Cheryl Krasnick Warsh – författare

The woman scientist who saved Americans from thalidomideIn the early 1960s, Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration became one of the most celebrated women in America when she prevented a deadly sedative from entering the U.S. market. A Canadian-born pharmacologist and physician, Kelsey saved countless Americans from the devastating side effects of thalidomide, a drug routinely given to pregnant women to prevent morning sickness.As the FDA medical officer charged with reviewing Merrell Pharmaceutical's application for approval in 1960-61, Kelsey was unconvinced that there was sufficient evidence of the drug's efficacy and safety. Despite substantial pressure, she held her ground for nineteen months while the extent of the drug's worldwide damage became known-thousands of stillborn babies, as well as at least 10,000 children across 46 countries born with severe deformities such as missing limbs, arms and legs that resembled flippers, and improperly developed eyes, ears, and other organs. As a result of Kelsey's efforts, thalidomide was never sold in the United States. The incident led Congress to pass the 1962 Drug Amendment, which fundamentally changed drug regulation in America. Those regulations, still in force today, required pharmaceutical companies to conduct phased clinical trials, obtain informed consent from participants in drug testing, and warn the FDA of adverse effects, and it granted the FDA important controls over prescription-drug advertising.One of a small minority of women to earn an advanced degree in science in the 1930s, Kelsey faced challenges that resonate with women scientists to this day. Revered by the public as a “good mother of science,” she went on to act as a formidable gatekeeper against other suspect drugs, such as diesthylstilbestrol (DES) and laetrile. As part of the team that tested anti-malarial drugs on prisoner volunteers during World War II, she later was instrumental in the formulation of ethical protocols for drug testing on prisoners and the vulnerable, including the elderly and children. Yet behind the public adulation, she faced professional jealousies and glass ceilings, political interference with FDA's actions, and ongoing hostility from pharmaceutical industry officials. She was sustained and supported by family and friends, co-workers and mentors, and a lifetime commitment to good science.Based upon FDA archival records, private family papers, and interviews with family and colleagues, this biography brings to light the efforts and legacy of a pioneering woman of science whose contributions are still influential today.

Through an international comparison, Cheryl Warsh introduces the major themes in both historical and anthropological studies of beverage alcohol use. In a separate essay she describes the stigma attached to female alcoholism, particularly its association with prostitution and child neglect. James Sturgis presents the collective biography of the Rennie brothers, who fell victim to alcoholism while attempting to make their fortunes in the late nineteenth-century boom-bust economies of Canada and the United States. Jim Baumohl recounts attempts to establish institutions for alcoholics on the model of insane asylums. Jan Noel describes the revivals organized by Father Chiniguy, a Catholic evangelist, which swept Lower Canada in the 1840s, unifying a French-Canadian populace threatened by the rapid influx of anglophone settlers. Glenn Lockwood pursues a similar theme in his essay, concluding that Ottawa Valley temperance lodges solidified loyalist American opposition to immigrant competitors for regional dominance. Jacques Paul Couturier analyses the regulation of prohibition in a mixed anglophone/Acadian community. Ernest Forbes demonstrates that Canadian and American prohibition provided vital economic opportunities during the prolonged Maritime depression. Finally, Robert Campbell surveys the post-prohibition experience of state monopoly as a means of liquor control. Each author brings new sources and new research techniques to the discussion of alcohol, posing methodological and public policy challenges for the future as well as a solid survey of the past.

Booze, dope, smokes, and weed. Mind-altering, mood-changing substances have been part of human society for millennia. And the history of drugs and alcohol is infused with what we understand as their proper and improper use.Pleasure and Panic reveals how cultural fears and social, political, and economic disparities have always been deeply embedded in attitudes about drugs and alcohol. Long before John Lennon testified at Canada's Le Dain Commission in favour of marijuana decriminalization, social movements existed to challenge the view that consumption of mind-altering substances, especially by young people, posed a danger to society. The contributors to this collection explore how drugs and alcohol intersect with diverse histories, including gender, medicine, popular culture, and business.Pleasure and Panic brings a dispassionate voice to current debates about liberalizing drug and alcohol laws and challenges existing ideas about how to deal with the so-called problems of drug and alcohol use.

Booze, dope, smokes, and weed. Mind-altering, mood-changing substances have been part of human society for millennia. And the history of drugs and alcohol is infused with what we understand as their proper and improper use.Pleasure and Panic reveals how cultural fears and social, political, and economic disparities have always been deeply embedded in attitudes about drugs and alcohol. Long before John Lennon testified at Canada's Le Dain Commission in favour of marijuana decriminalization, social movements existed to challenge the view that consumption of mind-altering substances, especially by young people, posed a danger to society. The contributors to this collection explore how drugs and alcohol intersect with diverse histories, including gender, medicine, popular culture, and business.Pleasure and Panic brings a dispassionate voice to current debates about liberalizing drug and alcohol laws and challenges existing ideas about how to deal with the so-called problems of drug and alcohol use.

From sentimental stories about polio to the latest cherub in hospital commercials, sick children tug at the public's heartstrings. However sick children have not always had adequate medical care or protection. The essays in Children's Issues in Historical Perspective investigate the identification, prevention, and treatment of childhood diseases from the 1800s onwards, in areas ranging from French-colonial Vietnam to nineteenth-century northern British Columbia, from New Zealand fresh air camps to American health fairs. Themes include: the role of government and/or the private sector in initiating and underwriting child public health programs; the growth of the profession of pediatrics and its views on ""proper"" mothering techniques; the role of nationalism, as well as ethnic and racial dimensions in child-saving movements; normative behaviour, social control, and the treatment of ""deviant"" children and adolescents; poverty, wealth, and child health measures; and the development of the modern children's hospital. This liberally illustrated collection reflects the growing academic interest in all aspects of childhood, especially child health, and originates from health care professionals and scholars across the disciplines. An introduction by the editors places the historical themes in context and offers an overview of the contemporary study of children's health.

In her meticulously researched history, Cheryl Krasnick Warsh challenges readers to rethink the norms of women's health and treatment in Canada and the United States since 1800. Prescribed Norms details a disturbing socio-medical history that limits and discounts women's own knowledge of their bodies and their health.By comparing ritual practices of various cultures, Prescribed Norms demonstrates how looking at women's health through a masculine lens has distorted current medical understandings of menstruation, menopause, and childbirth, and has often led to faulty medical conclusions. Warsh also illuminates how the shift from informal to more formal, institutionalized treatment impacts both women's health care and women's roles as health practitioners.Always accessible and occasionally irreverent, Warsh's narrative provides readers with multiple foundations for reconsidering women's health and women's health care.