Useful Bodies edited by Jordan Goodman, Anthony McElligott and Lara Marks, Johns Hopkins University Press, £31/$42, ISBN 0801873428 Reviewed by Laura Spinney
IT WASN’T just the Nazis who experimented on humans. Witness the hepatitis studies at Willowbrook State School in the 1950s, when New York University physicians infected “mentally retarded” children with virus-laden stools. In Useful Bodies, editors Jordan Goodman, Anthony McElligott and Lara Marks collate examples of medical abuse from recent history. It stands out that publication in a respected journal deterred questioning of the authors’ ethics.
