May 2008

Some medical objects, like stethoscopes or mechanical hearts, are almost 100% ‘medical’. They are not made for other purposes, they are rarely used for other purposes, and they are almost always understood by others as ‘medical’ objects.

But what about this worn-out keyboard?

It was produced as a multipurpose keyboard, clones of it are used in a variety of professions and contexts — and few of us would think of any of these as ‘medical’ objects.

Yet, this particular keyboard was used by a medical transcriptionist, says Cory Doctorow who cites a colleague:

We have a medical transcriptionist on staff who has been using the same keyboard for the last 8.5 years. My co-worker replaced it yesterday, and when he first showed it to me I thought someone had taken a blowtorch to it! The most frequently used keys have been completely worn through, exposing the mechanism beneath. Zoom in and check out the indentation on the Backspace key! The keyboard still works fine, so there’s something to be said for durability. BTW, it’s a NMB Technologies model RT2358TW

Today’s Medgadget use the image to illustrate their celebration of the (US) National Medical Transcriptionist Week, designated in May 1985 by president Ronald Reagan, who said in a speech:

Record-keeping is a vital function in our society, and one of the most important records for every American is the medical record. That record, including reports prepared and edited by a medical transcriptionist from physician dictation, is the permanent history of a patient’s medical care.

I doubt a historian of contemporary medical history could have better summarised the role of medical transcriptionists in the health service sector.

And I doubt that any other object is better suited to function as an evocative object of the profession — crystallising the daily work conditions of hundreds of thousands, mainly women, transcriptionists.

(originally brought by boingboing)

A couple of weeks ago I received a package which, to my great joy and surprise, contained five copies of my biography of Niels K. Jerne (Science as Autobiograhy, Yale UP, 2003) in a Japanese translation.

The rights were sold to the big Tokyo publisher Igaku Shoin already in 2004. But I never heard anything from them, and occasional inquiries never yielded anything but polite avoidance replies. So it is very pleasing to see it in print at last.

My knowledge of Japanese is less than rudimentary so I churned the title (免疫学の巨人イェルネ) through Google Translate and got another—but less joyful—surprise: ‘giants immunology jerne’! Could be a Google blunder, of course, but it doesn’t even remotely looks like anything like ‘autobiography’.

The Japanese title is a pretty far shot from (well, even the opposite of) the idea behind the original title. The thrust of the book is that Jerne’s theoretical work in immunology was a metaphorical projection of his understanding of himself. His science was literally his autobiography. Accordingly Science as Autobiography is a case-study of an auto/biographical approach to understanding the construction of scientific knowledge. My claim is that the inner life of the scientist constitutes an emotional and existential context for the production of scientific knowledge which is as important as the cultural or social contexts.

Most reviewers got this message right (like Fred Tauber in Bull. Hist. Med.). But, alas, it gets completely lost in the translation. The new title erroneously classifies the biography into one of these hagiographical works that I very consciously tried to stay away from. Maybe some immunologists believe Jerne was a ‘giant’, but I certainly didn’t portray him as such. It simply wasn’t the intention of the book. The summary on their website (in Google translation) isn’t better.

That said, it’s great that the book is now available for a wider Japanese readership. To Igaku Shoin’s credit, they have kept the whole note apparatus and the full bibliography, and all the illustrations are intact too. And it’s very nicely set and bound, and (as far as I can see 🙂 there are no typos.

What makes these everyday things—a food storage container, a measuring cup, a cake keeper, a beverage bottle, etc—potential contemporary medical museum objects?

Well, it turns out they all contain bisphenol A, a rather simple organic molecule used as a key monomer in the production of polycarbonate plastics.

In addition to being a very useful hard plastic ingredient, however, BPA is also a biologically active molecule, having the spooky effect of being an estrogen receptor antagonist; in other words it disturbs the endocrine system. The effects of endocrine disruptors are debated. But most pundits seem to support a better-safe-than-sorry policy (see, for example, this interesting interview on the Stanford School of Medicine website with emeritus endocrinologist David Feldman, who warned about the possible effects in the 1990s).

The display of a collection of such objects could be a nice everyday-life appetizer to a future exhibition about the many dangerous substances—radioactive isotopes, toxic chemicals, nanoparticles and so forth—that affect public health. The problem with such exhibitions is precisely the invisibility of many environmental hazards. The use of objects like Rubbermaid beverage bottles and Tupperware microwave canisters could be one way to mentally visualize (and materialize) the problem. (Tupperware say they’ve abolished BPA in their baby bottles and other products, but that they keep it in their microwave line.)

(credits: thanks to Medgadget for Feldman interview link and object image—which they in turn got from Rubbermaid—and to Wikipedia for molecule image)

If I were an American I would probably have rushed to my computer already last Tuesday night to proudly announce on this blog that I and Medical Museion had been given Medicoprisen. The prize has been awarded annually by the industry organisation for medical devices in Denmark (Medicoindustrien) since 2001. The industry exports for more than 40 billion DKK per year, which is quite hefty, given the small size of this country (population 5,5 mill).

This year, the award was given for the work we have done here at Medical Museion to collect, preserve and display the medical industrial heritage. As you may have noticed, some of the collected artefacts have been displayed on this blog over the last couple of years (some of them are also displayed on our official website; in Danish only)

I didn’t rush to the computer, however, because in Scandinavia it is still somewhat suspicious to write too much about oneself (ever wondered why there are so few bloggers in Denmark :-). The Danish word for this is ‘selvfed’ which is not only untranslatable (literally ‘auto-obese’), but also a kind of behaviour which invites to a certain ridicule, so it has taken me almost a week of reeeally hard emotional work and much support from friends and colleagues to wrestle down my innate Jante Law censor.

After this ritual three paragraph opening caveat, I must admit that I’m quite pleased by the award. We have worked hard for several years now to turn this old museum into an institution that is more oriented towards contemporary medicine and medical technology. We are in the process of formulating a new acquisition strategy based on an awareness of the importance of medical industrial design both for the curation and the design of medical artefacts, and we are interested in opening up for co-operation between the university, the industry and the museum world. Our senior curator with responsibility for acquisitions, Søren Bak-Jensen (a specialist in the history of late 20th century kidney transplantation procedures) plays a central role in these efforts. 

So here are some ‘auto-obese’ images from the prize ceremony. First, yours truly with the award, a small, but very solid (and heavy!) bronze sculpture by the Danish artist Peter Hesk Møller:

And then in conversation with Helge Sander, the Danish Minister for Science, Technology and Development, who handed over the award on Tuesday 6 May:

(there is a less flattering pic on our official website, as well).

(all photos by Michael Altschul, Visuel-medie)

Joanna Ebenstein, a NYC-based photographer and designer, spent a month travelling to medical museums throughout Europe and the US (see a list of visited museums here), to take photos of their collections of human remains and anatomical models, from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Her efforts have now been turned into a web gallery called Anatomical Theatre.

The images on the website are great (some have also been shown before on her excellent blog Morbid Anatomy). But it’s also interesting to contrast the web show (and the blog) with the corresponding physical photo installation in the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences last autumn (you can see pictures of it in Joanna’s flickr-gallery here).

Placed in the rooms of the Alabama museum, the appearance of the images of these delicate old museum specimens changes drastically:

At first sight, this is a hopeless setting for a photo exhibit of early modern and modern anatomical objects and models; the beauty of the objects is squandered by the barren interior design. Just take a look at those lights!

But on the other hand — there are also interesting contrasts at play:

The choice of a room with cream-coloured walls, clinical ceiling light, and huge illuminated exit signs can be seen as the artist’s (unconscious?) protest against the ambience of authenticity and the artistic tastefulness which such images and artefacts are often surrounded by in their original settings.

So, the anonymous, near-clinical setting (this could be a waiting room in any hospital in the Western world in the 1990s) functions as a reminder of the original function of these artefacts and models. They were not made to please the aesthetic eye, they were made to be used.

In other words, the functionality of the room transforms these potentially aesthetically pleasing images to functional, clinical pictures. The hanging makes all the difference.

(pictures above from Joanna’s flickr-gallery)

Today’s edition of SurgXperiences (nr 121)—organised by The Sterile Eye under the title ‘Tools of the trade’—is illustrated with some of Øystein Horgmo‘s photos of surgical instruments. A nice collection which reminds us of the visual aesthetic qualities of surgical things. Here are some examples:

More here.

Biomedicine is displayed in many ways. Science writer Carl Zimmer wondered last summer if scientists are making tattoos with images from the world of science. It turned out they have — and so yet another science blog (Carl Zimmer’s Science Tattoo Emporium) was born, filled with skin images of science motifs.

Here, e.g., is a DNA motif on the ankle of Therese (last name unknown) who teaches molecular and cell biology at a university in Atlanta (from Zimmer’s post here):

And here’s a DNA monster (from an earlier post):

If we are right in believing that the microarray pattern is gradually about to replace DNA as an icon of postgenomic life sciences (because the double helix is so last year), then we should soon be able to see a red, green and yellow microarray tattoo. A fitting pattern for a broad back, with thousands of dots! Let us know if you find one (or make one yourself!).

(jen_drake is close too it: (s)he has tattoos and is also using microarray analysis — but has apparently not made the connection between them yet …)

Earlier this week we mentioned the MoMA exhibition ‘Design and the Elastic Mind‘. One of the art works on show is (sorry: was) Oron Catt’s and Ionat Zurr’s ‘Victimless Leather’ a small ‘leather’ jacket made of stem cells on a polymer matrix. Was, because last week an exhibition curator pulled the plug on its life-support system, thus killing the project. ‘Victimless Leather’ was originally created to last at least until the exhibition close next Sunday. But it grew too fast, and since the artists were back in Australia the curator felt she had to kill it off. More details in The Art Newspaper and The Scientist).

Three reflections on the synthetic life conference in Roskilde in August.

First, it would be great to bring the science/art perspective into the discussion. Art works inspired by the idea of synthetic/artificial life forms (like Reiner Matysik‘s) will probably contribute to the production and circulation of popular doxa in the field, which will in turn speed up funding of the research effort.

Second, the Roskilde University based organising committe (Vincent F. Hendricks, Poul Holm, Frederik Stjernfelt, Anette Warring, Jeppe Dyre, Jacob Torfing, and John Gallagher) have backgrounds in philosophy, history, literary theory, physics, political science, and computer science—but nobody from the life sciences is taking part. Which raises the interesting question whether current research on synthetic life in general is actually advancing outside the framework of the life sciences?

Third reflection: if the synthetic life theme is pursued by computer scientists, nanoengineers and physical chemists, and is considered too ‘far out’ for mainstream life sciences, are we then actually witnessing a situation analogous to the rise of molecular biology 60-80 years ago? Historians of molecular biology have convincingly demonstrated that most biologists were oblivious to the questions raised by emergent molecular biology in the 1940s and 1950s, and that the coming of molecular biology (later molecular genetics, biotechnology etc) was to a large extent nurtured by people trained in physics. Is the synthetic life movement a kind of redux phage group?

Speaking of artificial organisms: the Roskilde Science Sunrise Conference 2008 (‘Surviving Ourselves: The Human Condition’) to be held at Roskilde University, Denmark, 13-15 August, will deal with the possible impact of the laboratory creation of primitive life and the possibility of genetic recreation of dead DNA (the Jurassic Park theme).

The organising committee is bringing in a group of specialists with profound knowledge about synthetic life and its social, ethical etc. consequences. Speakers include Mark Bedau (Reed University, currently at ProtoLife), David Deamer (who works on molecular self-assembly at UC Santa Cruz), Drew Endy (MIT pioneer in synthetic biology; see interview with him in Edge here), Gerald L. Epstein (who studies the consequences of bioterrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC), expert on synthetic life, P. Luigi Luisi (University of Rome), neuroscientist Donald W. Pfaff (Rockefeller University), Steen Rasmussen at the Center for Fundamental Living Technology (SDU, Denmark), and Robert M. Friedman (Vice President for Public Policy, J. Craig Venter Institute).

On top of this stellar crew, the organising committee is expecting a number of additional 35 min. presentations on the theme. Send 150-250 abstracts before 1 June (online submission here). More info on http://sunrise.ruc.dk/. Great initiative!