Futures past and present - hopes and fears and the history of antibiotic resistance

Antibiotic resistance is today acknowledged as one of the greatest challenges for modern medicine.  Dystopic visions are prevalent, the fear of a future epidemic for which no treatment is available widespread, and  terms such as “superbugs”, confer a special agency to multiresistant microbes. In other areas of medicine, the future is defined in opposition to the past as the “place” where solutions are realized, presence manifested, and wrongs righted”. However, in the treatment of infectious disease it is the past which has these glorious futures (”magic bullet”, ”golden age of medicine)”.  

Hopes or fears for a future do not only describe expectations, they are also part of the way these futures (our present) are brought into being. They are performative in the sense that they mobilize the interest of allies and define political agendas, and therefore particularly interesting to study. However, they are largely unexplored as such in the history of medicine. This conference intends to explore the changing expectations of antibiotics over time. It will explore past (and some present) dreams, hopes and fears for the future, in the clinic, in politics, and in the laboratory settings.

 

Open for all. Registration by April 12th to: amund.pedersen@medisin.uio.no

Time and place: – , Radisson Blu Scandinavia Hotel, Holbergs gate 30

Monday 22.4

 

1000:  Anne Kveim Lie (Oslo): Exploring past and present futures: opening and welcome

Agricultural past and present futures

1030-1130:

Ulrike Thoms (Berlin); Antibiotics, Agriculture and Political Agendas. Past, Present and Future of German Agricultural Policy and its Impact on Strategies against Microbiological Resistance

Claas Kirchhelle (Oxford): Utilizing resistance. Agricultural antibiotics, public anxiety, and expert empowerment in Britain (1953-2003)

1130-1200: Discussion

1200-1300: Lunch

Clinical past and present futures
 

1300-1430: 

Scott Podolsky (Harvard) Antibiotic Anxieties: Therapeutic Dystopias and the Framing of Antibiotic Reform, 1948-2013

Morten Lindbæk (Oslo): Negotiating futures: working with use of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance in community medicine

1430-1500:  Coffee

1500-1600:

Flurin Condreau (Zürich): Controlling fears: Hospitals and infection (control) in Britain 1860-1960

Quentin Ravelli (Paris) Knowledge without power: multi-resistance from global consciousness to local helplessness

1600-1630: Discussion

1900: Dinner

 

Tuesday 23.4

 

Past  and present futures of the pharmaceutical industry

0900-1030:

Maria Jesus Santesmases (Madrid): Expectations fulfilled: Inventing a Spanish antibiotic 1959-1975

Christoph Gradmann (Oslo): A future for a molecule: inventing combination therapy for tuberculosis 1940-1960?

Amund Pedersen (Oslo): Mobilizing hope in the midst of fear: negotiating penicillin production and distribution in Norway

1030-1130: Discussion and coffee break

Public health past and present futures

1130-1230

Anne Kveim Lie (Oslo): A battle of futures:  dystopias and utopias in drug regulation policies and practices in Norway

Bård Hobæk (Oslo): Dystopic visions and restrictive practice: The Norwegian “clause of need” in practice

1230-1330: Lunch

Public health past and present futures (cont)

1330-1430:

Dag Berild:  Apocalyptic scenarios: effective means of prevention or scare propaganda?

Siri Jensen (Oslo): Different expectations for the future? Cultural factors and the prescription and consumption of antibiotics.

1430: Discussion and Coffee

Concluding comment

1530-1630: Robert Bud (London)

1630-1730: Final discussion

1900: Dinner

Published Apr. 3, 2013 10:46 AM - Last modified Apr. 3, 2013 10:46 AM
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