Paper short abstract:

Hopes that a vaccine trial in Tanzania would lead to lasting development were unfulfilled, with impacts of the trial uncertain. Exploring how trial staff conceptually entwine medical research with development aspirations demonstrates the expectations they assign to research, and its limitations.

Paper long abstract:

Development practices are built on the premise that certain places are not only economically deprived but also temporally behind or stuck in the past. Development aims to bring low-income settings forward in time through improved infrastructure, health outcomes and education. Transnational medical research in low-income settings has been conceptualized as playing a role in development, helping bring modern medical practice and technology to impoverished settings. Focusing on a malaria vaccine clinical trial in northeastern Tanzania, this paper elucidates the connections between research and development, untangling the entwining of these projects; one to test a new vaccine and the other to assist in development. For trial staff, the idea that the research was helping to modernize Tanzania and bring it into the future was a prevalent perspective. Capacity building, the construction of laboratory and clinical spaces, improvements in the health care system, the provision of medical technology, and the education of communities were all cited as positive impacts of the trial. But as the trial drew to a close in 2013, its legacy was uncertain. The trial led to some improvements but also entrenched inequalities and many of its lauded impacts were finite. Hopes that the trial would bring lasting development gave way to a level of disappointment when the trial concluded. By exploring the ways that trial staff expressed their understandings of the research and its impacts, this paper teases out the various meanings and aspirations assigned to medical research and the connections research has with temporalities and development.