Biomedical Library's History and Special Collections for the Sciences

Programs in Medical Classics, Winter-Spring 2008

The Notorious Saenger Case: What Does It Tell Us About Post-World War II Medical Research Practices and Clinical Conduct

Gerald Kutcher, Ph.D.
Dean's Professor of the History of Medicine, The State University of New York at Binghamton

Tuesday, April 29
5 p.m.

During the 1960s, the physician Eugene Saenger treated patients with advanced cancers while he also used them as proxy soldiers for military research. For some critics, the Saenger case is paradigmatic of unethical research. Yet, the case has remained controversial and without closure for almost forty years. In this paper, I will argue that the Saenger case has survived so long in part because his research shared so much with "normal" post-war investigations and therefore that the case can be used as a lens to reveal the research practices and clinical conduct of that period.

A reception with light refreshments will follow the lecture.

This program is co-sponsored by the UCLA Healthcare Ethics Center

Printable PDF version of April announcement

First Floor Conference Room, 1357
Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience and Genetics Research Center

 

Genetic Screening is not Eugenics and It Never Was

Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Ph.D.
Janice and Julian Bers Professor of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania

Thursday, May 15
4 p.m.

Introduction: Edward R.B. McCabe, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Pediatrics and Human genetics, and Bioengineering; Mattel Executive Endowed Chair of Pediatrics and Physician-in-Chief, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA

A reception with light refreshments will follow the lecture.

This program is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics

Printable PDF version of May announcement

First Floor Conference Room, 1357
Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience and Genetics Research Center

 

Contested Wills: The Medico-legal Aspects of Acquired Language Disorders in Victorian England

Marjorie Perlman Lorch, Ph.D.
Reader in Brain and Language, Birkbeck College, University of London

Tuesday, February 5 
6 p.m.

Discussant: William M. McGovern, LL.B.
Professor of Law, Emeritus, UCLA

In the second half of the 19th century several areas of theoretical development and evolving practice can be seen to converge in the civil court cases of contested wills. The determination of "being of sound mind" required by law was being challenged at this time by new clinical distinctions between intelligence and understanding, language and thought, speech and expression in people with neurological diseases. The emerging diagnostic categories of aphasia and dementia were being developed in the newly created fields of neurology and psychiatry. At the same time jurisprudence was developing in the newly founded Probate Courts which were formed to deal with the large volume of cases regarding will-making. Physicians were being called upon as expert witnesses with increasing frequency to aid in the determination of testamentary capacity. The development of ideas on language and thought in Victorian England is revealed in the medical and judicial opinions recorded in court reports on the ability of people with language and memory disorders to make wills. 

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