Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Disability Studies
Episode: Sydney A. Halpern, "Dangerous Medicine: The Story Behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis" (Yale UP, 2021)
Description: From 1942 through 1972, American biomedical researchers deliberately infected people with hepatitis. Government-sponsored researchers were attempting to discover the basic features of the disease and the viruses causing it, and develop interventions that would quell recurring outbreaks. Drawing from extensive archival research and in-person interviews, Sydney Halpern traces the hepatitis program from its origins in World War II through its expansion during the initial Cold War years, to its demise in the early 1970s amid outcry over research abuse. The subjects in hepatitis studies were members of stigmatized groups--conscientious objectors, prison inmates, and developmentally disabled adults and children. Dangerous Medicine: The S...