Tag: Alice Dreger

A lot of your work in medical history examines people and conditions which are considered by the larger society to be “monstrous” or “freakish.”  What do you think it means to “monsterize” these people? I think humans are fascinated by differences, including extreme differences, and also have a tendency to want to say to themselves …

Sarah McCord can’t quite remember when she discovered that PubMed was still calling conjoined twins “monsters.” She does, however, remember being startled. “It bothered me,” she wrote to me, “because it seemed like there were all kinds of news stories about conjoined twins being surgically separated, and I knew that there would be more searching …