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Icons of Life: A Cultural History of Human Embryos
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Icons of Life tells the engrossing and provocative story of an early twentiethcentury undertaking, the Carnegie Institution of Washingtons project to collect thousands of embryos for scientific study. Lynn M. Morgan blends social analysis, sleuthing, and humor to trace the history of specimen collecting. In the process, she illuminates how a hundredyearold scientific endeavor continues to be felt in todays fraught arena of maternal and fetal politics. Until the embryo collecting projectwhich she follows from the Johns Hopkins anatomy department, through Baltimore foundling homes, and all the way to Chinamost people had no idea what human embryos looked like. But by the 1950s, modern citizens saw in embryos an image of ourselves unborn, and embryology had developed a biologically based story about how we came to be. Morgan explains how dead specimens paradoxically became icons of life, how embryos were generated as social artifacts separate from pregnant women, and how a fetus thwarted Gertrude Steins medical career. By resurrecting a nearly forgotten scientific project, Morgan sheds light on the roots of a modern origin story and raises the still controversial issue of how we decide what embryos mean.
⚠️ WARNING (California Proposition 65):
This product may contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
For more information, please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.