Parasites! Graphic exploration of tropical disease drug development

Abstract

Parasites!, a 2010 comic sponsored by the Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Parasitology, demonstrates that a graphic narrative can play a role in energizing public debate. Part of the genre known as graphic medicine—comics about illness, treatment, disability, and caregiving—Parasites! is intended to educate readers of all ages about illnesses less known in the developed world. Two visual strategies in particular enable the comic to offer an alternative and aesthetic response to questions about developing drugs to treat tropical diseases for profit. By including visuals and text, and not just one of these formats, viewers must reorient themselves aesthetically and epistemologically to ethical, social, cultural, and political structures that adversely affect human health.