Instytucjonalizacja polskiej walki z rakiem. Między nauką i biopolityką
Institutionalising the Polish Fight against Cancer: Between Science and Biopolitics

Summary/Abstract: The article attempts to show the extent of the interpenetration of post-war Polish medicine (oncol- ogy) with the politics (biopolitics) of the state and the everyday life of physicians. In the first part of the article, describing the process of creation of post-war state institutions, I attempt to answer the question of whether and to what extent the post-war ideologisation of public life influenced the direction of development of the Polish fight against cancer and to what extent the patterns of health policy implemented in the USSR and the iron curtain, tight until the mid-1950s, determined the pos- sibilities for Polish oncologists to act and work. The second part of the article descends to the level of specific oncology institutes and analyses the day-to-day functioning of these centres. Through such an approach, this part attempts to show how, with the changes in personnel and the transformation of the political meaning of oncology and the fight against cancer as a “disease of modernity” tak- ing place from the 1970s onwards, a shift took place in the Polish People’s Republic not only in the priorities of health or social policy of the state (the so-called “epidemiological transition”), but above all in the area of public discourse.

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