Following the success of the first Vital Politics conference at the London School of Economics in 2003, the BIOS Centre is organising “Vital Politics II: Health, Medicine and Bioeconomics into the 21st century”. As before, focus will be on work that is empirically grounded but conceptually novel. The conference will be held 8-10 September 2006. Further details and a call for papers will be forthcoming. In the meantime, please mark your diaries and watch this space for more soon.
(from A V Jensen, Bios, LSE)

This draft paper was presented in the session ‘Carnevalesque medicine’ at the annual meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science, Pasadena, Ca., 20-22 October, 2005. If you cite this paper, please refer to the following url: http://www.corporeality.net/museion/index.php?p=261

Thomas Söderqvist, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen (ths@mm.ku.dk)
A Most Unruly Kind of Objects: Biomedical researchers as indeterminate singularities and ‘queer’ subjectivities

I would like to start by saying a few introductory words about the background for this session. Read More

I forlængelse af konferensen ”Medicinhistoria idag” i Stockholm den 22. august 2005 har arrangørerne udsendt følgende fortegnelse over deltagernes igangværende medicinhistoriske projekter. En del af dem vedrører biomedicinens nutidshistorie, så jeg vedlægger hele listen. Read More

Ifølge avisen The Scotsman er den skotske lovgivende forsamling igang med et forbud mod udstillinger af kroppe og kropsdele: Read More

Nu har Universitetsavisen ved Københavns Universitet fået øje på Medical Museion Weblog — se artiklen “Forskere på bloggen” i nr. 13/2005 (13. oktober), s. 14 (pdf-fil her). Den handler primært om erfaringerne med vores egen blog. Lisbeth Klastrup på IT-universitetet (som har læst artikeln) har for øvrigt skrevet en god artikel om forskerblogger.

And you could add many more: The University of Chicago Law School just started The Faculty Blog. A group of philosophers of biology started Philosophy of Biology last January.

Take a look at Genomics, Society and Policy — a new peer reviewed online journal initiated by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen) in Lancaster/Cardiff. The aim is

to provide an outlet for interdisciplinary research on the social, ethical and legal aspects of genomics and related emergent technologies such as nanotechnology and stem cell research. GSP welcomes submissions from sociological, philosophical, anthropological, legal, historical and other perspectives. We welcome submissions concerned with human medical issues, environmental impacts, human/animal relations and animal ethics. The journal will from time to time have themed special issues.

Sounds good! I wonder if they will accept papers about the material history of genomics? Or the public engagement in ditto? It’s definitely worth trying.

Et tilbagevendende spørgsmål på internseminarerne i august-september har været hvordan ordet ‘biomedicin’ egentlig skal defineres. Foranlediget af et spørgsmål fra Det Sundhedsvidenskabelige Fakultet ved KU, har Den Centrale Videnskabsetiske Komité nu kommet med deres definition:

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Ved et kort morgenmadsmøde fredag f.m. (7. oktober) fortalte Ken Arnold om planerne for ombygningen af Wellcome Trust‘s gamle hovedbygning (183 Euston Rd.) til en nyt kombineret udstillings-, biblioteks-, forsknings-, og events-center for biomedicinens kultur og historie (“Wellcome Collections”). De har lige udgivet en piece, som beskriver projektet og fordelingen af aktiviterne på de fem etager i bygningen. Det er en slags Medicinsk Museion-projekt — en hel del større, men lidt mindre integreret (og uden egne genstands- og ikonografiske samlinger!). De regner med at åbne det nye center i efteråret 2006. Den som vil se prospektmaterialet og høre mer, kan kontakte mig eller Frank.

Planlægningsmødet på Science Museum i torsdags (6. oktober) var meget interessant. Det var indkaldt af Robert Bud, som er deres Manager of E-Content (se fx. www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk and www.ingenious.org.uk). Han havde inviteret ca. 10 repræsentanter fra en række europæiske museer, herunder Medicinsk Museion, som kunne være interesseret i et samarbejde om at lægge deres digitaliserede samlinger ud på en fælles søgeportal. Det er store penge på spil og en hel del positive spin-off-effekter i det. Den som vil vide mere kan snakke med mig eller med Frank om sagen.

The European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) next conference is held in Lausanne, Switzerland, August 23-26, 2006. The conference theme is “Reviewing humanness: bodies, technologies and spaces” — which points to some of the central cultural and political questions of recent biomedicial and biotechnological practices:

What is it to be human today? Human “nature” is made and re-made by ideas and practices assembling bodies, technologies, and spaces. Three processes in particular seem to be transforming the very notion of humanness:

1. it is reconfigured by the life sciences, from genetics to neurobiology, with the invention of new forms of human corporeity. Within contemporary philosophy and STS literature, this is associated with conceptual changes, displacing traditional binaries such as human/animal, animal/machine, nature/technology, mind/body towards all kinds of hybrids.

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