Wild Science Reading Feminism, Medicine and the Media

Everyday viewers are confronted with shocking news reports and sensational images about DNA and cloning, the fight against AIDS, cancer and depression.
TV stations such as Lifetime currently devote entire programs to women's health and popular sitcoms are now dealing with issues like mammograms, breast cancer and hormone replacement therapy.
"Wild Science" investigates this worldwide boom in health culture. The book helps to explain how popular culture-the principal channel by which the non-scientific community understands illness-implicates national health policies and effects medical research funding. This innovative and controversial volume reveals the new technologies which make the human body into a virtual territory; popular representations of genetics and identity, the diagnostic and medical practices centered around women's bodies, and debates around the practice of 'feminist science studies'.
"Wild Science" attempts to aim our attention at the visual culture of medicine, exploring the power of popular representations over our expectations in everything from the Visible Human Project to the supposed existence of a 'gay gene' to medical abortion.. The book argues science is an everyday practice bound in values and institutions, and calls for a responsible engagement with the public cultures of science and health.
Contributors: Anne Balsamo, Anne Beaulieu, Lisa Cartwright, Kathy Davis, Jose Van Dijck, Lisa Finn, Ursula Franklin, Janine Marchessault, Maria Nengeh Mensah, Kim Sawchuk, M. Medhi Semati, Jennifer Daryl Slack, Bonnie P. Spanier, Catherine Waldby and Angela Wall.

Wild Science investigates the world-wide boom in 'health culture'. While self-help health books and medical dramas are popular around the globe, we are bombarded with daily media images of DNA research, and news reports about cloning, the fight against AIDS, cancer and depression. With popular culture now the principal means through which the non-scientific population encounters science why do certain images of science get promoted above others?Contributors examine the public meanings of science, revealing the frictions and contradictions within popular representations of what medicine can and should do. Focusing on the visual culture of medicine, they show how representations of science have a direct impact on popular perceptions of the limits of science, and ultimately on health education, funding and research, and examine the belief that media literacy in popular representations of medicine makes an ethical public discourse on the aims of science possible.With sections addressing the new visual technologies which make the human body into a virtual territory, the diagnostic and medical practices centered around women's bodies, and popular debates around genetics and identity, Wild Science argues that science is a practice bound in values and institutions, and argues for a responsible engagement with the public cultures of science and health.

Introduction 1. Corporeal Maps 2. Genetic Codifications 3. Clinical Practices 4. Feminist Science Studies

Janine Marchessault is Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Video, York University, Ontario. She is President of the Film Studies Association of Canada. Kim Sawchuk is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University, Montreal.