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Medical humanitarianism, therapeutic markets, and the failure of proximate care for Thalassemia-affected in India

Datum
25. Novem­ber 2025 

Online sem­i­nar on Teams


Online sem­i­nar: Med­ical human­i­tar­i­an­ism, ther­a­peu­tic mar­kets, and the fail­ure of prox­i­mate care for Tha­lassemia-affect­ed in India
25 Nov, 13:00hrs GMT on Teams!

Please join us for the penul­ti­mate pre­sen­ta­tion in our Anthro­pol­o­gy Research Sem­i­nar, this week from Samik­sha Bhan (Max Planck), who will be talk­ing about tha­lassemia in India. The full title and abstract are below, and the Teams link – to join at 13:00hrs on 25 Novem­ber – is below that. Hope to see many of you there!

„Dis/abling cure: Med­ical human­i­tar­i­an­ism, ther­a­peu­tic mar­kets, and the fail­ure of prox­i­mate care for Tha­lassemia-affect­ed in India”

The expand­ing diag­no­sis of rare dis­eases and chron­ic ill­ness­es has led to new ther­a­peu­tic mar­kets in the glob­al South. Cater­ing to some of the most pop­u­lous and poor­est coun­tries, a new seg­ment of transna­tion­al experts has emerged while blur­ring the lines between med­ical human­i­tar­i­an­ism and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment. In this pre­sen­ta­tion, I draw from 13 months of doc­tor­al field­work on pro­vi­sion of the cura­tive bone mar­row trans­plant for tha­lassemia-affect­ed chil­dren in India, suf­fer­ing from a debil­i­tat­ing genet­ic blood dis­or­der. Fol­low­ing dis­abil­i­ty stud­ies schol­ars, I com­pli­cate the hope attached to new ther­a­pies by argu­ing that cure takes prece­dence over care under his­tor­i­cal­ly pro­duced con­di­tions, enabling ther­a­peu­tic mar­kets to flour­ish at the cost of prox­i­mate rela­tion­al­i­ties of care and sup­port. In the case of tha­lassemia, transna­tion­al bro­ker­ing of afford­able bone mar­row trans­plants is direct­ly relat­ed to the fail­ure of local­ly admin­is­tered blood banks to pro­vide trans­fu­sion ser­vices for patients to main­tain their qual­i­ty of life. While med­ical anthro­pol­o­gists have exten­sive­ly fol­lowed the dou­ble bind of care as an exploita­tive and life-sus­tain­ing force, I spec­u­late if con­cep­tu­al­is­ing a ‚dis/abling cure’ might illu­mi­nate the debil­i­tat­ing ways in which cure becomes avail­able and pre­sent­ed as the only choice at the lim­its of care.

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25 Nov @ 13:00hrs GMT on Teams!