A magic bullet for the “African” mother? Neo-Imperial reproductive futurism and the pharmaceutical “solution” to the HIV/AIDS Crisis

Soc Polit. 2010;17(3):349-78. doi: 10.1093/sp/jxq012.

Abstract

On the basis of a close reading of popular and medical texts which address a debate over the ethics of clinical drug trials funded by the United States and designed mainly for sub-Saharan Africa, I argue that international public health discourse about infant HIV infection in that region reflects and legitimates a neo-imperialist, anti-reproductive justice ideology. Participants share a fetal-centered logic that US-funded biomedicine must shoulder the burden of rescuing sub-Saharan Africa from itself by using the bodies of HIV-positive pregnant women to transmit biomedicine's magic bullet—antiretroviral drugs—to the next generation. The survival of the fetus, disguised as the well-being of the HIV-positive woman and accomplished by the magic of biomedical research, becomes the survival of a region otherwise doomed by its present state of economic, political, and medical incapacity. This version of what queer theorist Lee Edelman (2004, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive) calls “reproductive futurism” redounds to the benefit of the more explicitly women-hating and nationalist ideologies of still-powerful right-wing movements against reproductive and sexual rights.

Publication types

  • Historical Article

MeSH terms

  • Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome* / economics
  • Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome* / ethnology
  • Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome* / history
  • Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome* / psychology
  • Africa South of the Sahara / ethnology
  • Antirheumatic Agents* / economics
  • Antirheumatic Agents* / history
  • Clinical Trials as Topic* / economics
  • Clinical Trials as Topic* / history
  • Clinical Trials as Topic* / legislation & jurisprudence
  • Clinical Trials as Topic* / psychology
  • Ethics, Medical / education
  • Ethics, Medical / history
  • Ethics, Pharmacy* / education
  • Ethics, Pharmacy* / history
  • Female
  • HIV*
  • History, 20th Century
  • History, 21st Century
  • Humans
  • Patient Participation / economics
  • Patient Participation / history
  • Patient Participation / legislation & jurisprudence
  • Patient Participation / psychology
  • Pharmaceutical Solutions* / economics
  • Pharmaceutical Solutions* / history
  • Politics
  • Pregnancy
  • Public Health / economics
  • Public Health / education
  • Public Health / history
  • Public Health / legislation & jurisprudence
  • United States / ethnology
  • Women's Health* / ethnology
  • Women's Health* / history

Substances

  • Antirheumatic Agents
  • Pharmaceutical Solutions