By the 1970s, a therapeutic revolution, decades in the making, had transformed hemophilia from an obscure hereditary malady into a manageable bleeding disorder. Yet the glory of this achievement was short lived. The same treatments that delivered some normalcy to the lives of persons with hemophilia brought unexpectedly fatal results in the 1980s when people with the disease contracted HIV-AIDS and Hepatitis C in staggering numbers. The Bleeding Disease recounts the promising and perilous history of American medical and social efforts to manage hemophilia in the twentieth century.\\This is both a success story and a cautionary tale, one built on the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of an advocacy movement that sought normalcy—rather than social isolation and hyper-protectiveness—for the boys and men who suffered from the severest form of the disease.

Introduction : hemophilia as pathology of progress -- The emergence of the hemophilia concept -- The scientist, the bleeder, and the laboratory -- Vital factors in the making of a masculine world -- Normality within limits -- The hemophiliac's passport to freedom -- Autonomy and other imperatives of the health consumer -- The mismanagement of hemophilia and AIDS -- Conclusion : the governance of clinical progress in a global age.