Biomedicine in museums

Jeg har lige sendt penge til Wikipedia igen her i november. Den her gang fik de 5% af min månedsløn, hvilket gjorde lidt ondt lige da jeg klikkede på ‘betal’, men som jeg alligevel ikke kan lade være med.

Jeg ved flere som heller ikke kan lade være, og jeg synes endnu flere skulle gøre det. Fordi næsten alle jeg kender bruger Wikipedia. Mange, som jeg, bruger den hver dag, simpelthen fordi den er uundværlig hvis man vil vide noget (det gælder ihvertfald den engelske Wikipedia, de tilsvarende danske og svenske ligger desværre langt bagefter, hvilket ikke er så mærkeligt, antallet af bidragsydere taget i betragtning).

Det er ikke alle som ved at Wikipedia lever af private donationer. Så hvis du vil holde Wikipedia levende, vent inte på at Bill Gates måske en gang i fremtiden sender dem et par miljarder. Det er en form for frivillig brugerbetaling. Hvis Wikipedia bliver nødt til at holde op pga mangel på penge så ville det være et tragisk eksempel på Hardin’s begreb “the tragedy of the commons” (som man kan læse mere om på Wikipedia her).

In case you have forgotten where to find Medical Museion on the (social) web:

• Biomedicine on Display: www.corporeality.net/museion

• Museionblog: www.museionblog.dk (in Danish)

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/medicalmuseion

• Twitter: www.twitter.com/medicalmuseion

• Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/medicalmuseion

• Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/53284874@N02/

• and, of course, our traditional home page: www.museion.ku.dk

God iagttagelse af Claus forleden dag — hovedet på sømmet!

Penge og ord – den entreprenante refleks
Jeg har iagttaget en ny rygmarvsreaktion: At forskere, som allerede står på universiteternes lønningsliste, straks, når de får ideer til at samarbejde om nye projekter, pr. automatik tænker dem som større ansøgninger til en forskningsfond eller et forskningsråd, der skal argumenteres og begrundes og kæmpes igennem før samarbejdet kan starte. Forskningssamarbejder fødes på dagens entreprenante universitet som idé-kasteller i stål og glas, fuldbragte med særlige advisory boards og andre udenomsværker, og gerne horder af tekniske eller videnskabelige assistenter, der må søges om ekstra penge til. – Okay, man kan da være nødt til at sikre midler til afholdelse af konferencer eller nyt instrumentel i laboratoriet. Påstanden her er blot, at det er blevet til en refleks helt fra starten at tænke forskningssamarbejder som organisatoriske monstre, der kræver uanede mængder af nye penge og ord. Hvorfor ikke bare begynde med at gøre arbejdet?

Claus har ret, i dag tænker flere og flere på denne entreprenante måde. Jeg må indrømme at jeg føler mig en smule ramt. Jeg tænkte slet ikke på den måde for ti år siden. Det er virkelig blevet en rygmarvsrefleks.

Syntetisk biologi er ikke nogen stor grej idag. Men der er meget hype omkring hvordan den her form for biologisk ingenjørkunst vil kunne forændre vores fremtid som mennesker, med organreservedele og det hele. Så som museum må vi være opmærksom på hvordan vi skal forholde os til indsamling af genstande fra denne tidlige fase af den syntetiske biologi. Den som vil vide mere om udviklingen inden for området kan komme til et seminar med Mark Bedau med titlen “Living technology” på torsdag i næste uge (den 11. november), kl. 14-15. Det sker i regi af vores nye Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies, og det foregår på CSS (det gamle Kommunehospital), Øster Farimagsgade 5, rum 10.0.11.

In 2000, a group of university museum people around Europe founded UNIVERSEUM as a loose network for the preservation of the European academic heritage.

So far it’s had an informal structure, which has been part of the charm of the organisation. But at the 2010 annual meeting in Uppsala last June, it was decided to organise it more formally with statutes, membership, fees etc — and the following aims:

• It aims at academic heritage in the broad sense – not only university museums and collections, but also monuments, buildings, archives, and libraries.
• Its geographical scope is European academic heritage (although anyone from outside Europe can become a UNIVERSEUM member).
• In terms of recognition, it targets the European political and academic community, particularly the European University Association (EUA), the Coimbra Group, other European university organisations, the European Union, the Council of Europe, etc.

Anyone (individual or institution) with an interest on European academic heritage can now become a member. See the statutes here.

The interim executive committee — Thomas Bremer, University of Halle-Wittenberg; Marta Lourenço, University of Lisbon;
Laetitia Maison, University of Bordeaux, France; Sébastien Soubiran, University of Strasbourg; Klaus Staubermann, National Museums Scotland; Sofia Talas, University of Padua; Roland Wittje, University of Regensburg — invites to the next UNIVERSEUM Network Meeting to be held at the University of Padova, 26-29 May, 2011. A call for papers will be announced soonish. More info from Sébastien Soubiran, University of Strasbourg,
sebastien.soubiran@unistra.fr.

Most medical museums live in the safe past. Exhibitions rooms are filled with beautiful 19th and 20th century medical instruments and scary pathological body parts in formaldehyde. The present and the future body and its instruments are hardly visible in medical museums.

How, for example, shall medical museums handle the fusion of bodies and instruments made possible by bio-engineering and human enhancement:

Living bacteria with artificial DNA, supercomputers designed to function like a real human brain or robots showing human-like emotions. Biology is increasingly engineered in much the same way as technology, while technology is becoming more and more life-like. These two engineering trends intensify current debates about the desirability and acceptability of genetic engineering and human enhancement. They also raise novel issues, like who’s in control of machines with a life of their own?

Quoted from an invitation to a meeting titled ‘Making Perfect Life’ (about the social and political consequences of these two bio-engineering trends) in the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday 10 November. Speakers include stem cell scientist Stephen Minger, neurosurgeon Veerle Visser-VandeWalle, Artifical Intelligence expert Brigitte Krenn, philosophers Mark Bedau, Roger Strand and Jutta Weber, sociologist Andrew Webster and others.

See here for final programme and registration (before November 2nd). Conference attendance is free.

Jesper‘s bog, Det hvide snit: Psykokirurgi og dansk psykiatri 1922-1983 (Syddansk Universitetsforlag) udkommer i morgen. Der er noget forskellige forhåndsomtale af bogen i dag her og her. Der var også en artikel i Information i går.

Sekretæren for Dansk Medicinsk-Historisk Selskab, Søren Bak-Jensen, påminder om at fristen for indsendelse af opgaver til Studenterprisen 2010 er 31. december.

Prisen er på kr. 10.000 og kan uddeles til alle typer studenteropgaver, undtagen specialer, der beskæftiger sig med et medicinhistorisk emne og som er blevet bedømt i 2010.
 
Derfor, hvis du har været vejleder på eller kender til en god medicinhistorisk opgave fra i år, så er det en rigtig god idé at gøre opmærksom på muligheden for at deltage i konkurrencen.
 
Flere oplysninger om hvordan indsendelse af opgaver foregår findes her. Eller spørg Søren på stbj@hotmail.com.

Luke Jerram has just finished a new glass sculpture of a Plasmodium falciparum merozoite just after it has entered a red blood cell.

The artwork is to be auctioned in New York to raise money for the charity Malaria No More.

See the sculpture in Jerram’s microbiology artworks collection and a YouTube clip of the newly completed sculpture.

(From the Luke Jerram Newsletter, October 2010)

If you are interested in medical science studies, you might consider visiting Medical Museion on Thursday 28 October at 2PM.  Tiago Moreira (School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University) will speak about “Ageing in Technological Democracies”:

Social gerontology has until recently been mainly concerned with the structural and cultural contexts through which age identities and practices are organised. This has been enriched by current debates about the extent to which these identities are constrains on individuals or represent ‘reflexive opportunities’ of re-invention, and by the increased recognition that knowledge and representations of ageing play a central role in these social and political processes. In this paper, I explore the growing importance of processes of collective negotiation about the aims, methods and results of research on ageing. Drawing from a documentary analysis of an on-going public controversy about access to dementia drugs on the National Health Service and the role of ‘quality of life’ measurements within it, I examine how patient organisation, charities, clinicians, health economists and policy makers confront different understandings of the ageing process in their quest to assess the value of therapies for Alzheimer’s Disease. I argue that these differences can be explained by relating them to divergent perspectives on the relationship between the experience of ageing, ageing research and the politics of health and social care. I conclude by suggesting ways through which a ‘technological democracy’ could include groups and concerns that have remained at the margins of the knowledge making process in contemporary societies.

Tiago is trained as a sociologist and has written extensively about “the complex worlds that are enacted in contemporary biomedicine, with particular attention to the role of technology in the orders of medical work, the use of health technology at home, the collective production of health care standards and the politics of clinical trials”.

Arranged by Center for Healthy Aging, Theme 5: Communication and Innovation (in which Medical Museion takes part with a postdoc project and two PhD-projects). Further info from Lene Otto (lotto@hum.ku.dk) or myself (ths@sund.ku.dk).