Description
Book SynopsisBrazil's Zika outbreak revealed extreme health disparities and reproductive injustice across racial and socioeconomic lines. Brazil's 2015 Zika outbreak led to severe illnesses for many and the birth of several thousands of children with severe brain damage. Even though mosquito-borne diseases such as the Zika virus affect people across society, these children were born almost exclusively to poor, and usually non-white, women. In Viruses and Reproductive Injustice, Ilana Löwy explores the complicated health disparities and reproductive injustice that led to these cases of congenital Zika syndrome. Löwy examines the history of the outbreak in Brazil and connects it to broader questions concerning reproductive rights, the medical science behind understanding new pathogens, and the role of international health organizations in battlingor ignoringpublic health crises. The explanation behind the strongly skewed distribution of cases among social classes was far from straightforward or o
Table of ContentsContents
Preface: A Forgotten Virus and Expunged Memories
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Framing an Epidemic
Chapter 1. Viruses and Mosquitoes: From Yellow Fever to Zika
Chapter 2. Fetuses: Women, Doctors, and the Law
Chapter 3. Surprises: "I've never seen anything like this"
Chapter 4. Zika in Brazil: Producing Partial Knowledge
Chapter 5. Stratified Reproduction: Class, Ethnicity, and Risk
Chapter 6. Mães de Micro: Zika and Maternal Care
Chapter 7. After Zika: Open Questions, Complex Legacy
Conclusion. Embodied Inequality
Further Reading
Notes
Index
