Biomedicine in museums

Will one of the unintended efffects of ‘translational medicine’ be that the traditional playfulness that characterizes the life science culture will become stymied by politically correct medical science committee people?

The recent case of censoring gene names is an early warning sign. The Human Genome Organisation Gene Nomenclature Committee is about to rename a number of genes which some physicians believe have offensive or embarrassing names. The reason behind this is that geneticists have traditionelly used their creative fantasy to come up with weird gene names like lunatic fringe, sonic hedgehog, cookie monster, etc. But now, when these names are increasingly being transferred to the human analogues of the genes, some medical doctors find this practice problematic: “It struck me that if I were talking to a patient and telling them the problem is that they have a mutation in their lunatic fringe, that would be an inappropriate conversation we were having,” said Mark Ludman, a medical geneticist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, to news(at)nature (on-line version 6 November 2006). Biologists are pissed: “Darn prissy physicians. They’ve got no sense of humor”, wrote PZ Myers on Pharyngula under the heading “Hands off those genes” — and was followed by a host of (mostly supportive) comments. Read More

‘Translational medicine’ (or ‘from bench to bedside’) is one of recent popular notions in  biomedical research policy discourse. The idea is to strenghten the relations between basic life science research and clinical work: “Translational medicine facilitates the rapid, effective application of results in the research laboratory to patients in the clinic”, says one of Science magazine’s website editors.

At first sight the notion of ‘translational medicine’ looks like old wine in new barrels. For example, strengthening the bonds between basic science and the clinic was the foundational idea behind the creation of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the early 1890s, making Baltimore the world’s leading medical research city around the turn of the last century. And the history of 20th century medicine is replete with examples of the close connections between basic life science research and clinical work. Clinical practice is to a large extent based on scientific knowledge — a lot of translation has flown under the bridges in the last hundred years.

So what’s the recent buzz about ‘translational medicine’ about? It probably has to do with the fact that basic life science research over the last decades has produced an enormous amount of knowledge about molecular and cellular structures and processes which has not yet been translated into clinical practice. In private, clinical people are often somewhat embarassed about the fact that so little of basic molecular biology and genomic and postgenomic science has been turned into useful bedside practice. So ‘translational medicine’ is probably just another way of saying that molecular biology (and its present version: postgenomics) — which as been funded for more than half a century because of its alleged clinical usefulness (e.g., to find “the cure against cancer”) — has to start to deliver.

Is there any historian of idea out there who is interested in taking a closer look at the history of the notion of ‘translational medicine’?

I wonder how much we could do out of photo- and electronmicroscopic art in an exhibition context? The practice of turning microscopic scientifc objects into art objects goes all the way back to the beginning of light microscopy in seventeenth century, and since then generations of microscope users have alternated between taking a scientific and an aesthetic approach to what they saw through the ocular.

So there is an enormous amount of potentially useful historical material out there. Today most scientists are accustomed to such science/art objects; almost every issue of Nature, Science, Cell, and many other scientific journals carries photo- or electronmicrographs of cellular and molecular structures on the cover.

General audiences are also getting access to more and more of this kind of borderline science/art micro-iconography through popular science magazines and not least through the web. One of the best sites is Nikon’s Small World site which contains many hundreds of photomicrographs from the annual Small World Photomicrography Competition. For example, this “Cell nuclei of the mouse colon” by Paul Appleton at the University of Dundee (740x with 2-photon fluorescence microscopy; see it in context here) was the winner of the 2006 competition:

What place may such photo and/or electronmicrographs have in displays of recent biomedicine? Has anyone found a good example of an exhibition where they fit in with/complement material objects and/or texts? How can we use them to problematise the meaning-presence tension? Any views on this?

Evolutionary theory is one of those conceptual approaches that knocks on the door of recent biomedicine. What role might evolutionary thinking have on future medical practice? To answer this and similar questions we are organizing a symposium on “What and Why Medical Doctors Need to Know About Evolution”, Friday 15 December 9-12.30 at the Panum Institute, Blegdamsvej 3 (Dam Auditorium).

Evolutionary biology has played only a small role in medical thought in the 20th century. Although basic biological training is a must for medical students, evolutionary thinking has rarely been part of the medical curriculum. The two keynote speakers of this meeting – Professor Randolph Nesse (Psychiatry, University of Michigan) and Professor Stephen C. Stearns (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Yale University) – are among the leading proponents for the need to build new conceptual bridges between evolutionary thinking, medical research and clinical practice. Their talks will be followed by a discussion where the audience can put questions to the speakers and a panel of leading Danish experts.

The symposium is organized by Professor Jacobus J. (Koos) Boomsma, Head of Department of Population Biology and Director of the Centre for Social Evolution at the Institute of Biology (jjboomsma@bi.ku.dk), and Professor Thomas Söderqvist, Director of Medical Museion (ths@mm.ku.dk), both at the University of Copenhagen.

For program details, see http://www.nbi.dk/~natphil/hugin-og-munin/219.htm#OPSLAG%20C.5

Every historian’s/curator’s wet dream is to find the door to a forgotten attic with all sorts of so far unseen historical documents and artefacts. This is what two former staff members at the Willard Psychiatric Center in New York State and a New York State Museum curator did in 1995 when they opened a hidden door to an attic with almost 400 suitcases with photos, letters etc. that had belonged to former patients. This unique material was turned into a very popular exhibition at the New York State Museum (“Lost Cases, Recovered Lives: Suitcases From a State Hospital Attic”) in 2004, and now it has been turned into a wandering exhibition and website, see http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org. Has anybody thought of going through the attics of the Copenhagen hospitals?

There has been some controversy in recent years about the possible beneficial vascular effects of drinking moderate amounts of red wine. Is it in the alcohol or in some other molecules in the complex wine soup? A report in this week’s issue of Nature confirms what we all thought — viz. that the effect can be correlated to a set of molecules called procyanidines which are in higher concentrations in wines from the southwestern area of France than in wines from other regions of the wine world. Here’s the abstract:

Regular, moderate consumption of red wine is linked to a reduced risk of coronary heart disease and to lower overall mortality, but the relative contribution of wine’s alcohol and polyphenol components to these effects is unclear. Here we identify procyanidins as the principal vasoactive polyphenols in red wine and show that they are present at higher concentrations in wines from areas of southwestern France and Sardinia, where traditional production methods ensure that these compounds are efficiently extracted during vinification. These regions also happen to be associated with increased longevity in the population.

(See futher R. Corder et al., “Oenology: Red wine procyanidins and vascular health”, Nature vol. 444, p. 566; 30 November 2006)

And what about beer? Come on, British Medical Journal!

Take a look at the brand new Journal of Visualized Experiments which wants to publish video films of experimental work to help apply laboratory protocols. The “YouTube for test tubes”, as news (at) nature writes.

The editors’ explicit aim is to help researchers reproduce biomedical experimental procedures, but it certainly has museological applications as well. These videos is a reminder how thoroughly materially grounded these practices are. We are very far from inscriptions á la Latour & Woolgar here. This is laboratory work in its original meaning of manual labour.

See also Gustav Holmberg on the same topic (in Swedish) + another post 

Another interesting aspect of multi-participant-generated scientific papers is that they will make it more difficult to retain traditional means (e.g.,co-authorship in articles in high impact peer-reviewed journals) for evaluating scientific research performance. As one report to the National Science Foundation said already six years ago:

“the shift from multidisciplinary to integrated research … will require changes in the way individuals are evaluated at their home institutions and by funding agencies. The emphasis on integration and collaboration leads to more collaborative research projects and multi-authored papers which will challenge traditional mechanisms of assessment for tenure and promotion”

(Report to the National Science Foundation From the Third Workshop on the Development of a National Ecological Observatory Network … 2000).

Tonight I am going to bed in company with a month-old (26 October) issue of Nature which carries the article that reports on the sequence of the honeybee genome. There are about 50 different species genomes sequenced or in the process of sequencing at the moment, but this is clearly one of the more interesting because of its potential power to elucidate the genetics of social behaviour.

What’s equally fascinating (as others have perhaps already observed in other multiauthor scientific papers) is that the 197 “participants” from 90 institutions all over the world are listed according to their functional position in the Honeybee Genome Sequencing Consortium, like “principal investigators” (2 persons), “DNA sequencing” (“only” 26 persons), “data management”, “genome assembly”, etc. Even “funding agency management” staff is listed in the paper. (It reminds me of the end credits of a movie: producers, instructors, 1st camera crew, gaffers, key grip, postproduction, catering etc. Will next step for consortium-produced scientific articles be to list IT service and kitchen staff as well?) Read More

The Office of NIH History has posted a job listing for their new Director. For more information go to www.usajobs.gov and search for vacancy #OD-07-146557-DE. The job closes on January 26, 2007, and is expected to be filled next spring. See also the new issue of their Newsletter.