Beyond Thalidomide

Beyond Thalidomide traces the global rise of patient engagement with drug-related disability in the second half of the twentieth century to understand how newly empowered agents transformed conceptions of (reproductive) health and disease in science and society.

Their multifaceted activities resulted in clashes between different forms of knowledge and expertise that connected actors in the “global South” and “North”—from Latin America through Central Africa, India, and Europe — in the enforcement, implementation, and stabilization of reproductive health approaches that addressed the emerging challenges to democracy and civil society, beyond traditional accounts of expert-led iatrogenic risk management.