Hepatitis C cure as a 'gathering': Attending to the social and material relations of hepatitis C treatment

Abstract

Since the advent of direct-acting antiviral hepatitis C treatments, widespread enthusiasm about disease elimination has emerged. This article examines experiences of hepatitis C treatment and cure in this period. Mobilising Fraser and Seear's (Making disease, making citizens: The politics of hepatitis C, Ashgate, 2011) approach to hepatitis C as a 'gathering', we analyse cure not as a biomedical phenomenon but as a social and material event. To do so, we take a Science and Technology Studies-inspired approach to analyse three complementary cases drawn from an Australian project on experiences of hepatitis C, treatment and cure. First, we analyse the ways a friendship between two women combines with adjustments to treatment access to produce a gathering that makes cure possible. Second, we analyse the forces that gather and distribute responsibility when a cure does not occur in a context shaped by oversimplified treatment logics. Third, we analyse a gathering of relations in which hepatitis C lingers, thereby limiting the cure's possible transformative effects. We argue that, even in an era defined by highly effective medicines, the hepatitis C cure is not necessarily straightforward, but an unpredictable gathering constituted by a fragile coalescing of social and material forces.

Keywords: Bruno Latour; cure; elimination; hepatitis C treatment; qualitative research.