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Abstract: Abstract United States Atomic Energy Commission (USAEC) and UN agencies utilized techniques of power and negotiation to implement radiation exposure regulations. USAEC affiliated scientists’ expertise was cultivated while establishing a radiation protection regime based on classified experiments. World Health Organization (WHO) leadership sought to manifest a human right to health, including a right to protection from radiation contamination. The careers of a few technical experts and interagency UN correspondence shows how American risk models of radiation regulation traveled and ultimately inhibited WHO attempts to frame radiation as a public health threat. The USAEC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) navigated WHO’s way of perceiving radiation with technical experts and bureaucratic and legislative means. This paper shows the underpinning at the UN of competing models of radiation regulation, one state centric and the other, an individual right to health. This narrative provides insights into the nature of the UN’s current conceptualization of radiation regulation and argues for further research into UN, radiation, and human rights history. PubDate: 2022-05-24
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Abstract: Abstract This paper traces the diverse contexts of radiation protection from liberation in post-1945 South Korea to its professionalization by the early 1970s, using the emerging field of health physics (보건 물리학) as the focus. The Korean nuclear center, AERI (Atomic Energy Research Institute/한국 원자력 연구소, 1959), started two affiliates, RRIA (Radiation Research Institute for Agriculture/방사선 농업연구소, 1966) and RRIM (Radiation Research Institute for Medicine/방사선 의학연구소, 1963) in the early 1960s. In particular, RRIM emphasized the use of radiation within cancer research, especially the use of cobalt in treating patients. In this context, health physics initially took the form of “radiation medicine.” With the two institutes returning to AERI’s fold in 1973, health physics took another turn: the second major subfield, following “radiation medicine,” invoked a broader conception of “radiation protection,” which now referred to a cluster of related interests, including the environment and the effects of industrialization. Rather than a simple transfer of American and international models after 1953, Korean health physics reflects its origins in a post-colonial research setting, one more diverse than its “official” institutional context at AERI. PubDate: 2022-05-18
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Abstract: Abstract After WWII, global concerns about the uses of nuclear energy and radiation sources in agriculture, medicine, and industry brought about calls for radiation protection. At the beginning of the 1960s radiation protection involved the identification and measurement of all sources of radiation to which a population was exposed, and the evaluation and assessment of populations in terms of the biological hazard their exposure posed. Mexico was not an exception to this international trend. This paper goes back to the origins of the first studies on the effects of radiation and on radioprotective compounds in the Genetics and Radiobiology Program of the National Commission of Nuclear Energy founded in 1960, at a time when the effects of radiation on living beings and radiation protection demanded the attention of highly localized groups of scientists and the creation of international as well as national institutions, and its connection to dosimetry and radiation protection until the 1990s. This historical reconstruction examines the circulation of knowledge, scientists, and their material and cognitive resources, to show that radiobiology, with dosimetry and radiation protection as cases in point, not only were carried out with high international standards in parallel with international agencies, but also reflected local material needs, including the standardization of new experimental techniques. PubDate: 2022-05-10
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Abstract: Abstract This paper draws attention to the role of the IAEA in shaping radiation dosimetry practices, instrumentation, and standards in the late 1950s and 1960s. It traces the beginnings of the IAEA’s radiation dose intercomparison program which targeted all member states and involved the WHO so as to standardize dosimetry on a global level. To standardize dosimetric measurement methods, techniques, and instruments, however, one had to devise a method of comparing absorbed dose measurements in one laboratory with those performed in others with a high degree of accuracy. In 1964 the IAEA thus started to build up what I call the “global experiment,” an intercomparison of radiation doses with participating laboratories from many of its member states. To carry out the process of worldwide standardization in radiation dosimetry, I argue, an organization with the diplomatic power and global reach of the IAEA was absolutely necessary. Thus, “global experiment” indicates a novel understanding of the experimental process. What counts as an experiment became governed by a process that was designed and strictly regulated by an international organization; it took place simultaneously in several laboratories across the globe, while experimental data became centrally owned and alienated from those that produced it. PubDate: 2022-05-10
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Abstract: Abstract The acquisition of a nuclear power reactor from the North American company Westinghouse in 1964 not only brought atomic practices and knowledge to Spain but also introduced new methods of industrial organization and management, as well as regulations created by organizations such as the US Atomic Energy Commission (US AEC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This article analyzes the history of the knowledge, regulations and experimental practices relating to radiation safety and protection that traveled with this reactor to an industrial space: the Zorita nuclear power plant. Within this space, the appropriation, use, and coproduction of knowledge and practices were conditioned by political, economic, industrial and social factors, and by the engineers, researchers and other professionals who contributed expert knowledge. Material held in the Tecnatom Historical Archive—the engineering company that coordinated construction of the plant—is the main source for this work, which delves into the history of knowledge and atomic technologies and adds to the historiography of radiological protection in Spain. PubDate: 2022-05-02
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Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract Patient history has enriched medical history since about the 1980s. But there are still research gaps in certain periods and themes, especially in topics related to the medical history of West Germany. This paper deals with the efforts of patients, lay persons, and medical advisors (diabetologists) to enable diabetics to secure employment as civil servants (Verbeamtung). Attention will be payed to the fact that this success relied on the activities of mediators, who translated and conveyed the patients’ interests to society at large. This victory was concordant with similar initiatives in other fields of the diabetic life, including sexuality and lifestyle management. Therefore, efforts to achieve civil servant employment for diabetic patients were constitutive of a broader initiative that changed the image of the disease and promoted the integration of diabetic patients into West German society. PubDate: 2022-02-15 DOI: 10.1007/s00048-022-00325-y
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Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
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Abstract: Abstract Recent scholarship on the social history of health and medicine in colonial India has moved beyond enclavist or hegemonic aspects of imperial medicine and has rather focused on the role of Indian intermediaries and the fractured nature of colonial hegemony. Drawing inspiration from this scholarship, the article highlights the significance of the Indian subordinates in the lock hospital system in the nineteenth century Madras Presidency. This study focuses on a class of Indian subordinates called the “gomastah”, who were employed to detect clandestine prostitution in Madras to control the spread of venereal disease. It also underlines the role of other native and non-native subordinates such as Dhais, Chowdranies and Matrons, the ways in which they became indispensable for the smoother operation of the Contagious Diseases Act and the lock hospitals on a day-to-day basis. By emphasising how Indian subordinates were able to bring in caste biases within colonial governmentality, adding another layer to the colonial prejudices and xenophobia against the native population, it underlines the fact that there was not a one-way appropriation or facilitation of the coloniser’s knowledge or biases by the colonised intermediaries. Rather, it argues for an interaction between them, and highlights the complexities of caste hierarchies and prejudice within the everyday colonial governmentality. Moreover, the article focuses on the consequent chaos and inherent power struggle between different factions of colonial staff. PubDate: 2022-02-10 DOI: 10.1007/s00048-022-00324-z
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Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the institutional and social dimensions of cooperation in the Alliance of Science Organisations, the central corporatist stakeholder in German science policy, in the 1970s and 1980s, which were a crucial period for this committee. In doing so, this essay mainly focuses on the way science organizations interact with each other, as well as with national politics. The Federal Ministry of Research invited the Alliance to regular meetings and thereby fostered its involvement into political decision-making processes. Consequently, the question of who belonged to the Alliance came into the focus of different players. Although the members of the Alliance themselves decided on the composition of their committee, they were not able to completely insulate themselves from external demands. Including new members into the Alliance had a destabilizing effect on the carefully balanced distribution of power within this committee, as will be shown through the case study on the admission of the Association of the Major Research Centers (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Großforschungseinrichtungen, AGF) in 1976. In order to restabilize the situation, the members of the Alliance tried to exclude the AGF from certain issues. At the same time, the AGF itself was keen on being regarded as an equal partner and thus strove for its inclusion. This complex interplay of cooperative and competitive actions finally resulted in the institutionalization of the Alliance. PubDate: 2022-02-10 DOI: 10.1007/s00048-022-00322-1
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Abstract: Zusammenfassung 1894 erwarb das Germanische Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg ein Instrument, welches einem Beinharnisch ähnlich sieht. Über seitliche Gewinde konnten damit steife Beine gebeugt oder gestreckt werden. Dem Ätzdekor nach zu urteilen stammt es aus der Kunstkammer Kurfürst Augusts von Sachsen (1526–1586). Ein Vergleich mit zeitgenössischen Beinharnischen legt nahe, dass die Beinschiene bereits ursprünglich als orthopädisches Instrument hergestellt wurde. Sie komplettierte die Sammlung chirurgischer Instrumente des sächsischen Regenten in Dresden. Vermutlich war der Plattenharnisch in vielen Eigenschaften eine technologische Bedingung für derartige Orthesen und Prothesen. PubDate: 2022-02-07 DOI: 10.1007/s00048-022-00323-0
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