Charlotte Brives
Tuesday 22 october 2024
Summary: Although the subject is still only timidly discussed in the public arena, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections will be one of the major public health problems of the 21st century. Infections that are still considered to be benign when treated properly could once again become lethal if effective treatments are not available. In this talk, I will look again at the causes of widespread bacterial resistance to antibiotics which, far from being simply the result of misuse of these chemical molecules by patients or doctors, are above all systemic, part of a long history of exploitation of nature in capitalist systems.
Secondly, I will present a possible partial response to this disaster: bacteriophage viruses, which ‘eat bacteria’, could be potential allies in the implementation of a response to antibiotic resistance. But under what conditions?
Biography: Charlotte Brives is an anthropologist of science and health and a researcher at the CNRS’s Centre Émile Durkheim. Her research focuses on the relationship between humans and microbes in the production, circulation and use of scientific knowledge, from laboratories through clinical trials to regulations on health products. She has published FFace à l’antibiorésistance, une écologie politique des microbes (Amsterdam) and Pluribiose, travailler avec les microbes (QUAE).
