The pasteurized state: milk, health and the government of risk

In the late 1940s, Florence Sabin, a retired professor of medicine, returned to her home in Colorado to launch a massive public health campaign. Seeing “filthy milk” as an important vector of disease, she struggled not just pasteurized milk, but a pasteurized state government that was capable of regulating the milk industry. In the process, she brought managerialism into public health by fighting against the political machines and introducing Robert McNamara's systems analysis into government for the first time. Sabin's innovation, which united business, government and public health in new ways, transformed the way that public health is managed even today.