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Search - The Poet-Physician and The Healer-Killer

The PoetPhysician and The HealerKiller
Author: Roberta Kalechofsky, Ph.D.

The sub-title of this book is ' Vivisection and The Emergence of a Medical Technocracy. The book is a multi-faceted examination of the moral and medical consequences of animal research. Animal experimentation led to experimentation on human beings in the concentration camps and elsewhere. Medically, it leads to the emphasis on the prevailing pha... more »rmaceutical approach to disease and to the avoidance of environmental causes of disease, and to the lack of an effective disease-prevention policy. This seriously erodes effective health care reform, because such an approach is very expensive. Academic animal experimentation developed in the mid- nineteenth century. As a medical/ philosophical approach to disease, it is being replaced by new nano-technological vision devices and our understanding of evolution, particularly of the evolution of microbes and bacterial life, and of genetics. The author calls for a new understanding of the limitations of animal research in light of the many failings of the pharmaceutical companies, the global character of modern contagion, the inadequacy of the animal model when applied to environmental hazards, and our more sophisticated present understanding of disease. She examines the budget of the National Institutes of Health, and judges that their apportionment funds---sixteen billion dollars for animal research---and only 3 % of the budget for the study of environmental causes of disease is a serious imbalance. Animal experimentation--like the germ theory of disease--was a nineteenth century phenomenon, which developed at the expense of other challenging explanations of disease, such as the Sanitarians', promoted by such people as Florence Nightingale, who argued that "there are no specific diseases, only specific disease conditions," such as slums, poverty, and bad nutrition. The author also examines the gender bias of the germ theory of disease, developed and promoted by such doctors as Pasteur, Claude Bernard, and Koch, while those who opposed the theory and vivisection, were frequently women, such as Nightingale, Anna Kingsford---one of the first women in England to get a medical degree and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to get a medical degree, who argued for an understanding of the relationship of "disease conditions" to disease, and who were frequently derided in the press as "ignorant," "sentimental," "anti-science," and "anti-progress" women. Her chapter on the aspect of the problem, "Sick Dogs and Angry Englishwomen" is an excellent picture of the social history of the late Victorian era, of the Anti-vivisection movement, and of how gender issues influenced medical philosophy. Finally, the book is a blend of autobiography and scholarship. The author writes about why the issue of vivisection has come to dominate her life and writing.

ISBN-13: 9780916288556
ISBN-10: 0916288552
Publication Date: 10/1/2009
Pages: 240
Edition: first
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Micah Publications, Inc.
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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