Substitution, enhancement, autonomy: making treatment regimes with methadone and HRT
Dr Suzanne Fraser, Dr kylie valentine, Dr Celia Roberts
This project enables the collaboration of three scholars undertaking research into the ethical and political dimensions of biomedicine, and pursuing complementary conceptual and theoretical lines of inquiry. It brings together two larger projects looking at the circulation of drugs between research fields, policy arenas, clinical practice and patients. One of these projects, the NHMRC-funded ‘Comparing the Role of Takeaways in Methadone Maintenance Treatment in New South Wales and Victoria’, is an examination of social aspects of methadone maintenance treatment (MMT), using qualitative research methods. It is concerned with both specific policy regimes and the social and cultural operations of drug treatment and management. The other, a book length project entitled ‘Messengers of Sex: hormones, biomedicine and feminism’, is a critical examination of biomedical discourses around sex hormones, with a central focus on discourses and practices of hormone replacement therapies (HRT) for aging men and women.
The project comprises:
- a workshop held in 2006
- conference presentations
- a special issue of the journal Science as Culture
- a multi-authored journal article based on study findings – Roberts, C., valentine, k., & Fraser, S. Rationalities and non-rationalities in clinical encounters: Methadone maintenance treatment and hormone replacement therapy. Submitted to special issue of the journal Science as Culture, edited by S. Fraser, C. Roberts and k. valentine.
The project is a collaboration between the Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, Monash, the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales and Lancaster University, UK.