Biopolitical endpoints: Diagnosing a deserving British nuclear test veteran

Catherine Trundle

Social Science & Medicine, 2011, vol. 73, issue 6, 882-888

Abstract: This article examines recent claims for healthcare made by British veterans who participated in nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s. Specifically, it focuses on their claims for war disablement pensions, exploring how they seek and challenge medical diagnoses. Detailing three veteran case studies, the article offers an ethnographic analysis of illness narratives. It explores how sufferers attempt to recast and reject the evidential burdens that they face in pension appeals, and identifies three narratives strategies that they deploy aimed at linking somatic realities to political etiologies. I propose the notion of biopolitical endpoints to capture how test veterans narratively connect political and medical domains as they seek to enable state culpability and redress.

Keywords: Britain; Nuclear; bomb; tests; Veterans; Biopolitics; Legal; claims; Contested; illness; Diagnosis; Illness; narratives; UK (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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