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Sex Hormones for Animals and Humans? Enhancement and the Public Expertise of Drugs in Post-war United States and France

  • Jean-Paul Gaudillière
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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the questions raised by the administration of DES to animals for food production, within the context of the DES medical affair and the public debates about the regulation of sex hormone prescription. The contrast in the development of this practice in the United States and France originates in the different roles public expertise played in each country. The chapter concludes that the different meanings thus given to human and animal enhancement — improvement versus augmentation — rest on a common ground. Agriculture and medicine are not two worlds apart: the same tools, techniques and sometimes personnel circulate between the two, thus making it possible to enhance both type of bodies at the boundary between the normal and the pathological.

Keywords

Human Enhancement Industrial Agriculture Vaginal Cancer Congressional Hearing Consumer Politics 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Jean-Paul Gaudillière 2015

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  • Jean-Paul Gaudillière

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