Leeming, William (2004) The early history of medical genetics in Canada. Social History of Medicine, 17 (3). pp. 481-500. ISSN 0951-631X

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Abstract

This article shows that the intellectual and specialist movements that supported the growth of medical genetics in Canada between 1947 and 1990 were emergent phenomena, created, split, and reattached to different groups of actors, and reconfigured numerous times over the course of four decades. In each instance, new kinds of working relationships appeared; sets of diverse actors in local university-hospital settings coalesced into a new collectivity; and, as a collectivity, actors defined and/or redefined occupational roles and work rules. In its beginnings, medical genetics appears to be the object of a serious institutional manoeuver: a movement in support of the creation of examining and teaching positions in human genetics in North American medical schools. With time, the institutionalization of ‘medical genetics’ took hold, spurred on by changes in the rate and direction of service delivery associated with genetic consultation and laboratory services in clinical settings. Medical genetics in Canada consequently gained a semblance of unanimity over its basic reference points and arrived at a meaning directly tributary to current acceptance of the term.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Medical genetics, human genetics, medical specialism, hereditary disease, Canadian College of Medical Geneticists
Divisions:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences > Social Sciences
Date Deposited:	18 May 2016 15:05
Last Modified:	20 Dec 2021 20:02
URI:	https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/856

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