Schedule

Nov. 27, 2024 | 4:10–5:40 PM

Room

Rm 3, South Ballroom

Chair and Moderator

Vincent Bernabe
University of the Philippines Diliman

Panel Abstract

This panel seeks to bring new and expanded vistas to the history of science, health, and medicine in the Philippines—an area that has recently received profound scholarly interest. Through distinctive case studies, each with a diverse range of primary sources, it looks beyond the borders of the state and highlights the ways in which the Philippines navigated an increasingly globalized field of health from the colonial to the postcolonial era. 

Vincent Bernabe examines the unexplored linkages between the Philippines and the League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO), focusing on what seems to be an unusual case of collaboration between Filipino scientists and the Malaria Commission of the LNHO in domestically producing cost-effective antimalarial drugs during the late American colonial period. He argues how this collaboration was entangled with concerns about national and imperial security. Extending the conversation, Patrick James Serra explores the Philippines’ active engagement with a newly established World Health Organization (WHO) and its governing body, the World Health Assembly (WHA). He demonstrates how Filipino medico-diplomats in the postwar era leveraged the international health arena to advance national interests and priorities. Meanwhile, Alvin D. Cabalquinto and Ivan Adrian L. De Guzman examine the postwar evolution of biomedical ethics in contemporary Philippines. They demonstrate, in nuanced ways, how Filipino medical scientists and practitioners sought autonomy in their practice as the country reckoned with its colonial moorings and as Western nations enshrined standardized bioethical codes. Lastly, Aaron Abel Mallari traces the evolution of Philippine illegal drug policy from the colonial to the contemporary period, arguing the significance of locating its development within regional and global contexts.

Lying at the intersection of the history of health and medicine, the history of science and technology, and diplomatic history, this panel offers novel historical insights and understandings into the Philippines’ dynamic and evolving role in the emergent realm of “world health.”

C3.1

Internationalizing Health: The League of Nations Health Organization and the Making of Antimalarial Drugs in the Philippines, 1920s–1940s

Vincent Bernabe

University of the Philippines Diliman

The emergence of a recognizable and robust field of international health constituted a pivotal development of the early twentieth century, with the Rockefeller Foundation and the League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO) representing two of the leading players in this dynamic landscape as they fostered extensive networks across metropolitan and colonial borders. However, scholars have paid scarce attention to the Philippines’ historical linkages with what Alison Bashford (2006) called a nascent “global biopolitics” that was associated with the twentieth-century making of “world health.” Building upon the works of Sunil Amrith (2006; 2014) on the “internationalization of health in Southeast Asia,” this paper attempts at an initial exploration into the Philippines’ entanglements with the LNHO during the Interwar period. Using an unexplored set of archival materials from the United Nations Archives, it focuses on a case of collaboration between Filipino medical and scientific authorities and the Malaria Commission of the LNHO to produce domestic supplies of cost-effective alternatives to quinine, the renowned antimalarial drug that was globally monopolized by the Dutch Empire. In 1935, the Bureau of Science in Manila successfully adopted and manufactured a novel standard formulation by the Malaria Commission called “totaquina” that was envisaged as a modernizing instrument capable of addressing the medical and economic exigencies of the nation-in-the-making—an affordable antimalarial drug for the rural masses and a commercially viable local industry for a forthcoming independent nation. Such an alliance not only highlights the significance of overlooked lateral and horizontal collaborations between colonial governments and emergent global governing bodies, but also underscores the role that internationalization imperatives played vis-a-vis nation-building.

C3.2

The Philippine Delegation to the World Health Assembly, 1948-1972

Patrick James Serra

University of the Philippines Diliman

In the inaugural World Health Assembly (WHA) of the then newly established World Health Organization (WHO) held on the 29th of June, 1948 in Geneva, Switzerland, Dr. J.P. Bantug, the chief delegate of the Philippines expressed the “readiness [of his country] to participate in the worldwide effort to improve the health of mankind”. Since then, the Republic of the Philippines has been an active member of WHO—from being the presiding chair of the Fifth WHA to fervently lobbying to establish a regional office of WHO in the country. This study explores the engagements of the Philippine delegation to the World Health Assembly (WHA), the legislative arm of the WHO from 1948 to 1972, coinciding with the Third Philippine Republic as set in the context of post-World War II reconstruction and the immediate Cold War era. By employing an archival research and textual analysis, the study collates and analyzes the speeches of the Filipino medico-diplomats, proposed and sponsored resolutions, and the general voting behavior of the Philippine delegation to the World Health Assembly which constituted the cornerstone of the country’s bilateral and multilateral engagements of an increasing globalized health diplomacy during the Cold War period. Ultimately, this study contributes to a historically-informed foreign policymaking of the present by outlining how the medico-diplomats of the nation translated its national interest in the matters of public health and medical R&D into the international arena hence, laying the foundations for a Filipino-oriented foreign policy.

C3.3

Charting a Biomedical Code of Ethics in the Postcolony: A History of Biomedical Ethics and Postcolonial Medicine in Contemporary Philippines since 1945

Alvin D. Cabalquinto and Ivan Adrian L. De Guzman

Ateneo de Manila University

With the revelations on the mistreatment of human participants in various scientific experiments after the Second World War and the bioethical revolution on clinical research, medical practice, and health care reform, there were renewed discussions on creating a standard of biomedical ethics across Western countries in the late twentieth century. With such changes in the post-1945 global order, these series of events pose questions on how biomedical ethical practices are carried out in a newly independent Philippines, which was reckoning its Western orientation due to its colonial past. With the initiatives for codification and enshrining of biomedical ethics in Western nations in the second half of the twentieth century, this study explores how Philippine medical practitioners and researchers adapted their own practice in adherence to modern understandings of biomedical ethics. Utilizing a content analysis of laws, codes, periodicals, journal articles, and reports, this study surveys the themes of the public and professional discourse on the changes in biomedical ethics. Among such changes were the creation of laws such as the Medical Act of 1959 and the creation of medical codes of ethics within the Philippine Medical Association and its specialty divisions. Likewise, this study documents notable cases of ethical misconduct in clinical research and practice and the discussions and resolutions that ensued. Furthermore, this study interrogates the sociopolitical context that frames the inclusion and exclusion of biomedical issues on the treatment of subjects and informed consent in these resolutions and the enactment and implementation of these codes of ethics. Through a historical and social constructionist approach, it positions Philippine biomedical ethics as a lens to understand the crucial interplay of politics and culture in charting the course of medical practice and research in the postcolony.

C3.4

Situating Drug Policy in the Philippines within the Evolution of the International Drug Control Regime: Regional and Global Contexts

Aaron Abel T. Mallari

University of the Philippines Diliman

This paper intends to situate the evolution of illegal drug policy in the Philippines within broader regional and global contexts. Drawing on insights from norm cycle perspectives, this project attempts to locate the Philippines within the emergence, cascade, and growing contestation of norms related to illegal drugs. Utilizing official reports, government policy documents, speeches, and other documentary sources, three periods are explored: First, the root of the international drug control regime in the early 20th century is presented with the place of the Philippines as a colony and site of Opium Commissions that laid the foundations for the shift in discourse on illegal drugs. Second, the period of the 1970s which saw the beginnings of the Global Drug War—after the United States called on a worldwide campaign against drugs—is tackled with the authoritarian government in the Philippines and the regional context of the ASEAN vision of a drug free Southeast Asia. Third, the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte and his violent war on drugs is revisited within the broader contestation on the efficacy of the global war on drugs as evidenced by growing discussions on harm reduction, legalization, and other public health campaigns related to drug use. Within these episodes, the paper argues the importance of looking at the development of drug policy in the Philippines with a global perspective in order to better understand shifting discourses, policy debates, and interconnected aspects of drugs and politics.   

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