"It's All Hormonal": Puberty, biomedical technologies and responsibility

Speaker: Dr Celia Roberts
Date: 2 December 2009
Time: 18:15

Lecture

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According to many scientific experts, children today are going through puberty at younger ages than ever before.

This raises questions both about the nature of contemporary bodies (what might be changing across populations and within individuals? And are these changes necessarily pathological?) and about the nature and desirability of biomedical interventions into such bodies (what kinds of treatments are available and who should decide how and when they get used?).

This paper explores the contributions social science might make to such debates and to thinking critically both about bodies themselves and how we attempt to medically manage them.