The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of Defective Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915

ISBN-13: 9780195077315 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 328 str.

Martin S. Pernick

Opis

In the late 1910s Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, a prominent Chicago surgeon, electrified the nation by allowing the deaths of at least six infants he diagnosed as "defectives." He displayed the dying infants to journalists, wrote about them for the Hearst newspapers, and starred in a feature film about his crusade. Prominent Americans from Clarence Darrow to Helen Keller rallied to his support. Martin Pernick tells this captivating story--uncovering forgotten sources and long-lost motion pictures--in order to show how efforts to improve human heredity (eugenics) became linked with mercy killing, as well as with race, class, gender and ethnicity. It documents the impact of cultural values on science along with the way scientific claims of objectivity shape modern culture. While focused on early 20th century America, The Black Stork traces these issues from antiquity to the rise of Nazism, and to the "Baby Doe," "assisted suicide" and human genome initiative debates of today.

Recenzje

an appetite-whetting prelude to his intended larger study of American health films ... This is a case study which forcibly demonstrates the advantages to medical history of taking popular media seriously. We can await his promised larger study with some eagerness.