TY - JOUR
T1 - Global health, accelerated
T2 - Rapid diagnostics and the fragile solidarities of ‘emergency R&D’
AU - Kelly, Ann H.
AU - Lezaun, Javier
AU - Street, Alice
N1 - Funding Information:
Research for this paper was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [grant agreement number: 715450], the Wellcome Trust [Award grant number 204939/Z/16/Z], and a Newton Fund Institutional Links award [grant number 280969145] funded by the Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy and the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, and delivered by the British Council. We would like to thank our many collaborators for their contributions to the wider research projects on which this paper has drawn, including Rashid Ansumana, Imogen Bevan, Momoh Gbetuwa, Mohamed Boie Jalloh, Koichi Kameda, Ilana Löwy, Gustavo Matta, Mohammed Hashim Rogers and Eva Vernooij. Any errors or omissions are the sole responsibility of the authors. We are also grateful to our reviewers, whose close reading and astute comments helped sharpen our argument.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - A new paradigm of emergency R&D has transformed global health. Beginning with the 2014–2016 Ebola virus disease epidemic in West Africa, experimental product development has been propelled to the frontlines of outbreak response, radically compressing timelines and unsettling regulatory standards, biosecurity strategies and humanitarian protocols. This paper examines these emerging epistemic practices and ethical norms as they played out in the creation of rapid diagnostic tests for Ebola, Zika and COVID-19. In each of these viral public health crises, new platforms for quick detection have been the principal load-bearing pillar of outbreak response, and the effort to speed up their development illuminates the fragile set of accommodations between public health needs and commercial interests that obtain under conditions of emergency. The World Health Organization’s role in stimulating and coordinating the development of these tools provides our analytical through-line, and reveals, we argue, the limitations of an accelerationist model of global health innovation organized around the concept of ‘market failure’. The evolution of this paradigm of ‘emergency R&D’ into a permanent feature of pandemic preparedness will further narrow our imagination of how global health goods should be construed and provided.
AB - A new paradigm of emergency R&D has transformed global health. Beginning with the 2014–2016 Ebola virus disease epidemic in West Africa, experimental product development has been propelled to the frontlines of outbreak response, radically compressing timelines and unsettling regulatory standards, biosecurity strategies and humanitarian protocols. This paper examines these emerging epistemic practices and ethical norms as they played out in the creation of rapid diagnostic tests for Ebola, Zika and COVID-19. In each of these viral public health crises, new platforms for quick detection have been the principal load-bearing pillar of outbreak response, and the effort to speed up their development illuminates the fragile set of accommodations between public health needs and commercial interests that obtain under conditions of emergency. The World Health Organization’s role in stimulating and coordinating the development of these tools provides our analytical through-line, and reveals, we argue, the limitations of an accelerationist model of global health innovation organized around the concept of ‘market failure’. The evolution of this paradigm of ‘emergency R&D’ into a permanent feature of pandemic preparedness will further narrow our imagination of how global health goods should be construed and provided.
KW - diagnostics
KW - global health
KW - market failure
KW - solidarity
KW - WHO
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126229608&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/reso20
U2 - 10.1080/03085147.2021.2014730
DO - 10.1080/03085147.2021.2014730
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85126229608
SN - 0308-5147
VL - 51
SP - 187
EP - 210
JO - Economy and Society
JF - Economy and Society
IS - 2
ER -