Choosing the best apple: counselling leaflets and technologies of communication in the history of reproduction.

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.

The environments of reproductive and birth defects research in the U.S. and West Germany (c. 1955-1975).

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.

The Duogynon controversy and ignorance production in post-thalidomide West Germany.

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.

[The Emergence of Genetic Prenatal Diagnosis from Environmental Research : On a Methodological Shift in Prevention Around 1970].

The history of genetic prenatal diagnosis has so far been analyzed as a part of the history of human genetics and its reorientation as a clinical and laboratory-based scientific discipline in the second half of the 20th century. Based on new source material, we show in this paper that the interest in prenatal diagnosis also arose within the context of research on mutagenicity (the capacity to induce mutations) that was concerned with environmental dangers to human health. Our analysis of the debates around the establishment of the German Research Foundation's (DFG) research program "Prenatal Diagnosis of Genetic Defects" reveals that amniocentesis was introduced in Western Germany by a group of scientists working on the dangers for the human organism caused by radiation, pharmaceuticals, and other substances and consumer goods.

Fifty Percent Human - how art brings us in touch with our microbial cohabitants.

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.