USEFUL BODIES

Useful Bodies; Human in the service of medical science in the twentieth century Edited by Jordan Goodman Anthony Mc Elligott and Lara Marks



Outline of the Study

Title

Useful Bodies; Human in the Service of Medical Science in the Twentieth Century

I. Introduction

A collection of papers presented in September 1998 at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London.

II. Making Human Bodies Useful: Historicizing Medical Experiments in the Twentieth century

Part I: What Is Human Experiment?

Part II: Who Experiments?

Part III. Whose Body?

IV. Conclusion

It can be concluded that this book comprising of the eight papers is one of the most important works for the development of medieval science.

Useful Bodies; Human in the Service of Medical Science in the Twentieth Century

Introduction

A collection of papers presented in September 1998 at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London. This cooperative effort offered as a practicum on the history of conducting tests on humans. Eight papers from this collection edited by Jordan Goodman, Anthony McElligott, and Lara Marks and shaped into a book. This book named “Useful Bodies: Humans in the Service of Medical Science in the Twentieth Century”.

The starting chapter, “Making Human Bodies Useful: Historical Medical Experiments In The Twentieth Century,” constructs two critical issues: first, that there is very limited background information accessible on the experimentation on human bodies. The second issue, which is also the focus of the book, is the responsibility of the state in nontherapeutic human experimentation. The writers debate that all through the phase from 1900 to 2000, the nation held the position that it could use the bodies of people to assemble its requirements devoid of unambiguous approval (Goodman, McElligott & Marks, 2003). This section is a difficult task for the reader who is unaware of the history. Factually, several readers would perhaps discover it further appealing to go back to the paper once finishing reading the manuscript. These writings catalogued according to the three questions: What is a human experiment? Who performs the experiments? Whose body is experimented on? Regrettably, these queries left unanswered in the essay, therefore, for the reader who is unaware with the history would find it somewhat confusing to understand the organizing principle.

Useful Bodies begins: “Human experimentation has its historians but not its history” (p. 1). This collection, the result of a 1998 workshop on the history of human experimentation held at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, seeks to remedy the situation. The editors hope to historicize human experimentation by moving beyond the issue of informed consent, which they identify as a “historical product rather than a tool of historical analysis” (p. 4). Instead they choose to focus on the role of the state in human experimentation as a way of exploring the political, professional, and cultural contexts in which the experiments were carried out.

Making Human Bodies Useful: Historicizing Medical Experiments in the Twentieth century

From classical antiquity until the end of the Middle Ages science extended knowledge beyond doubt, contrary to common ...