The West German drug Duogynon was internationally marketed as a "hormone pregnancy test" (HPT) between the 1950s and 1980s. In the late 1960s it came under suspicion for inducing miscarriage, spina bifida, and a spectrum of birth defects similar to those caused by the sedative thalidomide. In contrast to thalidomide, medical consensus did not form around the teratogenicity of Duogynon and many people who identify as Duogynon-affected continue to campaign for recognition. The informal use of Duogynon as an abortion pill adds a further layer of shame, secrecy, and silence. In this article, we reflect on the value of oral history and the ethics of inclusion within a larger research project that investigates the rise and fall of HPTs, globally. We ask what collaborating with patient campaigners in a more participatory mode than is typical of archival research can contribute to the historical understanding of the Duogynon affair and other drug scandals.

Historians have shown how the establishment of human genetic counselling in West Germany was characterised by several sociohistorical factors, in particular the impact of the legacies of Nazi biopolitics. These accounts have reconstructed continuities on an intellectual level which delayed a turn towards non-directive approaches, emphasising individual (emotional) well-being and voluntariness, and instead have prolonged a discourse that defined disability as an economic and social burden. However, while the distinct legacies of eugenics and racial hygienics are well researched, other factors that constituted counselling encounters, such as the ways of communicating reproduction and material objects' roles in transformations of concepts, actors and their relations, have not been examined in detail. Drawing on the archives of a Marburg-based charity, this paper aimed to reconstruct these factors at the example of the production and circulation of a major family planning leaflet, Our Child Shall Be Healthy, developed ca 1977. In doing so, I want to suggest that connections between science, politics and economy were a key element in technologies of communicating reproduction. This essay approaches counselling as a communicative practice that was in continual productive engagement with different concepts of reproductive health. First, it argues that the communicative and paper technologies used in counselling interactions in West Germany changed in the aftermath of the worldwide thalidomide tragedy. Second, it argues that a novel approach to reproductive health emerged that focused on individual decision making as the basis of prosperity and emotional well-being. Taking a family planning leaflet as a site for reconstructing how people of different organisations, with different stakes and expertise converged in the design of a counselling encounter, this paper targets the crossroads of economic, political and scientific activities in the history of communicating reproductive health and reproductive risks.

Most historiographies of the crossroads of environmental and reproductive health in 20th century start and end with the case of thalidomide. Despite its global scope, thalidomide today stands for sharp contrasts: in the numbers of victims, in institutional responses to the disaster, and also-more generally-in regulatory approaches to potential risks and national cultures of reproductive justice and disability rights. This paper takes a closer look at two countries that have been seen as emblematic of this divide in regulatory frameworks, despite similarities and interconnections in other areas, such as (pharma)industrial production, science, and robust feminist environmental health movements: the U.S. and West Germany. It argues that thalidomide needs to be historically contextualized within a broad framework of concepts and models of environment from research on exogenous reproductive effects. To do so, it reconstructs what counted as environment in research on reproductive health and birth defects in these two national settings in the postwar decades. It looks at transformations made across multifaceted initiatives, studying collective landscapes and workplaces as potentially dangerous "outer worlds," as well as smaller scale and more individualized environments, i.e., the maternal metabolism, uterus, lifestyle, or social interactions. The article thereby aims to explicate concepts and debates about the environment that influenced later national divisions in politics of science and technology, hinting of the democratic challenges these posed.

This article examines the West German controversy over Duogynon, a ‘hormone pregnancy test’ and the drug at the centre of the first major, international debate over iatrogenic birth defects in the post-thalidomide era. It recovers an asymmetrical power struggle over the uneven distribution of biomedical knowledge and ignorance (about teratogenic risk) that pitted parent-activists, whistleblowers and investigative journalists against industrialists, scientific experts and government officials. It sheds new light on the nexus of reproduction, disability, epidemiology and health activism in West Germany. In addition, it begins to recover an internationally influential discourse that, in the post-thalidomide world, seems to have resuscitated antenatal drug use as safe until proven harmful.

Die Geschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik ist bislang als Teil der Geschichte der Humangenetik und deren Neuorientierung als klinisch-laborwissenschaftliche Disziplin in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts betrachtet worden. Anhand neuen Quellenmaterials soll in diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, dass das Interesse an der Pränataldiagnostik in Westdeutschland auch im Kontext von Forschungen entstand, die sich mit Gefahren für den Menschen in der Umwelt befassten. Anhand der Debatten um die Einrichtung des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „Pränatale Diagnostik genetischer Defekte“ 1970 untersuchen wir, wie die Technik der Amniozentese in Westdeutschland von einer interdisziplinären Forschungsgruppe eingeführt wurde, die sich mit Schädigungen des Organismus durch Strahlen, Arzneimittel und andere Gebrauchsstoffe und Konsumgüter befasste. In einer als ökologische Wende bezeichneten Zeit wachsenden Umweltbewusstseins, so unsere These, sollte durch die Förderung der Pränataldiagnostik eine wahrgenommene Lücke in der Prävention umweltbedingt auftretender genetischer Anomalien geschlossen werden. Für die Pränataldiagnostik als „Schutzmaßnahme“ sprach unter anderem ihre erwartete Finanzierung als Krankenkassenleistung im Zuge der Reform des Abtreibungsrechts. Erst in einem zweiten Schritt führten Veränderungen von Strukturen der Forschung, vor allem aber Erfahrungen in der gynäkologischen Praxis zu einer Neuausrichtung auf die Diagnostik und Prävention mehrheitlich erblicher oder spontan auftretender Anomalien. Die Pränataldiagnostik, so wie sie schließlich in Westdeutschland ab den frühen 1980er Jahren routinemäßig Einsatz fand, hatte mit Fragen der „Umwelt“ kaum noch zu tun. Diese Fallstudie zur Frühgeschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik handelt von dem noch wenig untersuchten Verhältnis von humangenetischer Forschung, klinischer Praxis und Umweltforschung und hat zum weiteren Ziel, den bisher in anderen Kontexten beschriebenen Wandel von Perspektiven in der Vorsorge um 1970 zu beleuchten.

The Human Microbiome, as well as the exploration of the microorganisms inhabiting the human body, are not only integral to the field of microbiology but represent an intrinsic part of all human beings. Consequently, along with scientists, artists have been inspired by the microbiome: transforming it in to tangible artefacts in order to critically question, reflect on and break down the barrier between humans and their microcohabitants. By artistic means, artists help us to understand how microbial research topics are inevitably affected by societal influences, including (health) politics, economics and the arts. Fifty Percent Human is a multidisciplinary artistic research project that aims to reshape our understanding of the human body and its environment as well as to explore possibilities for conscious coexistence in order to bridge the gap between science and society.

The Human Microbiome, as well as the exploration of the microorganisms inhabiting the human body, are not only integral to the field of microbiology but represent an intrinsic part of all human beings. Consequently, along with scientists, artists have been inspired by the microbiome: transforming it in to tangible artefacts in order to critically question, reflect on and break down the barrier between humans and their microcohabitants. By artistic means, artists help us to understand how microbial research topics are inevitably affected by societal influences, including (health) politics, economics and the arts. Fifty Percent Human is a multidisciplinary artistic research project that aims to reshape our understanding of the human body and its environment as well as to explore possibilities for conscious coexistence in order to bridge the gap between science and society.

Vorliegender Aufsatz untersucht Praktiken der anatomischen Sichtbarmachung in der Zwischenkriegszeit. Speziell befasst er sich mit Tandlers Lehrbuch fürsystematische Anatomie (1919-1929), das im Zentrum eines gesellschaftlichen Reformprogramms steht. Der Autor, Julius Tandler (1869-1936), war nicht nur ein berühmter Anatom sondern auch ein sozialdemokratischer Politiker, der die Entwicklung des Wiener Sozialsystem maßgeblich prägte. Heute ist er primär für seine Verdienste in der Fürsorge, speziell in der Kinderund Jugendwohlfahrt, dem Einrichten von Schwangeren und Familienberatungsstellen, der Entwicklung des Krankenhaus- und öffentlichen Bäderwesenes und dem Kampf gegen Alkoholismus bekannt. Tandler wurde jedoch auch als einer der prominentesten jüdischen Wissenschaftler seiner Zeit wahrgenommen und war gerade durch seine einflussreiche Position in der Stadtverwaltung zugleich Brennpunkt und Ankläger antisemitischer Angriffe und Ausschreitungen. In meiner Analyse untersuche ich Tandlers Anatomieatlas zusammen mit anderen Objekten der anatomischen Darstellung als beides, wissenschaftliche und poiltische Projekte, als Werkzeuge der Produktion von Bedeutung und Evidenz, je an unterschiedliche Auffassungen von Wissenschaft, Gesundheit, Subjektivitität und Gesellschaft geknüpft. Internationalen Netzwerken und Prozessen des Austauschs folgend kann entlang ausgewewählter Objekte gezeigt werden, wie die Anatomie des Neuen Menschen mit der neuen Visualität der Radiokinematographie oder den Reformprogramm des Logischen Empirismus in Zusammenhang steht.

No AccessJulius Tandler. Anatom, Politiker, EugenikerBirgit NemecBirgit Nemechttps://doi.org/10.14220/9783737004138.257SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail About Previous chapter Next chapter FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Download book cover650 Jahre Universität Wien – Aufbruch ins neue JahrhundertVolume 002 1. AuflageISBN: 978-3-8471-0413-1 eISBN: 978-3-7370-0413-8HistoryPublished online:June 2015 PDF download

This paper aims at investigating anatomical modelling as a cultural practice. In early twentieth-century Vienna anatomists and artists produced a variety of models of the human body that had different functions, uses and meanings in changing historical scientific, political and cultural contexts. Together with various media of anatomical visualization such as atlases, medical moulages, illustrations and films they competed, both in the academic spheres of medical and art schools as well as in several places of popular negotiation and production of visual cultures of medicine, such as museums or public health education. Anatomical models, as this paper shows, are not only artefacts of medical-anatomical production of knowledge, meaning and evidence but highly powerful and strategic objects of knowledge linked to specific urban and political milieus and networks.

No AccessTerror gegen Tandler. Kontext und Chronik der antisemitischen Attacken am I. Anatomischen Institut der Universität Wien, 1910 bis 1933Birgit Nemec, Klaus TaschwerBirgit Nemec, Klaus Taschwerhttps://doi.org/10.14220/9783737001458.147SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail About Previous chapter Next chapter FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byAnhang14 November 2021Anschluss 1938: Aftermath on Medicine and Society2 October 2018 | Wiener klinische Wochenschrift, Vol. 130, No. S5 Download book coverVolume 8 1ISBN: 978-3-8471-0145-1 eISBN: 978-3-7370-0145-8HistoryPublished online:April 2014 PDF download