Financialization and Eradication

• In Event: Vaccine Histories and their Politics of Anticipation

Abstract

Drawing from our collaborative ethnographic research, in which we move between research hubs in the United States, global health organizations in Switzerland, and clinics in six African countries, this paper examines the tension between financialization and eradication in contemporary approaches to manage the global disease burden. Broadly, we take interest in the ways financialization impacts global health; and specifically, we trace the ways it affects innovation and access to biomedical solutions. While our premise is that financialization shapes biopharmaceutical innovation, and our concern is how this may be skewing the benefits of innovation away from the many and towards the (moneyed) few, we also observe several counterfactual examples exist of mechanisms that have successfully addressed market failure (e.g. DNDi) or of innovations that have occurred in the absence of significant consumer markets in order to eradicate disease (e.g. Ebola). So, we hold in mind financialization and eradication to better understand contemporary logics in global health, and thus, we also work to bridge two related bodies of literature: one about the history of disease management in global health (Packard 2016; Stepan 2016) and another that examines the influence of capital in biopharmaceutical markets (Sunder Rajan 2006; Dumit 2012; Waldby and Cooper 2014). Taking a life-cycle approach to innovations, we examine how commercial products, including those used to treat Ebola and HCV, and prevent HIV, are shaped across four environments (finance, business, R&D, and therapeutic markets) reveal new trends in the priorities of global health organizations, pharmaceutical firms, and financial actors.

Authors

• Ryan Whitacre, Graduate Institute, Geneva

• Vinh-Kim Nguyen, Graduate Institute, Geneva

• Sara Paparini, Graduate Institute, Geneva

• Nadya Wells, Graduate Institute, Geneva