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Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Elizabeth T. Hurren, "Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Description: In Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Elizabeth T. Hurren maps the post-mortem journeys of bodies, body-parts, organs, and brains, inside the secretive culture of modern British medical research after WWII as the bodies of the deceased were harvested as bio-commons. Often the human stories behind these bodies were dissected, discarded, or destroyed in death.Hidden Histories of the Dead recovers human faces and supply-lines in the archives that medical science neglected to acknowledge. Dr. Hurren investigates the medical ethics of organ donation, the legal ambiguities of a...