Description

An event organised by Health, Medicine and Agency Research Network

Dr Jessica Borge’s presentation: 'It should have been a Bonanza': AIDS, Photo Processing, and the Fall of the British-Made Condom. Given at Heath, Medicine and Agency’s Roundtable discussing Birth Control and Sex Education in Cultural and Historical Perspectives
17 Noviembre 2020

The concept of agency in health and medicine often speaks to the patient experience of medical procedures, products and services. But behind these lie other agents, such as local communities of factory workers, who are also affected by the success or failure of medical products and, further, the solvency of companies that bankroll them. Drawing from her new book on the London Rubber Company, and using the specific case study of condom manufacturing during the AIDS crisis, Jessica Borge describes the final days of the Chingford (North London) factory that made market-leading Durex, and the perplexity of helpless shop floor staff who watched their jobs evaporate despite unprecedented demand for condoms, following a string of bad corporate investments.

Book: Protective Practices: A History of the London Rubber Company and the Condom Business, is published by McGill-Queens University Press. For more information, see www.londonrubbercompany.com.

#historyofmedicine #contraception #agency