Overview
Persisting Pandemics explores the history of syphilis and AIDS to provide insights into the limits of biomedicine and our experience with epidemics today. Novel therapies developed for syphilis and AIDS became renowned in the medical field and the broader public sphere as exemplars of biomedical innovations. Public health campaigns based on these spectacular biomedical advances, however, have repeatedly fallen short of their goals to eliminate syphilis and AIDS in the population. The diseases epitomize the power of innovative biomedical therapies for the individual while unveiling limitations of scientific medicine in the domain of public health. The need for a public health approach to address mistrust in science, government indifference, and racial inequalities is relevant for strategies to eliminate COVID-19 today. Persisting Pandemics argues that campaigns to eliminate these diseases have not succeeded because they have not adequately addressed how diseases like AIDS, syphilis, and COVID spread unevenly in populations according to race, ethnicity, and geographic location. Despite the expectation of public health officials that medical advances would render epidemics obsolete, new diseases continue to emerge and spread regardless of efforts to eliminate them. Medical doctor and historian Powel H. Kazanjian concludes that narratives of syphilis, AIDS and COVID, unlike smallpox, do not contain a discrete ending—at least not within the timelines specified by their elimination campaigns. Instead they will be a continued part of our existence.
Full Product Details
Author: Powel H. Kazanjian
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Imprint: Rutgers University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.00cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.367kg
ISBN: 9781978830677
ISBN 10: 197883067
Pages: 276
Publication Date: 15 November 2024
Recommended Age: From 16 to 99 years
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
“Kazanjian offers a sweeping study of telling moments in medicine’s long struggle against infectious disease, bringing us a pointed message about our present public health challenges.” -- Christopher Crenner * Hudson-Major Professor of the History of Medicine * “Carefully researched and meticulously documented, Persisting Pandemics discusses similarities in the history of syphilis and AIDS and what lessons this story has for the battle against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. Kazanjian provides the most thorough analysis that I have seen of this topic, providing insights beneficial to those officials involved in dealing with the current pandemic, as well as those who will have to deal with future pandemics.” -- John Parascandola * author of Sex, Sin and Science: A History of Syphilis in America *
“Kazanjian offers a sweeping study of telling moments in medicine’s long struggle against infectious disease, bringing us a pointed message about our present public health challenges.” -- Christopher Crenner, * Hudson-Major Professor of the History of Medicine * “Carefully researched and meticulously documented, Persisting Pandemics discusses similarities in the history of syphilis and AIDS and what lessons this story has for the battle against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. Kazanjian provides the most thorough analysis that I have seen of this topic, providing insights beneficial to those officials involved in dealing with the current pandemic, as well as those who will have to deal with future pandemics.” -- John Parascandola, * author of Sex, Sin and Science: A History of Syphilis in America *
“Kazanjian offers a sweeping study of telling moments in medicine’s long struggle against infectious disease, bringing us a pointed message about our present public health challenges.” — Christopher Crenner, Hudson-Major Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center “Carefully researched and meticulously documented, Persisting Pandemics discusses similarities in the history of syphilis and AIDS and what lessons this story has for the battle against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. Kazanjian provides the most thorough analysis that I have seen of this topic, providing insights beneficial to those officials involved in dealing with the current pandemic, as well as those who will have to deal with future pandemics.” — John Parascandola, author of Sex, Sin and Science: A History of Syphilis in America
Author Information
POWEL H. KAZANJIAN, MD, PhD is a professor and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, at the University of Michigan Medical Center and a professor in the Department of History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
