CAREER: The Consequences of Efforts to Control Human Reproduction for Science and Medicine

这个职业项目考察了控制人类生殖的历史努力如何塑造了科学家和医学界在当代理解生殖健康的方式。在19世纪和20世纪初，科学界和医学界与国家一起努力“改善”国家的遗传池，包括通过强制对边缘化人口进行绝育。该项目调查了这些努力如何影响了20世纪末发展中的生殖医学，以及它如何继续影响科学知识和生殖健康。这项研究通过向学生介绍生殖健康和不平等的持久问题来加强本科生的科学教育。该项目制作了一个数字档案，促进公众对医学、科学和健康不平等历史的理解。该项目采用档案方法和访谈相结合的方法，以了解控制人口遗传学的努力如何影响科学和医学理解以及目前的生殖经验。这项研究包括对1950年至2000年发表的关于生殖健康的科学文章的内容分析，以及与保健提供者和科学家的存档通信。该项目还收集和分析了50人关于他们在生殖健康方面的经验的口述历史，并创建了一个新的公共数字档案馆来存储这些历史。解决这些研究问题对医学的社会研究、科学和技术研究以及对导致健康不平等的社会和历史因素的更广泛理解都有重要贡献。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This CAREER project examines how historical efforts to control human reproduction shaped the ways scientists and medical communities understand reproductive health in contemporary times. In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, scientific and medical communities worked alongside the state to “improve” the nation’s hereditary pool, including through forced sterilization of marginalized populations. This project investigates how these endeavors influenced the developing medicine of reproduction in the late 20th Century and how it continues to influence scientific knowledge and reproductive health. The study enhances undergraduate science education by introducing students to lasting issues in reproductive health and inequality. The project produces a digital archive that advances public understanding of the history of medicine, science, and health inequalities. This project uses a combination of archival methods and interviews to understand how efforts to control genetics in the population affected scientific and medical understandings and current experiences with reproduction. The research includes content analysis of scientific articles on reproductive health published from 1950 to 2000 and archived correspondence with health providers and scientists. The project also collects and analyzes oral histories with 50 people about their experiences in reproductive health and creates a new public digital archive to house these histories. Addressing these research questions offers vital contributions to the social study of medicine, science and technology studies, and broader understandings of the social and historical factors that contribute to health inequalities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.