The 2015 Zika outbreak in Brazil resulted in severe illnesses and numerous children born with brain damage, particularly affecting impoverished, non-white women. Professor Ilana Löwy's Viruses and Reproductive Injustice is a vital examination of the health disparities and reproductive injustices behind congenital Zika syndrome.

The book is essential reading for those interested in reproductive rights, bioscience of emerging pathogens and public health injustice. Löwy connects the outbreak's history to broader issues of reproductive rights, scientific understanding of pathogens and the role of international health organisations. The book underscores the complex interplay of biology and politics in infectious disease outbreaks.

The book launch will feature a short presentation by the author, Professor Ilana Löwy, and will be followed by responses from Professor Ann Kelly and Dr Rishita Nandagiri from the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine.

Professor Rayna Rapp, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at New York University, will also be a discussant. 

The discussion will be followed by a drinks reception. This event will be livestreamed on the YouTube channel of the School of Global Affairs. 

The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine Age of Health Series and the Reproduction Research Cluster.

About the author

Professor Ilana Löwy is Research Director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She is a biologist by training who worked for ten years in a cellular immunology lab at the Institut Pasteur before transferring to history of science. She has studied the history of organ transplants, "Pasteurian sciences" – bacteriology, immunology, and virology – and her research lies at the intersection between biomedicine and gender studies, notably in the field of reproduction and treatment of female cancers.

Professor Löwy has published, among other works, Preventive Strikes: Women, Precancer, and Prophylactic Surgery (Johns Hopkins UP, 2009), A Woman's Disease: A History of Cervical Cancer (Oxford UP, 2011), Imperfect Pregnancies: A History of Prenatal Diagnosis (Johns Hopkins UP, 2017) and Tangled Diagnoses: Prenatal Testing, Women and Risk (Chicago UP, 2018.)