Echoes and Antibodies: Legal Veridiction and the Emergence of the Perpetual Hepatitis C Subject

Abstract

New drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C have emerged. There is great optimism within medicine about the transformative potential of cure, but this overlooks the entrenched discrimination and stigma associated with both hepatitis C and injecting drug use and the role of law in re/producing it. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders such as policymakers, lawyers, and representatives from peer organisations (N = 30), Latour’s (2013) work on legal veridiction, Fraser and Seear’s (2011) conceptualisation of hepatitis C as a ‘gathering’, and Mol’s (2021) work on being, this paper explores the possibility that legal processes complicate the linear trajectory of progress and transformation cure promises. Our participants’ identify various legal processes that allow hepatitis C to echo or linger in people’s lives after treatment. These processes are remaking hepatitis C, and making perpetual hepatitis C subjects. We argue that we must grapple with these forces in the era of cure.

Keywords

Hepatitis c stigma and discrimination cure law veridiction gathering science and technology studies qualitative research

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Australian Department of Health (2018) Fifth National Hepatitis C Strategy 2018–2022. Canberra: Department of Health.

Australian Human Rights Commission (2016) Guidelines for the Providers of Insurance and Superannuation Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. Sydney: Human Rights Commission.

Cloatre

Cowan

(2019) Legalities and materialities: Some observations. In: Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

(ed) Research Handbook in law and Theory. Oxon: Routledge, pp.433–452.

Daley

Paskin

Pallone

. (2020) Sub-optimal disclosure. SuperFunds, 5 February https://superfunds.superannuation.asn.au/2020/02/sub-optimal-disclosure.

David Jones v “P” [1997] NSWSC 347 (29 August 1997).

David

Rhodes

(2004) Managing seen and unseen blood associated with drug injecting: Implications for theorising harm reduction for viral risk. International Journal of Drug Policy 15: 377–384.

Deleuze

Parnet

(1987) Dialogues. London: Athlone Press.

Dilkes-Frayne

(2016) Drugs at the campsite: Socio-spatial relations and drug use at music festivals. International Journal of Drug Policy 33: 27–35.

Dilkes-Frayne

Duff

(2017) Tendencies and trajectories: The production of subjectivity in an event of drug consumption. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35(5): 951–967.

10.

Dore

Kaldor

McCaughan

(1997) Systematic review of polymerase chain reaction in defining infectiousness among people infected with hepatitis C virus. British Medical Journal 315(7104): 333–337.

11.

Dore

Martinello

(2020) Global elimination of hepatitis C virus by 2030: The optimistic view. In: Foster

Reddy

(eds) Clinical Dilemmas in Viral Liver Disease. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, pp.238–243.

12.

Duff

(2016) Assemblages, territories, contexts. International Journal of Drug Policy 33: 15–20.

13.

Duffin

(2005) Lovers and Livers: Disease Concepts in History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

14.

Dwyer

Fraser

Treloar

(2011) Doing things together? Analysis of health promotion materials to inform hepatitis C prevention among couples. Addition Research and Theory 19(4): 352–361.

15.

European Association for the Study of the Liver (2020) ASL Recommendations on treatment of hepatitis C 2018. Journal of Hepatology In press.

16.

Farrugia

(2017) Gender, reputation, and regret: The ontological politics of Australian drug education. Gender and Education 29(3): 281–298.

17.

Farrugia

Fomiatti

Fraser

, et al. (2022) Hepatitis C as a ‘gathering’: Attending to the social and material relations of hepatitis C treatment. Sociology of Health and Illness 44(4-5): 830–847.

18.

Fitzgerald

(2015) Framing Drug Use: Bodies, Space, Economy and Crime. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

19.

Fomiatti

Lenton

Latham

, et al. (2020) Maintaining the healthy body: Blood management and hepatitis C prevention among men who inject performance and image-enhancing drugs. International Journal of Drug Policy 75: 102592.

20.

Fraser

(2004) ‘It’s your life!’: Injecting drug users, individual responsibility and hepatitis C prevention. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 8(2): 199–221.

21.

Fraser

Moore

(eds) (2011) The Drug Effect: Health Crime and Society. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

22.

Fraser

Seear

(2011) Making Disease, Making Citizens: The Politics of Hepatitis C. Aldershot: Ashgate.

23.

Fraser

Treloar

(2006) ‘Spoiled identity’ in hepatitis C infection: The binary logic of despair. Critical Public Health 16(2): 99–110.

24.

Fraser

Valentine

(2008) Substance and Substitution: Methadone Subjects in Liberal Societies. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

25.

Goodyear

Brown

Browne

, et al. (2021) ‘Stigma is where the harm comes from’: Exploring expectations and lived experiences of hepatitis C virus post-treatment trajectories among people who inject drugs. International Journal of Drug Policy 96: 103238.

26.

Harris

(2005) Living with hepatitis C: The medical encounter. New Zealand Sociology 20(1): 4–19.

27.

Harris

(2017) Managing expense and expectation in a treatment revolution: Problematizing prioritisation through exploration of hepatitis C treatment ‘benefit’. International Journal of Drug Policy 47: 161–168.

28.

Harris

Rhodes

(2013) Hepatitis C treatment access and uptake for people who inject drugs: A review mapping the role of social factors. Harm Reduction Journal 10(7): 1–11.

29.

Hart

(2015) Assembling interrelations between low socioeconomic status and acute alcohol-related harms among young adult drinkers. Contemporary Drug Problems 42(2): 148–167.

30.

Hepatitis Australia (2017) The benefits and costs of new hepatitis C treatments in Australia. Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/50ff0804e4b007d5a9abe0a5/t/58bf63e4d2b8578f5301e3ef/1488937960565/Benefits+and+Costs+of+Hepatitis+C+Treatments+in+Australia+20170308+%28formated%29.pdf

31.

Hollo

Martin

(2021) An equitable approach to enhancing the privacy of consumer information on my health record in Australia. Health Information Management Journal: 183335832110197. doi:10.1177/18333583211019764.

32.

Hopwood

Treloar

(2005) The experience of interferon-based treatments for hepatitis C infection. Qualitative Health Research 15(5): 635–646.

33.

Kafer

(2013) Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

34.

Kim

(2017) Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea. Durham: Duke University Press.

35.

Lancaster

Rhodes

Rance

(2020) Towards eliminating viral hepatitis: Examining the productive capacity and constitutive effects of global policy on hepatitis C elimination. International Journal of Drug Policy 80: 102419.

36.

Latour

(2009) The Making of Law: An Ethnography of the Conseil D’Etat. Cambridge: Polity Press.

37.

Latour

(2013) An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

38.

Lin

, et al. (2017) Barriers to hepatitis C treatment in the era of direct-acting anti-viral agents. Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics 46(10): 992–1000.

39.

MacLachlan

Stewart

Cowie

(2021) Viral Hepatitis Mapping Project: National Report 2020. Darlinghurst: Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, and Sexual Health Medicine.

40.

Madden

, et al. (2018) Beyond cure: Patient reported outcomes of hepatitis C treatment among people who inject drugs in Australia. Harm Reduction Journal 15(42): 1–8.

41.

Malins

(2017) Desiring assemblages: A case for desire over pleasure in critical drug studies. International Journal of Drug Policy 49: 126–132.

42.

Marinho

Barreira

(2013) Hepatitis C, stigma and cure. World Journal of Gastroenterology 19(40): 6703–6709.

43.

McGee

(2014) Bruno Latour: The Normativity of Networks. Oxfordshire: Routledge.

44.

McGee

(2015) Latour and the Passage of Law. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

45.

Mol

(2002) The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham: Duke University Press.

46.

Mol

(2021) Eating in Theory. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

47.

Moore

Pienaar

Dilkes-Frayne

, et al. (2017) Challenging the addiction/health binary with assemblage thinking: An analysis of consumer accounts. International Journal of Drug Policy 44: 155–163.

48.

Murphy

(2018) AIDS. In: Hohmann

Joyce

(eds) International Law’s Objects: Emergence, Encounter and Erasure Through Object and Image. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.106–117.

49.

Norman

(2015) Federal Government to spend $1 billion on ground-breaking Hepatitis C treatments. ABC News, 20 December https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-20/federal-government-spending-1billion-on-hepatitis-c-treatment/7043624.

50.

Peters v The Queen (No 2) (2019) VSCA 292 (10 December 2019).

51.

Pitcher

Gunkel

(2008) Q&A with Jasbir Puar. darkmatter Journal. Available at: http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2008/05/02/qa-with-jasbir-puar/ (accessed 18 August 2021).

52.

Rance

Treloar

Fraser

, et al. (2017) ‘Don’t think i’m ever going to leave you over it’: Accounts of changing hepatitis C status among couples who inject drugs. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 173: 78–84.

53.

Rhodes

Treloar

(2008) The social production of hepatitis C risk among injecting drug users: A qualitative synthesis. Addiction 103: 1593–1603.

54.

Rice

Saeed

(2014) Hepatitis C: Treatment triumphs. Nature 510(7503): 43–44.

55.

Rooney

(2022) New laws may protect chief health officer from being sued. Herald Sun 8 February. https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/new-laws-may-protect-chief-health-officer-from-being-sued/news-story/62c245b51f5e32015bffed1acfedfeac.

56.

Scott

, et al. (2017) Reaching hepatitis C virus elimination targets requires health system interventions to enhance the care cascade. International Journal of Drug Policy 47: 107–116.

57.

Seear

(2020) Law, Drugs and the Making of Addiction: Just Habits. London: Routledge.

58.

Seear

Fraser

(2014) Beyond criminal law: The multiple constitution of addiction in Australian legislation. Addiction Research and Theory 22(5): 438–450.

59.

Seear

Fraser

(2016) Addiction veridiction: Gendering agency in legal mobilisations of addiction discourse. Griffith Law Review 25(1): 13–29.

60.

Seear

Fraser

Farrugia

, et al. (2021) Beyond a ‘post-cure’ world: Sketches for a new futurology of hepatitis C. International Journal of Drug Policy.

61.

Seear

Gray

Fraser

, et al. (2012) Rethinking safety and fidelity: The role of love and intimacy in hepatitis C transmission and prevention. Health Sociology Review 21(3): 272–286.

62.

Seear

Lenton

(2021) Becoming posthuman: Hepatitis C, the race to elimination and the politics of remaking the subject. Health Sociology Review 30(3): 229–243.

63.

Seear

Mulcahy

Kagan

Lenton

Fraser

valentine

Farrugia

(In preparation) Complicating cure: How Australian criminal law shapes imagined post-hepatitis C futures

64.

Valentine

Treloar

(2013) Response to chandler et al., substance, structure and stigma: Parents in the UK accounting for opioid substitution therapy during the antenatal and postnatal periods. International Journal of Drug Policy 24(6): e87–e88.

65.

Whiteley

, et al. (2016) The lived experience of interferon-free treatments for hepatitis C: A thematic analysis. International Journal of Drug Policy 38: 21–28.

66.

Whiteley

, et al. (2018) Hepatitis C in a new therapeutic era: Recontextualising the lived experience. Journal of Clinical Nursing 27(13-14): 2729–2739.

67.

World Health Organization (2016) Combating Hepatitis B and C to Reach Elimination by 2030. Geneva: World Health Organization.

68.

World Health Organization (2021) Hepatitis C: Fact Sheet. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hepatitis-c#:∼:text = Globally%2C%20an%20estimated%2058%20million,carcinoma%20(primary%20liver%20cancer). (accessed 24 March, 2022).