© 2004 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
The Early History of Medical Genetics in Canada
1 Faculty of Liberal Studies, Ontario College of Art and Design, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5T 1W1, Canada. E-mail: williamleeming{at}hotmail.com
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 that were 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 manoeuvre: 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 leading directly to current acceptance of the term.
Keywords: medical genetics, human genetics, medical specialism, hereditary disease, Canadian College of Medical Geneticists