Paper short abstract:

Here, I explore tensions between public health policies intended to integrate and assimilate 'ethnic' immigrants, elite research programmes exploring their bodily diversity, and a health service struggling to address the needs of emerging ethnic communities within a remit of service to the majority.

Paper long abstract:

The exigencies of post war Britain brought together new populations and equally new understandings of disease and models of healthcare. This paper will explore the tension between public health policies intended to integrate and assimilate 'ethnic' immigrants; elite research programmes exploring their medical and especially genetic diversity; and a National Health Service struggling to assess and address the needs of emerging ethnic communities within a remit of service to the wider majority. I will focus on the ways in which clinical, community and biomedical responses to the thalassaemias -- a group of genetic blood disorders closely linked to South Asian and Mediterranean ethnicities -- exemplify the processes by which all participants in the medical encounter understood and negotiated these tensions.