AIHP members are invited to join us for a online program and panel discussion on Hormones and Health on Wednesday, April 27, from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm Central. This program is free, but preregistration at this link is required.
Hormones play a significant role in human reproduction – from feelings of love, sex and conception, to supporting pregnancy and childbirth. Hormones were identified and first produced synthetically in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The lure of potential profits attracted the interest of the pharmaceutical industry.
AIHP’s Hormones and Health program focuses on how pharmaceutical companies developed a variety of drugs to intervene into women’s reproductive experiences. Panel members will include Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, PhD, a historian of science, technology and medicine at the University of Strathclyde, and Birgit Nemec, PhD, a historian of science and medicine at the Charité Berlin. Dr. Olszynko-Gryn and Dr, Nemec co-lead on the internationally collaborative research project investigating the history of the use and regulation of medicines in pregnancy and the risk of birth defects.
The panel will be hosted by historian Naomi Rendina, PhD, a lecturer at California State University, East Bay. Her dissertation examined how the role of labor-inducing pharmaceuticals influenced the meaning of the emerging “natural” childbirth method in post-war America. Dr. Rendina received an AIHP PhD. Research Support Grant in 2019 to support her dissertation research.
Hormones and Health seeks to broaden the international conversations about the history of the use and regulation of drugs used in pregnancy and during childbirth. We hope you will join for this free program. Please click here to register for the program.
(Posted: April 19, 2022)
