Useful Bodies

Jordan Goodman is an honorary research fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. Anthony McElligott is founding professor of history at the University of Limerick and director of the Centre for Historical Research. Lara Marks is a visiting senior research associate at Cambridge University and an honorary senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

• Contents:1. Making Human Bodies Useful: Historicizing Medical Experiments in the Twentieth CenturyPART I: What Is a Human Experiment? 2. Using the Population Body to Protect the National Body: Germ Warfare Tests in the United Kingom after World War II 3. Whose Body? Which Disease? Studying Malaria while Treating NeurosyphilisPART II: Who Experiments? 4. Human Radiation Experiments and the Foundation of Medical Physics at the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley, 1937-1962 5. "I Have Been on Tenterhooks": Wartime Medical Research Council Jaundice Committee Experiments 6. See an Atomic Blast and Spread the Word : Indoctrination at Ground ZeroPART III: Whose Body? 7. Injecting Comatose Patients with Uranium: America's Overlapping Wars Against Communism and Cancer in the 1950's 8. Writing Wilowbrook, Reading Willowbrook: The Recounting of a Medical Experiment

Offers worthwhile lessons for contemporary researchers, scholars, and policy makers... [and] makes a strong case for adopting a broad perspective in the analysis of research ethics... Besides gaining a rich picture of past scientific practices, readers will be better equipped to monitor the continuing search of 'useful bodies' in our own era. -- Rebecca Dresser Nature Medicine 2004 Each chapter is a startling case study that examines the nature and degree of the state's involvement in human experimentation... With contributions by leading historians of medicine, science, and public policy, Useful Bodies will be of interest to ethicists, bioethicists and those engaged in the formulation of public health and policy. Issues in Law and Medicine 2004 The well-documented essays cite a rich body of sources. -- Susanna Cunningham Journal of Clinical Investigation 2004 This excellent volume treats human experimentation in Britain and the United States from 1920 to 1970. -- Londa Schiebinger American Historical Review 2004 Using specific examples of biomedical research in the 20th century, this collection addresses the role and treatment of the body by biomedical researchers. Choice 2004 These articles make a significant contribution to our understanding of the role of the state in human subjects research. -- Margot Iverson Journal of the History of Biology 2006 Although the chapters examine the tensions and moral ambiguities in research supported, sponsored, or performed by researchers in democratic states, the time period from which these cases are drawn makes a comparison with the research supported and performed by the Nazi government inevitable and disturbing. I highly recommend this book to those interested in the history and ethics of human experimentation. -- Lainie Friedman Ross Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 2005 Well-written and meticulously researched, these essays offer the historical context to understand and evaluate human experimentation. -- Karen Ross Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 2005 With a refreshing lack of sensationalism, the essays offer fascinating details and perspectives on human experimentation conducted or funded by governments. -- Norman M. Goldfarb Journal of Clinical Research Best Practices 2007