Barbara Katz Rothman’s The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic is a succinct, provocative work that challenges readers to examine how biomedicine governs all aspects of life and death. Extending the view of biomedicine beyond an approach that centers “the biological sciences, particularly biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics …. [in the] treatment and management of disease” (27), the book claims that a hegemonic biomedical empire has economic, governmental, and religious power over all. Katz Rothman, a sociologist who has undertaken extensive research on traditional health approaches in birth and care,[1] asserts both that biomedical imperialism has engulfed citizens worldwide (7) and that the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the “limitations of biomedical imperialism in taking care of people” (12).
School Authors: Catherine Z. Worsnop
Other Authors: Amy S. Patterson, Joshua Busby, Nathan A. Paxton, Preslava Stoeva, Jeremy Youde, Barbara Katz Rothman