The Social Production of Crisis

In The Social Production of Crisis, Constance A. Nathanson and Henri Bergeron focus on the profoundly troubling story of how blood banks and blood products manufacturers and distributors, as well as the authorities charged with regulating them in France and the US, knowingly allowed blood contaminated with HIV to be distributed to hemophiliacs and others needing transfusions in the early to mid-1980s. Based on detailed, lively, and exciting comparative analysis, the book explains why this drama became a political crisis in France and not in the United States. The authors use this comparison to advance more general ideas of how political crises are socially produced and to raise questions about disease policy and politics in the two countries.