Epstein shows the extent to which AIDS research has been a social and political phenomenon and how the AIDS movement has transformed biomedical research practices through its capacity to garner credibility by novel strategies.

Summary: It is crucial to understand that our progression through the twentieth century towards our contemporary global Crystal Palace (Peter Sloterdijk) of purity and transparency has been constantly accompanied by an almost physical desire for the pure, not just Mondrian's crystalline structures, but also the addictive taste of white sugar and white bread. This book investigates this urge for the pure, but also advocates a much deeper need for the impure, not to reinstate a new organicism, one more back-to-nature movement, but to trace that progression to a point where all modernist values reverse, where technology becomes an agent for the impure and the imperfect. Technology, long an agent for homogeneity and purity, is now turning into one for heterogeneity and global contingency.

Grippe / Impfung / Politik.

The distance between medical and public priorities is exposed in four case studies that reveal the human choices governing scientific innnovation and explore the political, economic and social factors influencing those choices.

What do you associate with chemistry? Explosions, innovative materials, plastics, pollution? The public's confused and contradictory conception of chemistry as basic science, industrial producer and polluter contributes to what we present in this book as chemistry's image as an impure science. Historically, chemistry has always been viewed as impure both in terms of its academic status and its role in transforming modern society. While exploring the history of this science we argue for a characteristic philosophical approach that distinguishes chemistry from physics. This reflection leads us to a philosophical stance that we characterise as operational realism. In this new expanded edition we delve deeper into the questions of properties and potentials that are so important for this philosophy that is based on the manipulation of matter rather than the construction of theories./a

This pioneering study of the geography of influenza during the twentieth century explores how geographical factors contribute to the periodic diffusion of influenza epidemics in the United States, adding a spatial dimension to national efforts to control the disease. Pyle brings together findings from history, virology, epidemiology, and demographics to develop a geographic model of influenza transmission.