 Biomedicine as a global institution coevolved with its characteristic philosophical positions. While key elements, such as laboratory biology, were present in the nineteenth century and even before, “World War II is usually presented as a turning point in the ‘biomedicalization’ process” (Löwy 2011: 117). The term “biomedicine” was first used between the two world wars as a shorthand for some of the medical and scientific work being done on radioactive materials (Keating &amp; Cambrosio 2003; Löwy 2011: 49–55). But biomedicine only came into its own during the period of economic and social transformation in industrialized Western countries that followed World War Two: