1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910814324703321

Autore

Pernick Martin S

Titolo

The black stork : eugenics and the death of "defective" babies in American medicine and motion pictures since 1915 / / Martin S. Pernick

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York ; ; Toronto, : Oxford University Press, 1996

ISBN

0-19-773744-7

0-19-975974-X

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (328 p.)

Collana

Oxford scholarship online

Disciplina

174.2/5/0973

Soggetti

Newborn infants - Diseases - Treatment - Moral and ethical aspects

Eugenics in motion pictures

Abnormalities, Human - Treatment - Moral and ethical aspects

Euthanasia - Moral and ethical aspects

Eugenics - United States - History - 20th century

Infanticide - Moral and ethical aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliography: p251-280. - Includes index.

Previously issued in print: 1996.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-280) and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

Intro -- Contents -- I: WITHHOLDING TREATMENT -- 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 -- Killing or Letting Die -- For Whose Benefit? -- Loving and Loathing -- Objective Science and Moral Obligation -- 5. Who Decides? The Ironies of Professional Power -- Doctors, Families, and the State -- Support for Medical Power -- Opponents of Medical Decision Making -- Eugenics and Gender Politics within Families and in Society -- Specialization and the Limits of Objectivity -- II: PUBLICITY -- 6. Mass-Media Medicine and Aesthetic Censorship -- Publicity, Public Health, and Professional Power -- Medical Movies and the Rise of Aesthetic Censorship -- 7. Eugenics on Film -- 8. The Black Stork -- The Movie -- Making and Distributing The Black Stork -- 9. Medicine, Media, and Memory -- From Haiselden to Hitler: Infanticide, Eugenics, and Euthanasia, 1919-1945.

Baby Doe, Doctor Death, and the Human Genome Project: Comparing Haiselden's America with the Present -- Appendix: Individuals Involved in the Controversy -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Index of Film Titles -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W.

Sommario/riassunto

In the 1910s, Dr Haiselden allowed the deaths of six infants he diagnozed as "defectives". His story highlights many other controversies. The book shows how efforts to improve human heredity became linked with euthanasia and shows how mass culture changed the meaning of concepts like "heredity".