Tropological Biopolitics of Molecular Medicine: NIH, Francis Collins, and the “New” Vaccines

Important slogans deployed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Francis S. Collins’ leadership have institutionalized patterns of synecdochic and metonymic reasoning about public health while idealizing molecular medicine, sustaining Nikolas Rose’s notion of molecularization, and advancing Rose’s notion of optimization. Because of NIH’s status and because of how tropes work, however, the messaging invites “arrested reconciliation,” a process that may occur when tropes misrepresent and reduce complex meaning about science amidst social forces that complicate processing. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s public health rhetoric about vaccine schedules for Black Americans performs arrested reconciliation as misaligned mimicry of NIH’s modeling.