Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Testing Fate illustrates how diseases become racialized, how racializing them supports political projects, and how the medical profession has been instrumental in racial formation."—Dorothy Roberts, author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century
"Shelley Z. Reuter offers a thoughtful, thorough, and sophisticated analysis of themes of modern biocitizenship and belonging refracted through a historical case study of Tay-Sachs disease."—Jonathan Kahn, Hamline University
"As she tells the fascinating and important story of Tay-Sachs disease, Shelley Reuter skillfully reminds us of the tight links connecting our concepts of disease to visions of belonging and otherness, selfhood and social responsibility."—Steven Epstein, author of Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research
"An engaging and carefully documented piece of scholarship. "—Disability Studies Quarterly
"A thoughtful, rigorous contribution."—Journal of the History of Medicine
"A sound contribution to anthropological debates surrounding the expression of biocitizenship, and, more specifically, how the decisions surrounding genetic screening are constrained by the continuous inculcation of normative ideas of what constitutes a responsible body and biocitizen."—Medical Anthropology Quarterly
"This well-written and fascinating account of the history of a racialised disease should be read by both health care providers and scholars in a wide range of fields interested in the history of race and medicine."—Medical History
"I suspect this book and the issues raised will nonetheless lend themselves to vibrant discussions in graduate seminars."—American Journal of Sociology
"Reuter offers a necessary critical, comprehensive, and sociological examination of the history of Tay-Sachs and its construction as a disease concept."—New Genetics and Society
"Testing Fate is a readable and inspiring book that has the great advantage of remaining accessible throughout. It would likely appeal to scholar and intelligent layman alike."—Isis
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction: A Critical Historical Sociology of Disease
Part I. Pathologizing the Other
1. Diagnosing the Genuine “Jewish Type”: Medical Racialism and Anti-Immigration Legislation in the United States
2. Governing Disease: Cultivating the Will to Health in Jewish Immigrants to the United Kingdom
Part II. Imag(in)ing Difference
3. “Plainer Than Words Can Describe”: Medical Portraiture and the Visualization of a Jewish Disease
4. The Unethics of Looking at Disease–Disability: Online Representations of Tay-Sachs
Part III. Paradoxical Biocitizenship
5. The Right to Be Responsible: Agency and Contemporary Carrier Screening
Conclusion: Freedom, Exclusion, and Genetic Decision Making
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
