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A paradigm-shifting exploration of the politics of health around the world, by an award-winning scientist
“Zaman’s optimism . . . is welcome. . . . His sense of urgency is irresistible.”
—The Wall Street Journal on Muhammad H. Zaman’s The Biography of ResistanceIn this groundbreaking new book, award-winning scientist and author Muhammad H. Zaman delves into the history of infectious disease and related policies in the United States since the dawn of germ theory, from cholera and meningitis to the recent COVID crisis, to show how vulnerable communities have been harmed in the name of research or disease control.
Infected is the epic story of compromised doctors, politicians, and the heroes who challenged them. Zaman shows that exclusionary immigration acts, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the development of biological weapons, the fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan, and the rhetoric around the COVID-19 pandemic are all parts of the same deeper story—one of medical science intertwined with power and politics.
This is a story that continues today, in poor nations that have long been impacted by foreign policy, and at the borders, where asylum seekers are denied lifesaving medicines regardless of the party in power. Melding science and history,
Infected presents infection as a key to understanding our recent past, present, and future.
About the author
Muhammad H. Zaman is an award-winning educator and researcher at Boston University, where he is Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health. He is the author of Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens and lives in Boston.
Summary
A paradigm-shifting exploration of the politics of health around the world, by an award-winning scientist
“Zaman’s optimism . . . is welcome. . . . His sense of urgency is irresistible.”
—The Wall Street Journal on Muhammad H. Zaman’s The Biography of Resistance
In this groundbreaking new book, award-winning scientist Muhammad H. Zaman—an expert on how disease affects vulnerable communities—delves into the history of U.S. epidemics, from the earliest cases of syphilis, cholera, and smallpox to AIDS and the recent COVID crisis, to show how the country’s response (or lack thereof) to infectious disease in America is part of a critical, time-tested strategy in America’s toolbox of oppression of the weak, the poor, and the non-white.
In the vein of Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Dorothy Roberts’s Fatal Invention, Infected is the epic story of white supremacists, compromised doctors, racist politicians, and the heroes who challenged them. Zaman shows that exclusionary immigration acts, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the development of biological weapons, the early response to the AIDS epidemic, the fake CIA vaccination campaign in Pakistan, and the xenophobic rhetoric sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic are all parts of the same deeper story—one of medical science twisted in the service of social control.
This is a story that continues today, on Native American reservations, in foreign zones occupied by the U.S. military, and on our borders, where asylum seekers are denied lifesaving medicines. Melding cutting-edge science and history, Infected presents infection as a key to understanding our recent past, present, and future.
