Personal statement
I am a historian of science, technology and medicine, with a particular interest in reproductive technologies. As co-lead on the internationally collaborative research project, Risky Hormones (2020-25), and Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Lyon (2022-23), I work with patient groups and other partners to historically investigate the contested use and regulation of medicines in pregnancy and the risk of birth defects. My book reconstructs the remarkable transformation of pregnancy testing from an esoteric laboratory service to a commonplace of everyday life. At the University of Strathclyde, I co-convene the Disability Research Group.
Professional activities
- Pregnancy testing and moral panic in permissive Britain
- Speaker
- 8/11/2021
- Filming fly eggs: time-lapse cinematography as an intermedial practice
- Speaker
- 11/9/2021
- Expert witnessing
- Consultant
- 10/5/2021
- MPhil examiner
- Examiner
- 3/2021
- Birth control in Britain before and after 'the pill'
- Speaker
- 22/1/2021
- Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (Journal)
- Peer reviewer
- 2021
More professional activities
Projects
- The Dépakine affair: Communicating reproductive risk in post-thalidomide France
- Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse (Principal Investigator)
- Today, Dépakine is an embattled drug. Sanofi, the manufacturer, is facing a class action in France, and a Paris court recently held the company liable for failing in its duty of care. This project is the first to historically investigate Dépakine (sodium valproate), an anti-convulsant drug that, if taken in pregnancy, also causes neurodevelopmental impairments. It focuses on the crucial role played in Lyon in the 1970s by REMERA (Registre des Malformations en Rhône-Alpes) in evidencing fetal harm. Examining Dépakine situates France, and more specifically Lyon, in the historical understanding of persistent tensions between reproductive rights and disability rights in contemporary Europe. By collaborating with patients (women with epilepsy who took Dépakine while pregnant), the project also contributes to the development of a more inclusive mode of historical research within science studies. Beyond compensation and justice for the families, at stake are fundamental issues regarding the production and communication of biomedical knowledge about reproductive risk in the post-thalidomide world.
- 08-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2023
- Risky hormones, pregnant patients and the contested science of birth defects: the rise and fall of hormone pregnancy tests in the FRG and UK, 1950-81
- Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse (Principal Investigator)
- This project examines, in collaboration with patient groups, the rise and fall of Primodos and other hormone pregnancy tests (HPTs).
Today it may be difficult to believe that doctors ever prescribed pills as pregnancy tests. However, between the 1950s and 1980s, millions of women worldwide were given HPTs: diagnostic drugs that ruled out gestation by inducing menstrual-like bleeding (a ‘negative’ result; no bleeding implied pregnancy). HPTs were first marketed by the West German pharmaceutical company Schering AG (now Bayer) in 1950. Compositionally similar to oral contraceptives, they prefigured ‘the pill’ by about a decade.
Starting in 1967, HPTs came under suspicion; initially for causing spina bifida and then for inducing miscarriage and a range of birth defects akin to those caused by thalidomide, the notorious sedative that was also used to treat morning sickness. In 1978, the British and West German parents of malformed children whose mothers had taken HPTs while pregnant organised to take legal action against Schering. Although HPTs have not been available for decades, new archival findings and scientific evidence have revitalised long dormant patient-led campaigns in Britain and Germany. Against a backdrop of persistent media interest, continuing scientific research, and resumed litigation, our project will cut through the polemic to produce at a subtler, more nuanced historical understanding of HPTs. It will also seek to better understand the West German origins of oral contraception as well as international debates over the use and regulation of drugs in pregnancy and the spectre of birth defects after thalidomide. - 01-Jan-2020 - 31-Jan-2025
- Pregnancy testing over the counter, in activism, and at home: Britain, 1970–2015
- Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2015 - 01-Jan-2019
More projects