In 1971 Abdel R. Omran published his classic paper on the theory of epidemiologic transition. By mid-1990s, it had become something a citation and was understood as theoretical statement about shift from infectious to chronic diseases that supposedly accompanies modernization. However, himself not directly concerned with rise disease; in fact closely tied efforts accelerate fertility decline through health-oriented population control programs. This article uses Omran's extensive writings...

The Aschheim–Zondek reaction is generally regarded as the first reliable hormone test for pregnancy and a major product of 'heroic age' reproductive endocrinology. Invented in Berlin late 1920s, by mid 1930s diagnostic laboratory Edinburgh was performing thousands tests every year doctors around Britain. In her classic history antenatal care, sociologist Ann Oakley claimed that launched 'modern era' obstetric knowledge, which asserted its superiority over pregnant women. This article...

This special issue adopts a comparative approach to the politics of reproduction in twentieth-century France and Britain. The articles investigate flow information, practices tools across national boundaries between groups experts, activists laypeople. Empirically grounded medical, news media feminist sources, as well ethnographic fieldwork, they reveal practical similarities that existed countries with officially different political regimes local differences within two countries. Taken...

This article restores pregnancy testing to its significant position in the history of women's liberation movement 1970s Britain. It shows how feminists appropriated test kit, a medical technology which then resembled small chemistry set, and used it as political tool for demystifying medicine, empowering women providing more accessible, less judgmental alternative N.H.S. While majority testees were young hoping negative result, many others older, menopausal well those anxious conceive. By...

The drug Primodos and other hormone pregnancy tests (HPTs) remained on the British market for about a decade after they were first implicated, in 1967, as possible cause of birth defects.In November 2017, an expert working group (EWG) set up by Medicines Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) concluded against such association.However, it was explicitly 'not within remit EWG to make formal conclusions or recommendations historical system regulatory failures', situation that has left...

Abstract This article uses the case of pregnancy testing in Britain to investigate process whereby new and often controversial reproductive technologies are made visible normalized mainstream entertainment media. It shows how 1980s 1990s then nascent product placement industry was instrumental embedding British cinema television's dramatic productions. In this period, pregnancy-test close-up became a conventional trope thin blue lines associated with Unilever's Clearblue rose prominence...

Abstract Reproduction is one of the most persistently generative themes in history science and cinema. Cabbage fairies, clones monstrous creations have fascinated filmmakers audiences for more than a century. Today we grown accustomed not only to once controversial portrayals sperm, eggs embryos biology medicine, but also artificial wombs dystopian futures fiction fantasy. Yet, while scholars examined key films genres, especially response recent cycle Hollywood ‘mom coms’, analytic potential...

Despite much excellent work over the years, vast history of scientific filmmaking is still largely unknown. Historians science have long been concerned with visual culture, communication and public sphere on one hand, expertise, knowledge production experimental practice other. Scientists, we know, drew pictures, took photographs made three-dimensional models. Rather like models, films could not be printed in journals until digital era, this limited their usefulness as evidence. But that did...

This essay investigates time-lapse cinematography as a hybrid, intermedial practice. To interrogate practices of authorship, publication, copying, storage, and especially distribution, it recovers the history The Embryonic Development Drosophila melanogaster, film made by Eric Lucey at University Edinburgh in 1956. An unusually rich archive makes possible to recover uses reuses footage research, teaching, other forms communication.

This article investigates cinema's engagement with the Malthusian movement to control global overpopulation in long 1960s. It examines contested production and reception of Z.P.G.: Zero Population Growth (Michael Campus, 1972) Soylent Green (Richard Fleischer, 1973) shed new light on nexus science, activism, media. argues that history movement, usually reconstructed as an elite scientific political discourse, cannot be fully understood without also taking into account mass-market entertainment.

Abstract Family Planning (1968), a short, animated film featuring Donald Duck, was translated into at least twenty-four languages and viewed in the span of two years by nearly 1.4 million people around world. Commissioned Rockefeller’s Population Council expensively produced Disney, movie represents international family planning industry’s single largest investment media object. It has since been perceived as largely effective achieving its goal promoting contraception to culturally diverse...

Abstract This essay uses Predictor, the first home pregnancy test, to reexamine doctor-patient relationship in Britain 1960s and 1970s, a tumultuous period associated with permissiveness, women's liberation, erosion of medical authority. It shows how rise self-testing contributed realignment power dynamics among women, doctors, pharmacists. argues that humble test kit merits place—alongside birth control pill abortion law reform—in histories health consumerism reproductive choice twentieth century.

A journalist corrects the record on US exposure.