Nils Kessel: From side effect to adverse drug reaction. Risk and benefit of medicines in Post World War II international health governance

Did you recently observe a side effects or an adverse drug reaction? While the former term is still widely used, including in medicine for describing mostly negative bodily experiences, the latter is essentially common in scientific and technical literature on drugs. Although both terms are often used synonymous with each other, their history is different and in some aspects even antinomic. Based on an analysis of the medical literature and public archives, this talk focuses on how conceptual changes influenced pharmaceutical risk management since the early 1960s when clinical pharmacologists and other specialists revised the concept of side effect to make it more precise but also more compatible for experimental proof. 

Nils Kessel is a historian specializing in the contemporary history of medicine and health in twentieth-century Germany and France. He is currently Associate Professor of the History of Health at the Faculty of Medicine in Strasbourg and a member of the SAGE research center, as well as a participant in the PEPR Risks research program since 2024. His research focuses on the history of pharmaceuticals and drug regulation, innovative teaching in medical humanities, and the history of emergency medicine, risk management, and disasters. (More information about his work.)

This seminar is part of Module 7 "Individual, health and society: Science and biopower" in the interuniversity master’s degree in the History of Science: History, Heritage and Scientific Communication (UAB-UB-UPF-CSIC). It is primarily aimed at master students but is open to the entire academic community.