Arthur Johnson Memorial Library

Pernick, Martin S.

Black stork Eugincs and the death of "defective" babies in American medicine and motion pictures since 1915. Print The black stork Martin S. Pernick. - New York Oxford University Press 1996 - 295 p. Hardback.

Contents:
1. The Birth of a Controversy. The Public Death of Baby Bollinger. Debates and Investigations. The Doctor and the Parents. Haiselden and History. A Word about Words
2. Contexts to the Conflict. Before Baby Bollinger: Infanticide, Eugenics, and Euthanasia. U.S.A., 1915. Taking Sides: Some Rough Images of the Debate
3. Identifying the Unfit: Biology and Culture in the Construction of Hereditary Disease. Heredity, Environment, and the Scope of Eugenics: Scientific Conceptions to 1915. Heredity, Environment, and the Scope of Eugenics: Haiselden and Mass Cultural Meanings. Constructing the Socially Defective Crime, Race, and Class. Defects and Desires: Eugenics, Aesthetics, and Sex. Elite Priorities and Mass Culture: Physical and Mental Defects. Degrees of Difference: Normality or Perfection? Opposing Expansive Concepts of Hereditary Defect: Equal Worth or Entering Wedge? Fitness and Objectivity
4. Eliminating the Unfit: Euthanasia and Eugenics. From Prevention to Death

"The Black Stork" is a most frightening tale of medicine run amok. Martin Pernick's narrative of Dr. Harry J. Haiselden's fin-de-siecle crusade in the late 1910's for the euthanasia of 'defective' children is a tale of the tangled path way of science in its pursuit of social ends. Haiselden's eugenic fantasy was a perfect race of 'undamaged' humans. Since these questions have arisen in more sophisticated form with the knowledge achieved daily through the human genome project, Pernick's narrative is a strong warning abou tthe slippery slope of determining what life is worth living.

0195077318


Eugenics --Medicine--United States--20th century
Euthanasia --Medicine--Defective children--United States--20th century

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