Margaret E. MacDonald (Author)
This paper is about a drug called misoprostol and its controversial clinical and social lives. Although originally developed as a prevention for gastric ulcers, in the 1980s, it developed an off-label reputation as an abortifacient. The drug’s association with clandestine abortion has profoundly shaped its social life as a marginal and suspect character in the realm of global maternal and reproductive health where it has the potential to prevent two major causes of maternal death––postpartum hemorrhage and unsafe abortion. The social life of misoprostol has also been shaped by the question of authoritative practice, that is, the question of who can deliver medicine. Both issues are about the specters of misuse of misoprostol: off-label, illegal, immoral, or by unlicensed providers. In this paper, I focus ethnographically on two women’s health nongovernmental organizations that have been conducting clinical testing and advocacy for the use of misoprostol for reproductive indications in global maternal health settings. Drawing on the notions of pharmaceutical activism and protocol feminism, I describe and analyze how the tools of evidence and authoritative practice have been reassembled in new networks of expertise toward the social justice goals of life, access, and dignity for women.
...More
Book
Mikkael A. Sekeres;
(2022)
Drugs and the FDA: Safety, Efficacy, and the Public's Trust
(/isis/citation/CBB614307145/)
Book
Amy Marie Hay;
(2021)
The Defoliation of America: Agent Orange Chemicals, Citizens, and Protests
(/isis/citation/CBB039979128/)
Article
Maayan Sudai;
(February 2022)
‘A woman and now a man’: The legitimation of sex-assignment surgery in the United States (1849–1886)
(/isis/citation/CBB859295291/)
Article
Monamie Bhadra Haines;
(February 2019)
Contested credibility economies of nuclear power in India
(/isis/citation/CBB710438620/)
Book
Greene, Jeremy A.;
Watkins, Elizabeth Siegel;
(2012)
Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America
(/isis/citation/CBB001214574/)
Article
Chiara Cosentino;
(2016)
Invisible Women: Ireland and the Fight to Access Safe and Legal Abortion
(/isis/citation/CBB073020496/)
Article
Andrea M. Bertotti;
Skye A. Miner;
(April 2019)
Constructing contentious and noncontentious facts: How gynecology textbooks create certainty around pharma-contraceptive safety: Research Note
(/isis/citation/CBB188878802/)
Article
Natassia F. Brenman;
Richard Milne;
(May 2022)
“Ready for What?”: Timing and Speculation in Alzheimer’s Disease Drug Development
(/isis/citation/CBB016946522/)
Book
Brianna Theobald;
(2019)
Reproduction on the reservation: Pregnancy, childbirth, and colonialism in the long twentieth century
(/isis/citation/CBB768527670/)
Article
Jongyoung Kim;
Heeyun Kim;
Jawoon Lim;
(2020)
The Politics of Science and Undone Protection in the “Samsung Leukemia” Case
(/isis/citation/CBB267983165/)
Article
Giampietro Gobo;
Barbara Sena;
(2022)
Questioning and Disputing Vaccination Policies. Scientists and Experts in the Italian Public Debate
(/isis/citation/CBB026130989/)
Article
Hugo Ferpozzi;
(2020)
Straight outta the tropics: Pathological features of techno-scientific promises in neglected tropical disease research
(/isis/citation/CBB359820359/)
Article
Lyle Fearnley;
(September 2020)
Viral Sovereignty or Sequence Etiquette? Asian Science, Open Data, and Knowledge Control in Global Virus Surveillance
(/isis/citation/CBB925083175/)
Article
Chan-Yuan Wong;
(2022)
Dynamic Capabilities in a Learning Society—The Case of Taiwan in Controlling the Coronavirus Outbreak
(/isis/citation/CBB181247803/)
Article
Ute Kalender;
Christine Holmberg;
(August 2019)
Courtesy work: Care practices for quality assurance in a cohort study
(/isis/citation/CBB109122041/)
Article
Anne Kerr;
Tineke Broer;
Emily Ross;
Sarah Cunningham Burley;
(August 2019)
Polygenic risk-stratified screening for cancer: Responsibilization in public health genomics
(/isis/citation/CBB774833590/)
Article
Klaus Hoeyer;
Susanne Bauer;
Martyn Pickersgill;
(August 2019)
Datafication and accountability in public health: Introduction to a special issue
(/isis/citation/CBB575402754/)
Article
Shi Lin Loh;
Sulfikar Amir;
(June 2019)
Healing Fukushima: Radiation hazards and disaster medicine in post-3.11 Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB754363980/)
Article
Klaus Hoeyer;
(August 2019)
Data as promise: Reconfiguring Danish public health through personalized medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB486735939/)
Article
Linda F Hogle;
(August 2019)
Accounting for accountable care: Value-based population health management
(/isis/citation/CBB281463388/)
Be the first to comment!