For thirty years, from 1942 through 1972, American biomedical researchers deliberately infected people with hepatitis as a way to learn about the disease and develop a vaccine. It’s a shocking history that has gone untold until now.

Today, Friday host Esty Dinur spends a special WORT Birthday Boost hour with Sydney Halpern to talk about Dangerous Medicine, her new book chronicling the history of this hazardous human experiment and its long-term consequences.

Sydney Halpern is a historical sociologist and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago. She has written extensively about twentieth-century American medical institutions and biomedical science. Her latest book is Dangerous Medicine: The Story behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis (Yale University Press, 2021).

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