We Are All Contaminated

Abstract

This chapter details how Uruguayan experts and citizens negotiated, translated, and “localized” global biomedical expertise, as well as how social theories of risk, vulnerability, and human nature became embedded in public-health interventions and scientific research. The chapter examines the biopolitical nature of the state’s Official Protocol and how it was both effectively deployed and continuously resisted, sometimes through double meanings associated with the oft-repeated phrase, “we are all contaminated.” The chapter chronicles the ways dissident scientists created new biomedical “artifacts” by generating and expanding toxicological data and pediatric case files, lending evidentiary support to social-movement characterizations of the weight of suffering and the geographic distribution of risk. The chapter argues that a central dimension of this scientific research and practice was its symbiosis with the social movement and the social proximity of clinicians to the lived experience of patients and families.