Yale Faculty Member Discusses Social History of Blood Policies

Susan E. Lederer, assistant professor of the history of medicine at Yale, will present a lecture on Thursday, January 17, on the ways in which public health policies concerning blood transfusions have reflected prevalent attitudes about race and ethnicity in American history.

Titled “Red, White and Black: Blood and Race in the USA,” her talk will explore how policies about blood exchange have revealed deep-seated prejudices as well as commonly held notions of community, family and nationality.

Lederer has written on blood policy in American history for the forthcoming book “Flesh and Blood.” An authority on human experimentation and medical ethics, Lederer has contributed articles and chapters to many publications. She has written widely on the Tuskegee syphillis study involving research on human subjects, and is the author of “Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

Sponsored by the Program for Humanities in Medicine, the talk will take place at 5 p.m. in the Beaumont Room of the Sterling Hall of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street. The talk is free and open to the public.