Invigorating The Public Body : A Case Study Of HIV/AIDS Activist Confrontations Against Big Pharma For Access To Medicines

Using 'illness as metaphor," critical communications theory, citizenship studies and critical political economy, this thesis presents a case study of the confrontation between "Big Pharma" and HIV/AIDS activists concerning access to HIV/AIDS medicines; a confrontation that spilled over into the World Trade Organization (WTO) causing worldwide public outrage. The timeline starts in the 1980s, but focuses on confrontations between these actors during the 1990s and early 2000s. By making HIV/AIDS 'public and 'political', activists: battled stigmatization; revealed the politics of medicine; made Big Pharma more socially responsible; influence the WTO's and global health agenda; and stirred dissent against a neoliberal globalization, exposing power relations between the global rich and global poor. This is about antiBody (HIV/AIDS activists) targeting a dangerous site of infection (Big Pharma) and combating the spread of two illnesses (HIV/AIDS and neoliberalism which invigorated the 'public body' in terms of public health and debate.

Invigorating The Public Body : A Case Study Of HIV/AIDS Activist Confrontations Against Big Pharma For Access To Medicines

Using 'illness as metaphor," critical communications theory, citizenship studies and critical political economy, this thesis presents a case study of the confrontation between "Big Pharma" and HIV/AIDS activists concerning access to HIV/AIDS medicines; a confrontation that spilled over into the World Trade Organization (WTO) causing worldwide public outrage. The timeline starts in the 1980s, but focuses on confrontations between these actors during the 1990s and early 2000s. By making HIV/AIDS 'public and 'political', activists: battled stigmatization; revealed the politics of medicine; made Big Pharma more socially responsible; influence the WTO's and global health agenda; and stirred dissent against a neoliberal globalization, exposing power relations between the global rich and global poor. This is about antiBody (HIV/AIDS activists) targeting a dangerous site of infection (Big Pharma) and combating the spread of two illnesses (HIV/AIDS and neoliberalism which invigorated the 'public body' in terms of public health and debate.

Aristotle on the Nature and Politics of Medicine

According to Aristotle, the medical art aims at health, which is a virtue of the body, and does so in an unlimited way. Consequently, medicine does not determine the extent to which health should be pursued, and “mental health” falls under medicine only via pros hen predication. Because medicine is inherently oriented to its end, it produces health in accordance with its nature and disease contrary to its nature—even when disease is good for the patient. Aristotle’s politician understands that this inherent orientation can be systematically distorted, and so would see the need for something like the Hippocratic Oath.

Legacies of Warlords and Empires

This chapter argues that by 1937, a medical infrastructure of Western hospitals and clinics already existed in Yunnan—many of which promoted Jennerian vaccination against smallpox, if not immunization against other diseases. This organization had hybrid origins in the efforts of French, British, and Chinese empires during the early twentieth century, although the province remained on the fringes of the emergent Nationalist medical administration until the late 1930s. Wartime biomedical experts in Kunming relied upon this limited but significant infrastructure to build a new vaccination scheme that sought universal coverage of urban and rural populations for the first time. Ultimately, the politics of medicine—and especially vaccination against smallpox—in prewar Yunnan reflected power struggles between empires for influence in the region. Like the Russian, Japanese, and local forces that battled for controlling interests in Manchuria, French and British imperial powers in Yunnan competed with each other as they engaged with local warlords; sought to build economic and transportation networks in the region; and used medicine, especially epidemic control, as a means of establishing influence.

The Balms of White Grief: Indian Doctors, Vulnerability and Pride in Victoria, 1890–1912

This article uses the 1898 manslaughter trial of two Indian medical practitioners in Victoria, Australia, as a lens to explore the settler colonial politics of medicine. Whereas imperial and colonial historians have long recognised the close and complex interrelationship of medicine and race, the emotional dimensions to care-giving have been under-appreciated – as has the place of the emotions within wider histories of sickness and health. Yet, this case studies shows, grief, vulnerability, catharsis and pride shaped the practice of medicine infin-de-siecleVictoria. In particular, I argue that, like other emotions, grief does racial work.

Stand Up to Cancer 2012 and 2014

In a fragmenting attention economy, the stakes for television (TV) and for the public service broadcaster are particularly high. This article looks at the different strategies at play in the British broadcaster C4’s adaptation of the US-originated Stand Up to Cancer telethon format to present its particular voice and brand in this ecology. This intervention into the politics of medicine is analysed in relation to the discourses of neo-liberalism which, it is argued, have increasingly become part of the mode of address of British factual TV content and have increasingly defined the working of the country’s national health system.