Hepatitis C has long been a public health problem in Australia. ‘Revolutionary’ new drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C have now emerged. The Australian government has invested heavily in them, and has an ambitious goal to eliminate hepatitis C by 2030. Numerous shifts in policy and practice are required if the elimination agenda is to be realised. This paper explores the significance of these shifts. We ask: what is the race to elimination doing with the subject? We argue that the race to elimination can be understood, simultaneously, as a product of posthuman forces, capable of being analysed using the theoretical tools made available via the posthuman turn; producing an intervention in what it means to be human; and generating a dilemma for people who use (or used) drugs, people with hepatitis C, and posthuman scholarship. In drawing out these issues, we aim to: trace the significant developments underway in hepatitis C medicine and raise awareness of them; encourage reflection on the consequences of these developments; and invite reflections on what might be lost when the human is remade by hepatitis C medicine.
Funding
The research reported in this paper is funded by the Australian Research Council (DP200100941).
History
Publication Date
2021-09-02
Journal
Health Sociology Review
Volume
30
Issue
3
Pagination
15p. (p. 229-243)
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
ISSN
1446-1242
Rights Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Health Sociology Review on 27 Aug 2021, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14461242.2021.1971102
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