A collection of essays that offers "a significant contribution to our understanding of the role of the state in human subjects research" ( Journal of the History of Biology).Though notoriously associated with Germany, human experimentation in the name of science has been practiced in other countries, as well, both before and after the Nazi era. The use of unwitting or unwilling subjects in experiments designed to test the effects of radiation and disease on...

First published in 1992, this book explores the efforts to counteract the high maternal and infant death rates present between the end of the nineteenth century and the Second World War. It looks at the problem in five different continents and shows the varying approaches used by the governments, institutions and individuals in those countries. Contributors display how policy and practice have been shaped by the structure of maternity services, nationalism, the conflict of colonization and...

Biotechnology harnesses cellular and biochemical systems to advance knowledge of the molecular cause of disease and to provide new diagnostic tools and more precisely targeted drugs. Within a decade, global investment in medical biotechnology has increased more than ten-fold, resulting in therapies for previously untreatable conditions. But what exactly is biotechnology and what are its origins? What further benefits to human health could it offer in the future?Written in an accessi...

How has twentieth-century medicine dealt with immigrants and minorities? The contributors to Migrants, Minorities and Health have studied a number of different types of migrant and minority groups from different societies around the world in order to examine the complex relations between health issues and ideas of ethnicity and race. The collection explores the historical origins and the contemporary power of stereotypical views—of immigrants as importers of disease, for instance, or of mi...

"...It is well-written and well-referenced...this is an important, innovative, enjoyable textbook which can be highly recommended for use in undergraduate and postgraduate sociology courses on health related subjects, and which will be of value in courses on women's studies and gender. It will also be of interest to inquiring health care practitioners of whatever persuasion." - Sociology "This book takes a bold step in pointing new directions for sociological and social-historical studies ...

The Abortion Papers is a unique edited collection that provides key reflections and scholarship on the Irish abortion regime generated in the period between the 1992 X case, the death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012 and the subsequent introduction in 2013 of limited abortion legislation. The ideas generated in the volume come from the different but complementary perspectives of activism and scholarship. The collection includes the voices of Irish women who have had abortions, something larg...

The volume focuses on the relationship between migration, health and illness in a global context from c.1820 to the present day. It takes a wide range of finely-grained case studies to examine epidemic disease and its containment, chronic illness and mental breakdown and the health management of migrant populations in the modern world.

This book introduces readers to the concepts of political philosophy. It starts by explaining why the subject is important and how it tackles basic ethical questions such as 'how should we live together in society?' It looks at political authority, the reasons why we need politics at all, the limitations of politics, and whether there are areas of life that shouldn't be governed by politics. It explores the connections between political authority and justice, a constant theme in political ...

As revealing as Freakonomics, shocking as Fast Food Nation and thought provoking as No Logo, The Politics of Breastfeeding exposes infant feeding as one of the most important public health issues of our time.Every thirty seconds a baby dies from infections due to a lack of breastfeeding and the use of bottles, artificial milks and other risky products. In her powerful book Gabrielle Palmer describes how big business uses subtle techniques to pressure parents to use alternatives to breastmi...

The best jobs in Britain today are overwhelmingly done by the children of the wealthy. Meanwhile, it is increasingly difficult for bright but poor kids to transcend their circumstances. This state of affairs should not only worry the less well-off. It hurts the middle classes too, who are increasingly locked out of the top professions by those from affluent backgrounds.Hitherto, Labour and Conservative politicians alike have sought to deal with the problem by promoting the idea of ...

Mankind's battle to stay alive is the greatest of all subjects. This brief, witty and unusual book by Britain's greatest medical historian compresses into a tiny span a lifetime spent thinking about millennia of human ingenuity in the quest to cheat death. Each chapter sums up one of these battlefields (surgery, doctors, disease, hospitals, laboratories and the human body) in a way that is both frightening and elating. Startlingly illustrated, A SHORT HISTORY OF MEDICINE is the ideal prese...

Victorian Britain was the world's industrial powerhouse. Its factories, mills and foundries supplied a global demand for manufactured goods. As Britain changed from an agricultural to an industrial ecomony, people swarmed into the towns and cities where the work was; by the end of Queen Victoria's reign, almost 80 per cent of the population was urban. Overcrowding and filthy living conditions, though, were a recipe for disaster, and diseases such as cholera, typhoid, scarl...