Abstract
AbstractA ‘technological fix’ reduces the negative impact of a problem without addressing its underlying political, economic, or social causes. This chapter examines antimicrobials’ central role in both the modern faith in technological fixes in medicine, and critiques of over-reliance on technological interventions that produce unintended consequences. The enduring appeal of technological fixes is rooted in their promise to provide simple, efficient, measurable, and effective solutions to complex problems; but this practically is purchased at the price of eliding important distributive concerns.
Highlights
In October, 2003, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) announced the first 14 ‘Grand Challenges in Global Health,’ as part of an initiative to stimulate scientific research on diseases affecting less-developed nations
Grand Challenge #10 asked for applications that would help “discover drugs and delivery systems that minimize the likelihood of drug resistant microorganisms.”
In the intervening years, combatting antimicrobial resistance has continued to be a priority for the BMGF, with at least 50 grants funded through initiatives aimed at ‘Creating Drugs and Delivery Systems to Limit Drug Resistance,’ and identifying ‘Novel Approaches to Characterizing and Tracking the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance.’
Summary
In October, 2003, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) announced the first 14 ‘Grand Challenges in Global Health,’ as part of an initiative to stimulate scientific research on diseases affecting less-developed nations. 516), Birn questioned the BMGF’s assumption that the most pressing global health problems can be solved through the application of innovative scientific and technological solutions that target proximate causes of disease, while ignoring more distal political, economic, or social determinants of health. She concluded with a call for integrating both narrow technological and wider social interventions, and cautioned that “the longer we isolate public health’s technical aspects from its political and social aspects, the longer technical interventions will squeeze out one side of the mortality balloon only to find it inflated elsewhere”(Birn 2005, p. 19 Technological Fixes and Antimicrobial Resistance heart of the technological fix idea, and confronts us with difficult decisions regarding how best to distribute social and economic resources
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