism and Institutions of the Healthcare System
Institutional Guidelines Governing Medicine
“Geneticisation” of Public Healthcare and Prevention Healthcare
Availability of Services, General and Equal Access to Medical Services
Medicalisation, Individualisation and Inequality due to Economic Status
Medical Services and Global Inequality
Privatisation and Internationalisation of Gene Diagnostic Services
Impact of Biomedicine for Federal Health Policy and for the Social Security System
Questions concerning the Right Not-to-Know, the Informed Choice of Treatment Methods, Securing Adequate Forms of Genetic Advisement/Counseling (e. Communication of Individual Risk)
Role of Social Environment of the Patient (Family as Decision-maker) and their legal-normative consequences
Securing Quality of Genetic Interventions through Certification of Gene-testing and Gene-testing Services
Instruments and Forms of Comprehensive Public and Treatment-based Information Empowerment of the Masses
Modified/Changed Expectations (e. demand for private cloning)
Ethical Responsibility to Publish Genetic Data or Participation in Population Studies
Population Genetic Research and Voluntary Participation as well as Informed Consent
“Forced Prevention”/“Coerced Prevention” and Personal Autonomy
Public Communication (participative forms of technology evaluation)

You are welcome to suggest additional topics, which have not been listed. A comprehensive description of the doctorate programme can be downloaded here: (PDF)