Everyday viewers are confronted with shocking news reports and sensational images about DNA and cloning, the fight against AIDS, cancer and depression.
TV stations such as Lifetime currently devote entire programs to women's health and popular sitcoms are now dealing with issues like mammograms, breast cancer and hormone replacement therapy.
"Wild Science" investigates this worldwide boom in health culture. The book helps to explain how popular culture-the principal channel by which the non-scientific community understands illness-implicates national health policies and effects medical research funding. This innovative and controversial volume reveals the new technologies which make the human body into a virtual territory; popular representations of genetics and identity, the diagnostic and medical practices centered around women's bodies, and debates around the practice of 'feminist science studies'.
"Wild Science" attempts to aim our attention at the visual culture of medicine, exploring the power of popular representations over our expectations in everything from the Visible Human Project to the supposed existence of a 'gay gene' to medical abortion.. The book argues science is an everyday practice bound in values and institutions, and calls for a responsible engagement with the public cultures of science and health.
Contributors: Anne Balsamo, Anne Beaulieu, Lisa Cartwright, Kathy Davis, Jose Van Dijck, Lisa Finn, Ursula Franklin, Janine Marchessault, Maria Nengeh Mensah, Kim Sawchuk, M. Medhi Semati, Jennifer Daryl Slack, Bonnie P. Spanier, Catherine Waldby and Angela Wall.