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The history of eugenics is often characterized as a cautionary tale of life in the bad old days, when pseudoscientific assumptions about genetic determinism provided a respectable veneer that enabled barely submerged racism, xenophobia, and blatant discrimination against persons with disabilities to take root in American law. Some argue that, today, our science is sound, our attitudes enlightened; we need not be hobbled by fear of long-expired bad eugenic habits.
In this Medical Center Hour, Paul Lombardo, who has written extensively on eugenics and the law in America, challenges such assumptions, asserting that the same tendencies that led to a century of eugenic law and policy continue to inform our public debate over democratic values and the proper role of science as a tool for solving social problems.
The Joan Echtenkamp Klein Memorial Lecture in the History of the Health Sciences
Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
We hear much these days about the widening gap in America between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. Inequality is all around us, and it exacts a serious toll on health. The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. Indeed, there is a 35-year difference in life expectancy between America's wealthiest (and healthiest) and poorest (and sickest) neighborhoods.
Internist David Ansell MD has worked for four decades in hospitals serving Chicago's poorest communities. While he's witnessed first-hand the structural violence—racism, economic exploitation, and discrimination—responsible for the "death gap," he argues that geography need not be destiny. In this Medical Center Hour, Dr. Ansell outlines how we can address this national health crisis and act to remedy the circumstances that rob many Americans of their dignity and their lives.
Co-presented with Alpha Omega Alpha National Medical Honor Society, UVA chapter
Nimura, Janice P., University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
The world recoiled at the idea of a woman doctor, yet Elizabeth Blackwell persisted, and in 1849 became the first woman in the U.S. to receive an MD. Her achievement made her an icon. Her younger sister Emily followed her, eternally eclipsed despite being the more brilliant physician of the pair. Together, they founded the first hospital staffed entirely by women, in New York City. While the Doctors Blackwell were visionary and tenacious—they prevailed against a resistant male medical establishment—they weren't always aligned with women's movements, or even with each other. In this Medical Center Hour, biographer Janice Nimura celebrates the Blackwells as pioneers, change agents, and, for women in medicine today, compelling yet somewhat equivocal role models.
Co-presented with Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
A documentary film series and website about Virginia's history since the Civil War.
Episode 1– New Deal Virginia explores two significant changes in Virginia history: the creation of Shenandoah National Park and the electrification of rural Virginia. Both stories trace the effects of the federal government on the lives of everyday rural Virginians in the 1930s. Letters, maps, newspaper stories and teaching resources accompany this exploration and film (30 minutes).
Episode 3 – Massive Resistance became Virginia's policy to prevent school desegregation in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. Many of Virginia's white leaders resisted integration with all of their considerable political and legal means. The story of massive resistance and of black Virginians' protests against segregation began in the early 1950s and continues today. This two-part film (one hour) traces the history of massive resistance in Virginia and considers some of its legacies. "Massive Resistance" was an Emmy Nominee in 2000 of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and will be shown nationally on PBS in February 2002 for Black History Month.
Episode 4 – Virginia Fights World War II explores the transformative changes that Virginia experienced in World War II. Virginia mobilized hundreds of thousands of citizens during World War II and became the home base for a host of navy, army munitions, and defense industries. Virginia's soldiers fought in the Pacific and landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. This two-part film (one hour) follows the stories of everyday Virginians, those who fought at D-Day and those who patrolled Virginia beaches, worked in the munition plants, flew missions in Europe, and fell in love during the war. This site contains the image archive for the film--over 1,600 images of Virginia or Virginians in World War II.
As our companion animals grow old and infirm, veterinarians and human caregivers alike face a complex and confusing array of choices and decisions. This Medical Center Hour explores some of the central moral challenges in end-of-life care for animals, from pain management and quality-of-life assessments to palliative treatment, hospice care, and making that final decision to hasten an animal's death. Considering this "last walk" with our pets, bioethicist Jessica Pierce and compassionate care advocate Susan Bauer-Wu borrow some ethical guideposts from the field of human bioethics (and offer a few in return).
A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
Co-presented with the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life, UVA
With malaria a real threat to American troops' fighting fitness, the U.S. government during World War II mounted an all-out hunt for a malaria cure. Tropical-disease researchers with the Rockefeller Foundation took the lead on a secret project that adopted German research models and methods, including use of institutionalized Americans—inmates in six mental hospitals and several large prisons—both for culturing the parasites that cause malaria (there was no animal model) and for testing experimental drugs against the disease. After thousands of failed starts (and much human harm), the researchers had their "magic bullet": a German antimalarial compound captured in battle. This drug, reformulated in the U.S., is chloroquine, one of the most important pharmaceuticals ever made to fight malaria.
In this Medical Center Hour, public health journalist Karen Masterson and infectious diseases specialist Dr. Richard Pearson delve into this tale of secret science in the service of war efforts and into research that was conducted before promulgation of federal rules and regulations governing human participation in biomedical research.
Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series of Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
