My guests today are Dr. Sydney Halpern, a historical sociologist from the University of Chicago who has written extensively about twentieth-century American medical institutions and biomedical science, including 2021’s DANGEROUS MEDICINE: THE STORY BEHIND HUMAN EXPERIMENTS WITH HEPATITIS, and Trigvy Faste an Associate Professor in the Department of Product Design at the University of Oregon as well as an illustrator and designer in his own right.

Their book, INFECTED FOR SCIENCE, coming out May 26th from Graphic Mundi, looks at religious pacifist David Miller and a group of conscientious objectors who took on an extraordinary mission during World War II: signing up for government-sponsored medical experiments that intentionally infected them with hepatitis to help scientists understand a disease that was sickening American soldiers fighting on the front lines. It also looks at the project’s aftermath and legacy almost 80 years later.

This is their first graphic novel, separately or together, and I am thrilled to have them on the show to talk about not just the book’s subject, but also its origins and the work that went into it.

(This is episode 835 in a series.)

YOUTUBE BLOCK

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Intro
01:22 – Discovering the Archives
03:45 – Trygve Finds Comics Again
05:33 – Meeting Through Comics Class
07:31 – Comics Influences and Models
08:34 – Trygve Comic Origins
12:30 – Building Dual Timeline Story
15:15 – Miller Cartoons Tone
18:56 – Art Style and Accent Color
23:14 – Publisher Pitch and Feedback
28:38 – Page Design and Lettering
31:03 – Seamless Reading Flow
32:12 – Internal Logic Design
33:08 – Dance With Death Spread
38:12 – Creative Nonfiction Boundaries
38:54 – Ethics And Compensation
42:51 – Who Gets Harmed
45:58 – Why Comics Worked
49:14 – Collaboration And Outreach
52:52 – Moral Complexity And Empathy
59:17 – Outro