Biomedicine in museums

The patient is a central category of recent (bio)medicine — this symposium focuses on the fragile patient, the patient as an object of biomedical science and industrialized care:

The Patient: A Symposium, Bucknell University, October 18 & 19, 2006

Precariously situated between home and hospital, work and bed, life and death, the patient occupies a liminal, unstable position. Charged to identify with her state as with the moral virtue from which she receives her name, the patient also lives in the fear of our indifference and impatience. Although attended by doctors, nurses, family and friends, her condition – particularly if it is chronic – ever threatens to sever her connections with the world and to exile her into that fundamental solitude owned by the sick and suffering.

Immersed within a society and medical system that seeks optimum outcomes linked to zero errors, the patient receives care delivered with industrial efficiency. Advances in diagnostic and therapeutic modalities provide both cure and control of chronic illness not imagined a decade ago. Poised to benefit on multiple fronts, she should be increasingly satisfied with the medical encounter; and yet, many patients feel alienated or even violated by the efficiency of the medical system. What defines a quality medical encounter from her perspective? What do medical practitioners – nurses, physicians, social workers – value in their relationship with the patient? How is this relationship preserved and nurtured? What are the opportunities or perils in the physician-patient relationship? Read More

Things are happening in the field of historiography that may have interesting consequences for the way we conceptualise the “representation” of recent biomedicine in a museum context, e.g., this conference:

Presence: A viable alternative to representation?
An international conference at Groningen University, The Netherlands Center for Metahistory Groningen (CMG), December 1 & 2, 2005

For more than thirty years now, thinking about the way we, humans, account for our past, has stood under the aegis of representationalism. In its first two decades, representationalism, inaugurated by Hayden White’s Metahistory of 1973, has been remarkably successful in questioning the realist assumptions in historiography. By now, however, it has lost much of its vigour and productivity, especially when faced with some of the more significant phenomena of the last decades’ dealings with the past (memory, lieux de mémoire, remembrance, trauma).

There are signs, however, that a new paradigm is emerging. We have boldly given a name to this emerging paradigm, we call it ‘presence’. Read More

Invitation and call for 1st annual symposium of the DK-UK Postgraduate Forum on Bio-studies: Current issues in bio-studies and society, 17th-18th November 2005, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK

This event will be the first meeting of the newly founded DK-UK Postgraduate Forum on Bio-studies. In both the United Kingdom and in Denmark, interest in the social, legal and ethical implications of developments in the biosciences has never been greater, as reflected in initiatives such as BioCampus at University of Copenhagen, BIOS at LSE, “Danish Biomedicine 1955-2005” at Medical Museion, the ESRC Genomics Network and many others.

The aim of this symposium is to focus on current issues in bio-studies in a cross cultural context in order to generate research initiatives and networking between the participants. The main themes to be explored will be Read More

Invitation from Lene Koch to the Medical Museion -group:

What: Stem cell group meets Nik Brown and Helen Busby
Where: Sofastuen, Panuminstituttet Blegdamsvej 3, 2200 N
When: September 27. 9.30 – 17 Read More

At the meeting, Friday 2 September, I mentioned in passing that we need suggestions for guest speakers at internal and external seminars, minisymposia, conferences etc. Invitations for events in the autumn of 2006 and in 2007 can wait until later, but to find interesting people for the spring of 2006, we need to take action sooner than later. Money is so far not a seriously limiting factor. Please list your suggestions here (continue to write in this area) or in the comment area below — when we have listed some 15-20 names I will send the accumulated tentative priority list around

“Genomics no longer casts genes as the blueprint that determines traits of humans, animals or plants. Rather genes are seen as “contextual” or as part of an interactive network that encompasses the genome, the cell, the organism and the natural and social environment”

Conference: “Genomics in Context”, 28th-30th September, 2005, ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society, University of Exeter, U.K.

The programme for our forthcoming international conference ‘Genomics in Context’ is now available (subject to minor changes). The conference will be launched by an open access keynote address by bestselling author Matt Ridley and closes with keynote lectures by Prof Stephen Hilgartner and Prof Joan Fujimura. The full programme with details of further plenary lectures and of all abstracts submitted can be found at:
http://www.centres.ex.ac.uk/egenis/events/genomicsincontext/index.htm. Although the deadline for submission of abstracts has passed, spaces are still available for delegates to attend the conference. Special students rates are available, and online registration is possible on the website.

Flesh & Bones, the online newsletter of National Museum of Health and Medicine, Wash. DC, writes in their August-September 2005-issue:

National Museum of Health and Medicine announces the opening of its newest exhibition: “Penelope: The World’s First Autonomous, Vision-guided, Intelligent, Robotic, Surgical Instrument Server.” A robotic scrub nurse assistant with speech recognition, machine vision, and robotic arm path planning and targeting, Penelope was developed by Robotic Surgical Tech, Inc., a Columbia University spin-out enterprise … Penelope is comprised of 4 major hardware and software components: the robotic arm, the instrument platform, the system stand and the system control software.

Read more.: http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum/news/robotic_surgical.html

Those interested in the recent history of biomedicine shouldn’t miss Nikolas Rose’s Clifford Barcley Lecture “Will biomedicine transform society?” held at the LSE in February 2005. Below is the abstract; the whole paper is available through this link.

Will biomedicine transform society? The political, economic, social, and personal impact of medical advances in the twenty-first century
Every day our news media report some wonderful new advance in biomedicine – new reproductive technologies to give hope to the infertile and allow parents to ‘design’ their children, new stem cell treatments for spinal cord injuries and Alzheimer’s ‘just around the corner’, new ways of screening our genomes for susceptibilities to illness, new pharmaceuticals that will not just alleviate our depression but make us happier and smarter, drugs that might further extend the life expectancy of those in the wealthy west. How should we evaluate this complex mixture of hype and hope in relation to health? Beyond the hype, what will Read More

Nu bekriger “body world”-udstillingerne hinanden: ifølge Florida-avisen Skt. Petersburg Times cirkulerer der i øjeblikket et tital udstillinger á la Günther van Hagen’s i USA — og van Hagen’s firma, Plastination Inc., lægger nu sag an mod én af dem, fordi han mener at den bryder imod hans ophavsret. Ikke på kropperne i sig selv, men den måde han udstiller dem på.
(tak til Erik Stattin, som fik den fra http://onthecommons.org/node/652)

Here is a blog experiment — putting other people’s published reviews of books of interest for the recent-biomedicine project on the blog (in the password protected area, of course, to avoid breaking copyright). All reviewed book will be ordered to the library. Here are three recent reviews from Nature and one from Science. If you find a relevant review, clip-and-paste it into a blog post (and remember to password protect it; password is “novo” Read More