Will to live : AIDS therapies and the politics of survival / João Biehl ; illustrated by Torben Eskerod.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Biehl, João Guilherme, author.

Contributor:

Eskerod, Torben, 1960- illustrator.

Series:

In-Formation

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medical care--Brazil.

Medical care.

AIDS (Disease)--Patients--Brazil.

AIDS (Disease).

AIDS (Disease)--Political aspects--Brazil.

AIDS (Disease)--Social aspects--Brazil.

Medical care--Political aspects--Brazil.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (482 pages)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2007]

Summary:

Will to Live tells how Brazil, against all odds, became the first developing country to universalize access to life-saving AIDS therapies--a breakthrough made possible by an unexpected alliance of activists, government reformers, development agencies, and the pharmaceutical industry. But anthropologist João Biehl also tells why this policy, hailed as a model worldwide, has been so difficult to implement among poor Brazilians with HIV/AIDS, who are often stigmatized as noncompliant or untreatable, becoming invisible to the public. More broadly, Biehl examines the political economy of pharmaceuticals that lies behind large-scale treatment rollouts, revealing the possibilities and inequalities that come with a magic bullet approach to health care. By moving back and forth between the institutions shaping the Brazilian response to AIDS and the people affected by the disease, Biehl has created a book of unusual vividness, scope, and detail. At the core of Will to Live is a group of AIDS patients--unemployed, experiencing homelessness, involved with prostitution and drugs--that established a makeshift health service. Biehl chronicled the personal lives of these people for over ten years and Torben Eskerod represents them here in more than one hundred stark photographs. Ethnography, social medicine, and art merge in this unique book, illuminating the care and agency needed to extend life amid perennial violence. Full of lessons for the future, Will to Live promises to have a lasting influence in the social sciences and in the theory and practice of global public health.

Contents:

Cover Page

Half-title Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Contents

Introduction. A New World of Health

The Right to a Nonprojected Future

Universal Access to Lifesaving Therapies

A Political Economy of Pharmaceuticals

Persistent Inequalities

Lives

"Take me to my father's house" (Edileusa)

"Today is another world" (Luis)

"If I only had thought then the way I think now" (Rose)

"Why will I think about the future?" (Nerivaldo)

"A child is what I wanted most in life" (Evangivaldo)

"To have HIV . . . is like not having money" (Valquirene)

"Too much medication" (Soraia)

"A beautiful place" (Tiquinho)

The Politics of Survival

Chapter One. Pharmaceutical Governance

Globalization and Statecraft

The Social Science of a Transforming Regime

AIDS, Democratization, and Human Rights

A Transnational Policy-Space

The Activist State

Intellectual Property Rights and World Trade

A Country's Disease-Public-Private Partnerships

Decentralization and a Magic Bullet Approach

Public-Sector Science and the Production of Generic Drugs

Scaling-Up

The Pharmaceuticalization of Public Health

Chapter Two. Circuits of Care

How Has AIDS Activism Changed?

From Passion to Politics

The AIDS Industry

Micro-Politics of Patienthood

Performing Citizenship

Grassroots Health Systems

A New National AIDS Program

On the Street: Violence, Charity, and Pleasure

In the Mainstream

Measures of Success, Undesirable Realities

The Undetectable Virus

"It is all about medicines now"

In Search of a Comprehensive Approach

"There is not just one death"

Chapter Three. A Hidden Epidemic

The Limits of Surveillance

AIDS in Bahia

Economic Death

Pelourinho

"I set myself on fire" (Maria Madalena).

"They take care of me as if I were family" (Lazaro)

Technologies of Invisibility

A System of Nonintervention

Infectious Diseases Research

Medical Sovereignty, Local Bioethics

Triage

The Social Life of Death Certificates

AIDS Therapies and Homelessness

"Science makes people equal"

Brasília

Chapter Four. Experimental Subjects

AIDS-like Symptoms

HIV Antibody Test

Certainty: Closing the Past

Uncertainty: The Window Period

A Population of Doubts

What Is Socially Visible Is an Imagined AIDS

Risk and Prevention Models

Libidinal Order

Science and Subjectivity

Dangerous Worlds of Intimacy

Technoneurosis

"They own their bodies and are responsible for their actions"

Clinical Trials

Chapter Five. Patient-Citizenship

"On the plane of immanence that leads us into a life"

A Place of No Government

Pastoral Power

Institutional Belonging and Treatment Adherence

New Prohibitions

"In Caasah we don't just have AIDS-we have God"

Religion, Health, Wealth

Ambiguous Political Subjects

Resuming Sexual Life

Beyond Direct Observed Therapy

Chapter Six. Will to Live

Lifelong AIDS

Human Values

Medical Disparities

From Epidemic to Personalized Disease

Physically Well, Economically Dead

Drug Resistance and Rescue Treatments

"Medication is me" (Luis)

"I am mother and father" (Rose)

"It is the financial part of life that tortures me" (Evangivaldo)

Conclusion. Global Public Health

Large-Scale Medical Change

"A little more reverence for life"

The Future of Treatment Rollouts

Pharmaceutical Philanthropy and Equity

Where Is the State?

A Vanishing Civil Society

Understanding the Nexus of AIDS, Poverty, and Politics

Local Economies of Salvation

The Unexpected and the Possible

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Series title from dust jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [425]-449) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781400832798

1400832799

OCLC:

1272995850