In this last episode of the first series of Body Politics, we reflect back on the history that we have come by over the past few months. One of the regular themes thrown up by the series' episodes is what we mean by 'progress' in science and medicine, and how a critical history of science and medicine can have deep, philosophical significance for o…

Between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the beginning of the 1960s, the idea of 'global health' came to be one of the key ways in which powerful, global institutions expressed their visions for how the world should be run. Drugs, poisons and other therapies came to be the materials through which humanity was to be made less prone to its…

Over the past seventy years, antibiotics have become one of the world's most prominent and powerful technologies for reducing human suffering through infectious diseases. Some historians have even gone as far to describe this period as the 'antibiotic era'. However, in the early twenty-first century, the progressive promises of antibiotics have com…

How do people cope on a day-to-day basis with experiences of infectious diseases? In this episode of Body Politics, we answer this question with the help of Dr Georgia McWhinney, an historian at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Dr McWhinney is an historian of the First World War (1914-1918), the conflict that defined politics and society fo…

In the past twelve months, we have become acutely aware of the ways in which diseases are the products of our relationship with the natural world, by way of disease transmission between animals and humans. This process is called zoonosis, and has been identified by some commentators as 'a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the twenty-fir…

"Are you gonna get the vaccine?" In the past few months, this question has probably been asked millions of times in hundreds of languages, in households all over the world. For many of us, answering affirmatively is more than a response to a simple, closed question, but puts us on the "right side" of history. By saying "yes" to vaccines, we also sa…

N.B. This episode contains audio footage of deceased peoples from Australia's Aboriginal populations, particularly from 07mins 20 to 09mins 50. The reason for this disclaimer will be made clear on a forthcoming blog-post. After the hope and optimism that late-2020 brought concerning vaccines for COVID-19, the last week has seen an increasing focus …

The third decade of the twenty-first century has started with the 'worst years ever', right? For billions of people around the planet, our 'new normals' are unpleasant, uncomfortable and dangerous, made so by the pervasive effects of COVID-19. However, history tells us that our assumptions about what was normal - an absence of infectious disease - …