Original scientific paper
The Concordant Space of Biomedical Science: How Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease Synchronize themselves with Clinical Trials
Markus Idvall
; Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Division of Ethnology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Abstract
Parkinson’s disease (PD) becomes more frequent as populations grow older in western countries. Levodopa exists as
medication, but is connected with side-effects. In search for an alternative therapy, patients become agents in different
ways. The role as participant in clinical trials, not least, is one of these possibilities for lay influence in scientific matters.
In this presentation we ask how one, as patient, relates to clinical science. How does one move along towards what,
on the basis of one’s degenerative illness, one perceives as the progress of science? Individuals with PD are, in this sense,
temporal beings in whatever they do or calculate in relation to science. This article, based on an ethnographic fieldwork
within the frames of a biomedical research project on cell transplantations, explores two different concepts – concordance
and synchronizing – in terms of their analytical potential for understanding how research patients participate in
clinical trials.
Keywords
concordance; synchronizing; Parkinson’s disease; clinical trials; space; time; patient perspective
Hrčak ID:
200348
URI
Publication date:
6.10.2017.
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