Glucantime: War Entanglements of an Imperfect Drug

• In Event: Interrupting the Care/Violence Nexus in Times of War and Peace – I

Abstract

Painless skin sores are the only physical manifestation of a disease called leishmaniasis. These lesions appear when a sandfly, infected with Leishmania parasites, encounters a human source of blood in the jungle and bites. What biomedicine offers to treat leishmaniasis is a highly toxic drug, involving 20 consecutive days of painful injections and very unpleasant side effects. In Colombia, this pharmaceutical, called Glucantime, has been subject to strict controls by the state. Its restricted access is usually understood as a political strategy of war to harm one of the populations most affected by leishmaniasis: the guerrillas. Nonetheless, Glucantime’s inaccessibility is justified by experts—whether health authorities, scientists or doctors—as a “necessary evil” through rationales of care. Based on ethnographic research, I argue that care is a common notion underlying all of the arguments used to justify the establishment of a complex control scheme around Glucantime. The discursive and material bases on which Glucantime has been restrictively controlled, undermining the diagnosis and pharmaceutical treatment not only of guerrilla members but also of civilians, show that care and violence are not mutually-exclusive. It is through care logics, taken for granted in medical sites and public health practices, that a line gets drawn between friends and foes. It is thanks to care that war bureaucracies related to Glucantime and leishmaniasis management pass as benevolent, forms of biopolitical governance that could not otherwise be justified, at least not openly if a state—like the Colombian—claims to abide by the International Humanitarian Law.

Author

• Lina Beatriz Pinto Garcia, York University