EP #292 - 06.17.2021 - Bounding Biomedicine in the Pandemic w/Collen Derkatch

Welcome to the 292st of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.  I’m coming to you live from Daejeon, SK.

Today I welcome medical Colleen Derkatch to discuss the rhetoric of biomedicine and medical expertises in the pandemic. Colleen Derkatch is Associate Professor of rhetoric in the Department of English.

Her research in rhetoric of health and medicine examines how language shapes and is shaped by various, often embodied, and sometimes conflicting forms of expertise about illness, treatment, and health. Her book, Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine, external link (University of Chicago Press, 2016), examines how scientific research on alternative health practices constitutes the boundaries between what counts as safe, effective health care and what does not. Her current project is Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture.