Evidence, Ethos and Experiment

The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa

P. Wenzel Geissler, Catherine Molyneux

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781785335006, 9780857450920
• eBook ISBN: 9780857450937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference
• Index: Social Sciences

Medical research has been central to biomedicine in Africa for over a century, and Africa, along with other tropical areas, has been crucial to the development of medical science. At present, study populations in Africa participate in an increasing number of medical research projects and clinical trials, run by both public institutions and private companies. Global debates about the politics and ethics of this research are growing and local concerns are prompting calls for social studies of the "trial communities" produced by this scientific work. Drawing on rich, ethnographic and historiographic material, this volume represents the emergent field of anthropological inquiry that links Africanist ethnography to recent concerns with science, the state, and the culture of late capitalism in Africa.

Table of contents

• Evidence, Ethos and Experiment
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Introduction: Studying Trial Communities: Anthropological and Historical Inquiries into Ethos, Politics and Economy of Medical Research in Africa
• Chapter 1: Writing Knowledge and Acknowledgement
• Chapter 2: Can One Rely on Knowledge?
• Chapter 3: Being ‘with the Medical Research Council’: Infant Care and the Social Meanings of Cohort Membership in Gambia’s Plural Therapeutic Landscapes
• Chapter 4: Contextualizing Ethics: Or, the Morality of Knowledge Production in Ethnographic Fieldwork on ‘the Unspeakable’
• Chapter 5: Testing a New Drug for Leprosy: Clofazimine and Its Precursors in Ireland and Nigeria, 1944–1966
• Chapter 6: Elucidating Ethics in Practice: Focus on Accountability
• Chapter 7: When Physicians Meet: Local Medical Knowledge and Global Public Goods
• Chapter 8: The Plausibility Design, Quasiexperiments and Real-world Research: A Case Study of Antimalarial Combination Treatment in Tanzania
• Chapter 9: Remember Bambali: Evidence, Ethics and the Co-production of Truth
• Chapter 10: Foetuses, Facts and Frictions: Insights from Ultrasound Research in Tanzania
• Chapter 11: Healers and Scientists: The Epistemological Politics of Research about Medicinal Plants in Tanzania
• Chapter 12: Parasite Lost: Remembering Modern Times with Kenyan Government Medical Scientists
• Chapter 13: Is the Sharia of the Doctors Killing the People? A Local Debate on Ethics and the Control of HIV/AIDS in a Rural Area in Kenya
• Chapter 14: The Historical Interface between the State and Medical Science in Africa: Kenya’s Case
• Chapter 15: The Intimate Rules of the French Coopération: Morality, Race and the Postcolonial Division of Scientific Work at the Pasteur Institute of Cameroon
• Chapter 16: The Mosquito Taken at the Beerhall: Malaria Research and Control on Zambia’s Copperbelt
• Chapter 17: Trial Communities: HIV and Therapeutic Citizenship in West Africa
• Chapter 18: Differences in Medicine, Differences in Ethics: Or, When is It Research and When is It Kidnapping or is That Event he Right Question?
• Notes on Contributors
• Index