“Réseaux sémantiques : construction, exploration et utilisations”, organisé par Guy Lapalme (2ème partie)

Mike Osborne dit :

“Some thoughts on yellow fever” by Mike Osborne, ancien de l’IMéRA

During my three quarters of residence at IMéRA, 2011-2014
https://imera.univ-amu.fr/en/resident/michael-osborne

I finished a book, wrote four articles, did some book reviews, hiked in the Calanques and conceived of my current project on a global history of yellow fever. It was a wonderful and productive time and the Camargo Foundation in Cassis even re-opened while I was in Provence. The IMéRA residencies continue to have sustained value. I remember fondly Pierre Livet who helped me with a piece on biological individuality which has just appeared as “Parasitology, Zoology, and Society in France, ca. 1880–1920” in a volume on the same topic:
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo26049219.html

Pierre is not only an asset to IMéRA, he is also a mentor and an epistemologue and scholar of mark who wears his erudition lightly, bubbles with ideas, and someone who gets to the heart of sloppy thinking and can help you get better. And that is what IMéRA was all about for me.

I recently spoke on yellow fever and globalism at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro and did a short interview and I paste the essence of it below for those interested in the history of health, disease, and healing. The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Brazil), along with the Institut Pasteur (Paris, but also its branches in Dakar and Tunis), the Rockefeller Foundation (USA), and the Welcome Bureau of Scientific Research (UK) were epicenters of yellow fever research. Work done there led to the development of two vaccines against the disease. French researchers elaborated the “French” vaccine and produced it until 1982 at Dakar. It was administered to 50,000,000 people in the French colonies and an additional 100,000,000 doses were shipped to British, Portuguese, Belgian, and other colonies. The “American” vaccine, now the standard vaccine, is the “17D” vaccine created by American and South African researchers in New York City. Virology is particularly interesting for historians of science as it does not fit our ideas of science as something where results are easily replicated and hence can be corroborated by other researchers. Thus Max Theiler, a South African who did most of his scientific work in America, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951 for his yellow fever work but he could not re-derive properties of the initial virus he adapted to white mice. It was the first Nobel Prize given for virology.

IMéRA, particularly Pascal and Virginie, helped me organize an international workshop in Marseille that was a prelude to this international congress in Rio on
the theme of “Science, Technology and Medicine between the Global and the Local.”
It all starts Sunday here in Rio and it is the first time the congress has been held in the Southern Hemisphere.
http://www.ichst2017.sbhc.org.br/

An illustrated version of the blog entry I paste below for FIOCRUZ, the largest medical research institute in South America, is at:
http://www.revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br/english/some-thoughts-on-yellow-fever/
A text of the interview follows.

July 2017

Michael Osborne, professor of History of Science at Oregon State University, is the author of The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France (University of Chicago Press, 2014) and is currently writing a book on the history of yellow fever.

During the 25th International Congress of History of Science and Technology (ICHST) held in the city of Rio de Janeiro from 23 to 29 July 2017, Osborne will become the next president of the Division of History of Science and Technology (DHST) of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IUHPST).

Among its activities, the DHST sponsors scholarship on the history of science and technology by awarding annual grants and every four years holds an international congress of history of science and technology in a selected city.

In this brief interview to our blog, Osborne talks about his current work on yellow fever and his priorities as the new president of DHST.

You are writing a history of yellow fever; what are the main themes of this project?

My previous book, The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France, employed yellow fever as a signature disease of colonialism as a way to tell a larger story of institutional transitions in French medical education.

The book examines the turbulent history of the ideas, people, and institutions of French colonial and tropical medicine from their early modern origins through World War I.

My new book elucidates the history of yellow fever through analysis of select iconic yellow fever epidemics in the Americas, Africa, and Latin America. I also want to so situate yellow fever and Aedes aegypti epidemiology with reference to Zika, dengue fever, and chikungunya.

The book will be both historical and contemporary because yellow fever is still with us. It is historical in the traditional sense but also bio-historical as we know a lot about the genomics of mosquito and virus populations and there are a number of newer technologies in use or proposed to address mosquito-borne diseases including at least two different kinds of bioengineered mosquitoes.

Do Brazilians play an important part in your new study on yellow fever?

Brazilians play critical and important roles in the yellow fever story and in my account of it. Brazilian, South American, and Latin Americanist scholars have written more on yellow fever history than the rest of us. My lectures in Brazil are mainly about French and African portions of the story but I am learning as much as I can about Brazilian interventions. It’s clear that the Oswaldo Cruz Institute (now FIOCRUZ) played a leading role in yellow fever research and control.

In the congress in Rio you will become president of the Division of History of Science and Technology of the IUHPST; what are your priorities and/or goals?

The International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology is composed of two divisions. I will become president of the Division of History of Science and Technology (DHST) at the Rio Congress.

The DHST together with its sister division, the Division of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science and Technology, form the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Since 1947 we have been a member of the International Council for Science. DHST advocates for history of science and technology.

We also sponsor scholarship on these subjects by awarding annual grants. Every four years we hold a congress in a city selected by the membership. We also award a series of Young Scholar Prizes. We support projects as diverse as the study of gender issues in science and educational outreach efforts to young people on historical and contemporary issues of global climate change.

Brazilian scholars are very active in DHST and so many of them have worked very hard and skillfully to bring DHST to Rio. I especially want to thank the officers and members of the Brazilian Society for the History of Science in this regard. I also think of Christina Helena da Motta Barboza at Rio’s Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins who is the current vice-president of DHST’s International Commission on the History of Meteorology.

As DHST president I want to continue and if possible enhance these and other programs. I am quite concerned about the de-funding of public institutions and what this means for scholarship and training in the history of science, technology, and medicine. This is linked, I think, in my home country at least, with a surging anti-science movement. This is not something unique to the USA, although it may be robust there, and all of us at DHST are working on aspects of this complex issue and will be doing so for at least the next four years.
http://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/users/michael-osborne