Casa de Oswaldo Cruz

Destaques da Biblioteca de História das Ciências e da Saúde

KAY, Lily E. Who wrote the Book of Life? A history of the genetic code. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

 

 

 

 

  

In a sense, this book is a genealogy of the future. The image of a genomic "Book of Life" - laden with biblical resonances - emerged in the 1960s and now animates human genome projects, which are so often viewed as a mammoth task of information and word processing. Driven by global capital, these biomedical projects are perceived as a mission of "reading" and "editing," while the information they amass affects our basic notions of humanness, illness, and health. Beyond the material control of life, there is now a quest for controlling information - the DNA sequence, the "word" - frequently perceived as life's logos. Though problematic, this view of the genome as an information system, a linguistic text written in DNA code, has been guiding theories and practices of molecular biologists since the 1950s. My study aims to explain the emergence and spread of these scriptural genomic visions, as well as their scope and limits (in fact, this work was generously funded by the NIH-ELSI branch as part of their commitment to critical scholarship and public discussion on the topic). This book is not meant to be the history of the genetic code; the sheer scope of the relevant research precludes its being comprehensive or definitive. Rather it is a history of one of the most important and dramatic episodes in modern science recounted from a novel vantage point: the dawn of the information age and its impact on representations of nature and society. (Au.)

 

 

 

 

   

 

BECKER, Peter; WETZELL, Richard F. (Ed.). Criminals and their scientists: the history of criminology in international perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press; Washington DC: German Historical Institute, 2006.

 

 

 

 

  

  

 

This book presents recent research on the history of criminology from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries in Western Europe (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Italy) and in Argentina, Australia, Japan, and the United States. Approaching the history of criminology as a history of science and practice, the chapters examine the discourse on crime and criminals that surfaced as part of different discourses and practices, including the activities of the police and the courts, parliamentary debates, and media reports, as well as the writings of moral statisticians, jurists, and medical doctors. By providing a comparative study of the worldwide reception of Cesare Lombroso's criminal anthropological ideas, the book seeks to elucidate the relationship between criminological discourse and politics, society, and culture.  (Au.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

SCULL, Andrew. The Insanity of Place/The Place of Insanity: essays on the history of psychiatry. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

 

This book brings together many of the major papers published by Andrew Scull in the history of psychiatry over the past decade and a half. Its historiographic essays provide a critical perspective on such major figures as Michel Foucault, Roy Porter, and Edward Shorter, and subsequent chapters examine some of the major substantive debates in the field from the eighteenth century to the present. Chapters on psychiatric therapeutics and on the shifting social responses to madness over a period of almost three centuries add to a comprehensive assessment of Anglo-American confrontations with madness in this period and make the book invaluable for those concerned to understand the psychiatric enterprise. The lnsanity of Place/ The Place of lnsanity will be of interest to students and professionals of the history of medicine and of psychiatry, as well as sociologists concerned with deviance and social control, the sociology of mental illness, and the sociology of the professions.  (Au.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

   

GAUDILLIÈRE, Jean-Paul. Inventer la biomédecine: la france, l’amérique et la production des saviors du vivant (1945-1965). Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2002.

 

 

 

 

  

 

Génomique, médecine moléculaire, biotechnologies génétiques : depuis une vingtaine d'années, les transformations de Ia biologie occupent une place essentielle dans les débats contemporains sur les sciences. Autour du gène, a pris forme une nouvelle alliance entre sciences, technologie et marché, bouleversant nos conceptions du vivant et de Ia maladie. Cette « révolution » est le fruit d’une histoire qu’il faut prendre en compte si l’on veut Ia comprendre. L'ouvrage de Jean-Paul Gaudillière retrace ainsi l’émergence du régime d’innovation biomédical qui a dominé les Trente Glorieuses, en suivant des objets aussi divers que Ia pénicilline, le vaccin contre la polio, les virus du cancer, l’ARN messager ou Ia politique de l’Institut national d’hygiène. À l’inverse des idées courantes sur Ia science pure et ses applications, les trajectoires présentées dans ce livre montrent à quel point Ia médecine et l’étude du pathologique ont contribué à Ia «molécularisation» des savoirs du vivant. Alors que l’échelle des investissements changeait radicalement, la lutte contre Ia maladie est devenue un problème de modélisation au laboratoire de biochimie ou de génétique, un problème de recherche chimiothérapeutique et de contrôle des pratiques cliniques. (Au.)