The Biomedical Empire during the Covid pandemic

Barbara Katz Rothman , PhD, is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at the City University of New York. Her work encompasses medical sociology, childbirth and midwifery, bioethics, race, disability, food studies, and the sociology of knowledge. Her books include IN LABOR; THE TENTATIVE PREGNANCY; RECREATING MOTHERHOOD; THE BOOK OF LIFE (her book on the Human Genome Project); WEAVING A FAMILY: Untangling Race and Adoption; LABORING ON (with Wendy Simonds), and A BUN IN THE OVEN: How the Food and Birth Movements Resist Industrialisation. Her most recent book is THE BIOMEDICAL EMPIRE: LESSONS FROM THE COVID19 PANDEMIC. She held the 2019 Fulbright Saastominen Distinguished Chair in Health Sciences at the University of Eastern Finland, and has served as President of Sociologists for Women in Society; the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Eastern Sociological Society and held visiting professorships and Fulbright awards in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Kevin Bardosh is the Director of Collateral Global, a UK-based charity dedicated to researching the global impacts of Covid-19 policy responses and helping the world better balance societal trade-offs during future health emergencies. He has worked in more than 20 countries on infectious disease control programs (including Ebola and Zika), authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and edited two books. He is currently an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health, University of Washington USA and an Honorary Lecturer at the Edinburgh Medical School, University of Edinburgh UK.