Hello!
I’m Austin, a philosopher of science and medicine, and currently a Lecturer of Philosophy at East Tennessee State University. My research primarily looks at epistemic, social, and ethical issues with contemporary medical practice and medical research with an emphasis on the development, use, and regulation of pharmaceutical drugs.
I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 2022 at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and my dissertation examined how we define and discover the side effects of pharmaceuticals. I argued for a novel, patient-relative account of ‘side effect’ that differentiates it from other clinical outcomes like ‘adverse events’ and placebic effects, as well as addresses issues in definitions offered by health authorities like the CDC, WHO, and FDA. I also highlighted some philosophically interesting things about trials that aim to discover side effects like ‘phase 4’ trials. I also argued that ‘evidence-based’ medicine and how it is taught is partly at fault for our lack of knowledge about side effects, and I offered a bioethical framework for patient involvement in the side effect discovery process.
My ongoing research continues to look at side effects but also branches into conceptual and ethical issues with psychiatry, genomic medicine, patient and public inclusion in science and medicine or ‘citizen science’, agriculture and regulating novel technology, conflicts of interest and privatized science, and the role of values in science. I am primarily trained as a philosopher of science, but I have interdisciplinary graduate education in history, public health, and health services research. I hold degrees in history, philosophy, and history and philosophy of science (HPS) and I am fundamentally committed to a practice-informed, problem-centric approach to social, ethical, and epistemic issues in contemporary medicine.
You can reach me @ austinjdue@gmail.com or via Twitter