The End of the Beginning? Temporality and Bioagency in Pandemic Research.

This paper deals with the ways in which the intellectual and political history of AIDS can assist in the chronological conceptualization of a pandemic such as COVID-19 as it is unfolding. It problematizes the idea of pandemic "beginnings" and "ends" to show that such definitions are shaped by the disciplinary location and thematic foci of relevant scholars. Central to this analysis is the notion that ethical and political contexts affect research on a pandemic in different ways at national and global levels at various points in its trajectory. The article develops this argument in relation to two main themes: firstly, with reference to the history of AIDS research in South Africa; secondly, with the philosophical concept of bioagency to understand the ways in which viruses and humans co-shape the course of epidemics over time. I first make the case for the development of historically informed, long-term ethnographic studies of COVID-19. Using bioagency as a point of departure to consider viruses as social actors, the essay then critiques the notion of bioinformationalism as catalyzing the widening accessibility of biomedical research. Instead, I discuss the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries as protagonists in the operation of biocapital. I argue that the history of AIDS in South Africa can provide methodological and theoretical insights into how to interpret an unfolding epidemic, outlining an ambitious transdisciplinary research agenda for thinking about the temporality of a pandemic spanning the different, interconnected, scales of life.

African voices in global health: Knowledge, creativity, accountability.

In this article we offer an introduction to a special issue of Global Public Health on the theme of 'African Voices in Global Health: Knowledge, Creativity, Accountability'. This special issue explores Africans' self-understood roles - and voices - in global health (as both researchers and interlocutors in relation to various global health institutions/policies). We argue that the special issue's focus on African voices in global health is critical in view of the legacies of colonial medicine and public health for contemporary narratives, discourses, and practices. It is important to acknowledge that Africans continue to address the structural injustices facing them in relation to global health policies and practices on the continent. In the face of this they have demanded that donors, NGOs, governments, and intergovernmental organisations be politically, fiscally, and ethically accountable to the people they serve on the continent. As the special issue highlights, critical scholars of global health based in Africa are increasingly offering challenges to the frequent positioning of African patients and study-participants as either invisible, or disempowered, in understanding and shaping their own lived experiences of health in a transnational context.

'A matter of conscience': the moral authority of the World Medical Association and the readmission of the South Africans, 1976-1994.

This article describes the role of transnational anti-apartheid activism in South Africa, Britain and the United States in generating international moral outrage over the readmission of the Medical Association of South Africa (MASA) to the World Medical Association (WMA), which had taken place in 1981 after it had withdrawn from that body in 1976. It discusses an example of a controversy where an international health organisation (IHO) lost moral authority as a result of being accused of white supremacy and a pro-American engagement in Cold War politics. At the time of its readmission to the WMA, the MASA was controversial because of its failure to strike off its membership roll one of the doctors implicated the death in detention of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko in 1977. It details how these activists viewed the American Medical Association as having campaigned for the MASA's readmission. The WMA's readmission of the MASA cost the former its relationships with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the British Medical Association - a dispute which continued until South Africa's democratic transition of 1994. With its focus on transnational activism in relation to the WMA and the effects of activists' allegations of racism on its internal politics, this article contributes to the literature on the history of IHOs. Ultimately, this controversy shows the deficiency of international medical professional associations as ethical arbitrators of last resort.