| Summary: | There has been a substantial increase in the amount of biomedical research being conducted in resource-poor regions of the world since the 1980s, particularly clinical trials involving human subjects. With a particular focus on public-sector clinical trials, a number of anthropologists have recently conducted important ethnographic research into the ground-level operations of clinical research organisations and the relationships between doctors, co-ordinators, participants and non- participants. It has been argued that formal ethics and the scientific practices they govern obscure a relational and affective dimension of clinical trials, which is both necessary for, and transcends, the requirements of trial protocols. On the basis of ethnographic research with a clinical research organisation in South Africa specialising in trialling tuberculosis (TB) vaccines, I contend the explanatory value of tracing the diseases 'under the microscope' from global public health agendas to ground-level research practices when exploring the relationships between the 'ordered separations' of medical research structures and the relational-affective dimension they obscure. Through a close examination of TB at different levels of scale, I aim to open up more avenues of enquiry into the multifarious factors that shape the important relations that develop between clinical research organisations and those on whom research is conducted.
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