Paper short abstract:

A series of ethnographic case studies are used to show how the definition of innovation is used for particular emerging health biotechnologies at particular times. A symmetrical approach is proposed to open regulatory governance to a parliament of evidence that recognizes the gaming of innovation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers innovation is politics by other means. Two separate Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEIC) were declared in less than two years. What was the intended purpose of this innovative international health instrument that appeared with Ebola virus disease and followed to zika? Where were resources deflected upon declaration of PHEIC? Each emergency originated in a poor region where social and economic inequities expose people to precarious lives where malnutrition, and the lack of clean water, sanitation, arable land, education and healthcare compromise their well being as violently as biological pathogens and vectors. Each was lurking for months if not years before declaration. In both cases, experimental innovative diagnostics, treatments and vaccines were on research lab shelves, rather than tested, approved and available. Just as populations were neglected without adequate (or any) health care system. From a series of ethnographic case studies, I follow how the definition of innovation is used for particular emerging health biotechnologies at particular times (and not others) across several continents. I consider the standardization of safety and efficacy to bring these 'innovative' products to market, and the agents that develop, regulate, market and use them. Finally, I propose a subversive cosmopolitical, symmetrical approach to open regulatory governance to the provision of a transparent, reflexive and trustworthy parliament of evidence that recognizes innovation can be gamed by elites when health products trump healthcare.