Pharmaceutical messianism and the politics of COVID-19 in the United States.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public officials in the United States - from the President to governors, mayors, lawmakers, and even school district commissioners - touted unproven treatments for COVID-19 alongside, and sometimes as opposed to, mask and vaccine mandates. Utilising the framework of 'pharmaceutical messianism', our article focuses on three such cures - hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and monoclonal antibodies - to explore how pharmaceuticals were mobilised within politicised pandemic discourses. Using the states of Utah, Texas, and Florida as illustrative examples, we make the case for paying attention to pharmaceutical messianism at the subnational and local levels, which can very well determine pandemic responses and outcomes in contexts such as the US where subnational governments have wide autonomy. Moreover, we argue that aside from the affordability of the treatments being studied and the heterodox knowledge claiming their efficacy, the widespread uptake of these cures was also informed by popular medical (including immunological) knowledge, pre-existing attitudes toward 'orthodox' measures like vaccines and masks, and mistrust toward authorities and institutions identified with the 'medical establishment'. Taken together, our case studies affirm the recurrent nature of pharmaceutical messianism in times of health crises - while also refining the concept and exposing its limitations.

UK junior doctors' strikes and patients with cancer: a morally questionable association.

Doctors' strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors' strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors' strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on the UK situation and specifically junior doctors' strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments-namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors' strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency.

Is political anxiety different than general anxiety?

Recently, there has been growing interest in the concept of political anxiety. One important question that remains unanswered is whether political anxiety is just a symptom of general anxiety-that those reporting anxiety tied to politics are the same individuals who would already score highly on measures of general anxiety. Using survey data collected in 2023 (N = 436), we find that measures of political and generalized anxiety do not appear to be tapping into a single underlying construct. In addition, the systematic correlates of these measures identified by previous literature are not equivalent predictors of the different types of anxiety. Politics seems to be a source of apprehensiveness and worry that affects individuals who are not necessarily suffering from general anxiety.

The politics of allyship: Multiethnic coalitions and mass attitudes toward protest.

Recent work finds that nonviolent resistance by ethnic minorities is perceived as more violent and requiring more policing than identical resistance by ethnic majorities, reducing its impact and effectiveness. We ask whether allies-advantaged group participants in disadvantaged group movements-can mitigate these barriers. On the one hand, allies can counter negative stereotypes and defuse threat perceptions among advantaged group members, while raising expectations of success and lowering expected risks among disadvantaged group members. On the other hand, allies can entail significant costs, carrying risks of cooptation, replication of power hierarchies, and marginalization of core constituencies. To shed light on this question we draw on the case of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which, in 2020, attracted unprecedented White participation. Employing a national survey experiment, we find that sizeable White presence at racial justice protests increases protest approval, reduces perceptions of violence, and raises the likelihood of participation among White audiences, while not causing significant backlash among Black audiences. Black respondents mostly see White presence as useful for advancing the movement's goals, and predominant White presence reduces expectations that protests will be forcefully repressed. We complement these results with analysis of tens of thousands of images shared on social media during the 2020 BLM protests, finding a significant association between the presence of Whites in the images and user engagement and amplification. The findings suggest that allyship can be a powerful tool for promoting sociopolitical change amid deep structural inequality.

SDGs and public health policies: implementing the S2D grid in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) and public health are often considered as separate policy fields, whereas there is a considerable potential in better coordinating their objectives and measures. Using an analytical grid (S2D grid) linking SDGs and public health objectives and comprising 6 thematic issues and 56 categories, the research team conducted an assessment of health promotion programs in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland. Their objective was to determine whether SDGs and public health concerns can translate into complementary policy objectives, and what was the level of achievement of Lausanne in terms of implementation, intersectoral collaboration and avoidance of redundancy, regarding the vast array of measures potentially dealing with SDGs and health promotion. Results show that measures implemented by Lausanne deal with 80% of categories included in the S2D grid, with a high level of intersectorality and a low level of redundancy. These results also emphasize the fact that linkages between SDGs and health promotion go well beyond the SDG 3 dedicated to 'good health and well-being', and that the S2D grid could be used as a tool in favor of organizational change, promoting the collaboration between stakeholders often reluctant to engage in public health policies.

Motherhood, wet-nursing and nation: nineteenth-century Brazilian medical perspectives.

This paper explores the viewpoints of nineteenth-century Brazilian physicians regarding women's roles as the 'propagators of the race'. It emphasises their perspectives on reproduction, breast feeding, and the involvement of enslaved wet nurses in a society grappling with significant paradoxes and conflicts as it sought to embrace modernisation. It also examines various aspects of women's health and childcare, encompassing topics like miscarriage and puériculture Through an analysis of medical discourse, this paper underscores physicians' profound influence in shaping societal assumptions surrounding maternal roles in Brazil. These understandings were instrumental in shaping the expectations for a 'modern nation', where racial considerations intertwined with broader discourses about female bodies. Drawing on diverse sources from the latter half of the nineteenth century, including newspapers and medical records, this paper also highlights the lived experiences of mothers-both tangible realities and imagined constructs. It emphasises how these experiences became integrated in ideological debates that centred on maternity, race, nationhood and modernity within a South Atlantic context. Conducting a discourse analysis of published medical sources, the paper finally uncovers the intricate interplay between reproductive politics, biological risk perceptions and national defence. It dissects how these elements coalesced into the language of biopolitics, moulding regulations and institutional control over the bodies of both white and black women. This exploration aims to enrich discussions about the intricate dynamics shaping institutional actions within the realms of reproductive health and national interests.

'Prudence, Foresight, Courage, Oeconomy': glass beehives and English society, 1650-1680.

During the English Civil War and subsequent Restoration, beekeeping provided a ready set of moral examples for those seeking answers about the 'natural' structure of society. The practice itself also underwent a number of substantial changes, moving from a traditional craft practice to a more knowledge-focused, technologically complex one. The advent of glass-windowed hives in the latter half of the sixteenth century allowed intellectuals from across the political spectrum to directly observe bees as a way of gathering knowledge about how to understand the divine plan and, with that understanding, improve human society.

The politics of disease.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights a long-known but often neglected aspect of international relations: the ability of disease to challenge and change all aspects of security, as well as the ability of public policies to change the course of disease progression. Diseases, especially mass epidemics like COVID-19, clearly affect political, economic, and social structures, but they can also be ameliorated or exacerbated by political policies, including public health policies. The threat of pandemic disease poses a widespread and increasing threat to international stability. Indeed, the political implications of pandemic disease have become increasingly evident as COVID-19 has precipitated death, economic collapse, and political instability around the globe. Any pandemic disease can precipitate catastrophes, from increasing health care costs to decreased productivity. This theoretical discussion highlights the intertwined interactions between social, political, and economic forces and the emergence and evolution of pandemic disease, with widespread implications for governance and international security.

Might the bioethical principle of individual decisional autonomy have a politically liberalizing effect on soft authoritarian communities?

According to the bioethical principle of individual decisional autonomy, the patient has a right of informed consent to any medical or experimental procedure. The principle is politically liberal by advocating significant individual freedom as guaranteed by law and secured by civil liberties. When practiced in illiberal communities, might it have a political liberalizing effect? I respond first by analyzing cross-national norms of individual decisional autonomy to identify tensions with illiberal community; second, by examining examining Singapore in a single case study to show that liberal bioethics does not promote political liberalization; and third, by showing that the possibility of practicing liberal bioethics in research, clinically as well as in education, does not require a democratic order, and that liberal bioethics is unlikely to encourage the liberalization of illiberal political communities. Hence, it may never contribute to the development of globally effective cross-national norms for the legal regulation of bioethical research and clinical practice. Fourth, to bolster this analysis, I anticipate several possible objections to various of its aspects.