Infected: How Power, Politics, and Privilege Use Science Against the World’s Most Vulnerable

A paradigm-shifting exploration of the politics of health around the world, by an award-winning scientist

“Zaman’s optimism . . . is welcome. . . . His sense of urgency is irresistible.” —The Wall Street Journal on Muhammad H. Zaman’s The Biography of Resistance

Since the dawn of germ theory, from cholera to sleeping sickness, syphilis to COVID-19, the history of infectious diseases and related policies has shown us how vulnerable communities have been impacted in the name of research or disease control.

In Infected, award-winning scientist and author Muhammad H. Zaman navigates the exceptionalism of infection and tells the epic story of compromised doctors and administrators, and the heroes who challenged them. It is a tale describing how exclusionary immigration acts, the Tuskegee syphilis study and the Guatemala experiments, the development of biological weapons, the fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan, and the rhetoric around the recent pandemic are all parts of the same deeper story—one of infectious diseases intertwined with power and politics.

This is a story that continues today, in poor nations that have long been impacted by the foreign policies of the rich, and at borders, where asylum seekers are denied necessary medical treatment regardless of who is in power. Melding science and history, Infected presents infection as a key to understanding our recent past, present, and future.

© 2025 The New Press (Ebook): 9781620979037

Release date

Ebook: November 18, 2025