Michael Polanyi and the sociology of a free society

Michael Polanyi’s defense of freedom in science and society conflicts in major ways with Weber (process of rationalization, value neutrality of sociologists), Popper (objective knowledge, open society), and technological or oppositional sociology. Polanyi rejects positivism, utilitarianism, and Marxism, and defends freedom as a necessary condition for pursuit of spiritual ideals such as truth, justice, charity, and tolerance. Half truths about science seen as rejecting tradition, faith, authority, values, and the subjective, have helped bring valuable social results, but in the form taken by radical philosophical skepticism (doubt), also called objectivism, they also threaten freedom itself. A more truthful account is needed. Scientists and citizens who would maintain a free society are morally responsible persons, joined together in quest of truth and certain other ideals, demanding of themselves and each other that they be faithful to that quest. Polanyi’s thought has connections with that of Shils, and has implications for what Shils calls a consensual sociology. Louis H. Swartz teaches law, and is interested in the development of sociological theory and legal sociology, building upon the contributions of Polanyi and Shils.     

Biomedical Research and the Commercialization Agenda: A Review of main Considerations for Neuroscience

This article reviews a range of issues associated with the commercialization of biomedical research and speculates on how these issues might apply to the neuroscience context. Drawing on existing studies of the impact of research commercialization activities on various areas of biotechnology research, the authors explore normative benchmarks for assessing and resolving issues likely to arise from the commercialization of neuroscientific research, including such topics as patenting, marketing pressures, and representations of research prospects.     

When Everyone Is an Orphan: Against Adopting a U.S.-Styled Orphan Drug Policy in Canada

Putting aside whether diseases that affect only small numbers of people (“rare diseases”) should be prioritized over diseases that are otherwise orphaned, in this article I argue that a new approach to rare, orphan diseases is needed. The current model, first signaled by the United States' Orphan Drug Act and subsequently emulated by several other jurisdictions, relies on a set of open-ended criteria and market-based incentives in order to define and encourage drug therapies for rare, orphan diseases. Given a) the biopharmaceutical industries' growing interest in orphan diseases, b) progress in the sphere of personalized medicines enabling more and more common diseases to be reclassified as rare, and c) empirical evidence suggesting that the most orphan drugs target only a limited, lucrative subset of rare diseases, I argue that Canada, which recently announced plans to develop its own “orphan drug framework” should not follow the United States' orphan drug model.     

TRUCE for advocacy and peer education in tobacco prevention

In response to aggressive marketing of tobacco to college students, Florida's legislature allocated multi-settlement agreement dollars to fund tobacco prevention programming at state institutions of higher learning. The Student Tobacco Reform Initiative: Knowledge for Eternity (STRIKE) was one such program. Its purpose was to increase awareness and support college student advocacy for prevention. In this program note, we introduce Targeting, Resource Identification, and Unification for College Peer Education (TRUCE), the strategy used to facilitate implementation of STRIKE tobacco prevention programming by student advocates at a metropolitan university campus.