Alex de Waal, New Pandemics, Old Politics: two hundred years of war on disease and its alternatives. Cambridge: Polity (hb £50 – 978 1 5095 4779 1; pb £15.99 – 978 1 5095 4780 7). 2021, 296 pp.

Abstract

[...]faced with a world of disease hazards we have all helped to create, he proposes that our best hope may lie with activist engagement of the kind apparent in the HIV and AIDS response, where those most affected by the problem became adept at pushing both science and politics towards sustainable solutions. A high degree of integration between hierarchies of science and market institutions – the result, for example, of having a government scientific adviser with a background in private-sector pharmaceutical research – would be seen as a textbook example of the Williamson approach, effectively reducing transaction costs by coordinating policy demand and research supply. At the end, Alex de Waal excuses himself: ‘the policies and practices needed range far beyond the scope of this book’ (p. 230). [...]we must be patient and await the sequel, which promises to be as compelling reading as the present potent offering.