Biomedicine on Display

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 public health agents. 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 on their blog that they’ve abolished BPA plastics from their baby bottles and other products, but keep them 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!

Today, Reiner Matysik’s exhibition ’Biofakte–Organismen der Zukunft’ [Biofacts-Organisms of the Future] opens in Bonn. When I wrote about the project in an earlier post in February, I thought the Bionten were small creatures, the size of a walnut or something:

And then Reiner sent me this photo from the installation work — they are huge!

(couldn’t get through the doors to our exhibition space). This could be a great show at the National Natural History Museum here in Copenhagen (maybe they’ve already arranged to show it?).

I must admit I’ve never paid much attention to chemical compound packages. But, of course, when you think about it — there they are, lots of variegatedly coloured bottles and plastic containers stacked on the shelves behind more fancy and eye-catching instruments and displays. A pedestrian, infrastructural backdrop to the more sophisticated scenery on the bench.

I thought about them, because one of my favourite science blogs — Derek Lowe’s well-written, professional, insightful (and almost daily updated) In the Pipeline (see earlier enthusiastic review here) — describes the different kinds of packages that arrive in his pharma lab. For example, the Japanese company TCI

sends a lot of its compounds in normal-looking glass bottles, but these are first put inside capped plastic containers, like larger translucent versions of the ones that 35mm film probably still comes in.

Maybridge, on the other hand, sends their compounds in

these weird little squat brown-glass bottles with small black caps on them. They must have the world supply of that particular bottle shape tied up, since I’ve never seen one anywhere else.

And so on and so forth. Collecting lab artefacts will never be the same again.

It looks like microarray patterns are gradually replacing the DNA double helix as the central icon for biomedicine and the life sciences. For example, the new Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen—funded for a ten-year period with 600 mill. DKK (~120 mill. USD) by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and fully operative some time in 2009—has just presented their logo:

thereby adding to the growing iconicity of microarrays, the new wonder tool of life science research. Martha de Menezes famously turned it into art a couple of years ago, we put it as a wall-paper on our blog about a year ago, and many others are beginning to employ the dotted pattern as an icon of the power of bioinformatics and systems biology in the life-sciences.

This particular logo has been worked out in co-operation between Søren Brunak, Michael Sundström and L. N. Jørgensen at the Center together with a graphical design company (‘daugbjerg + lassen’, which I cannot find on Google). Read more in the Center’s last newsletter.

Actually it’s more readable when it’s downsized!

Last year, Phillip Warnell (who made the pill camera installation which Jan Eric has reported about in an earlier post) went to Moscow to meet Natasha Demkina, one of the most famous contemporary medical clairvoyants and media darlings (aka The Girl with X-ray Eyes).

Now Phillips’ film of her scrutinising his body with her purported extra-ordinary ability will be premiered at Warwick Arts Centre on Thursday at 6pm.

After the film, lit crit theoretician Steven Connor will talk on the popular fantasy of acquiring x-ray vision, followed in turn by a showing of Werner Herzog’s documentary on mystical and shamanic traditions in Russia, Glocken aus der Tiefe: Glaube und Aberglaube in Russland [Bells from the Deep, 2005]. Plenty of vodka will of course be available during the event.

For another critical report on Demkina’s abilities, see here.

For more than a century, buttons (and badges and pins) have been carried to signal political or ideological allegiance. The appearance of a button tells us (to use Hegelian jargon) that a group of people an sich is becoming a movement or subculture für sich. If you have a political case to make, then produce a button.

Here’s the first example I’ve found of biomedical buttons. The folks behind easternblot are selling these buttons with the blog’s erlenmeyer flask logo. They are made in two colours – not simply red and blue, of course, but ’Ponceau S Red’ and ‘Bromophenol Blue’:

Easternblot say they have received ”a great response from scientists and non-scientists, from children and adults, from button-fanatics and button-novices”.

A must in any exhibition about the culture of contemporary biomedicine. Can be ordered here (wonder if they give a bulk discount if we would like to fill a whole wall?)

I’ve promised to write a chapter with the provisional title ‘Biomedical curating and the participatory web’ for our planned joint project anthology with the (also provisional) title Curating Biomedicine: Collecting, writing and displaying contemporary medicine. Here’s the abstract of the chapter (to be included in the book proposal; we haven’t found a publisher yet):

For more than a decade, museums in general have been exploiting the Internet for making their collections and exhibition available online. In the last 4-5 years museums have also begun to explore the potentials of the participatory web (web 2.0) for drawing users more actively into the production of the heritage. In this chapter I will explore, one the one hand, how museums actively promote the use of the participatory web for curating purposes, and, on the other hand how the increasing online availablility of iconographic and textual information about artefacts (both physical artefacts, images and documents) on user-driven websites (blogs, flickr, etc) provides an extra-mural source of curated objects. In addition, the chapter will also explore the vast resources of curated artefacts that are avaliable through traditional websites, including product catalogues of medicotechnical companies. The chapter will 1) give a state-of-the art overview over the variety of ways in which biomedical objects are represented on the web, 2) discuss the potentials of the participatory web for turning the curation of biomedicine into a more dialogical process between professional curators and amateurs (scientists, engineers, medical doctors), and 3) discuss the prospects for a synergy between museums and the web with respect to curating contemporary medical objects vs. a possible conflict between web-based curating and traditional curating procedures in medical museums.

Science and medical blogs will of course loom large in this chapter. So, in the next of couple of weeks I will post some examples of blogs and other kinds of user-driven websites that display biomedical objects. Ideally, the accumulated posts will then add up to the final chapter — don’t hesitate to engage in a critical discussion of my rambling thoughts. 

Susan Squier, Penn State University, will discuss work in progress for her new book in a seminar at Medical Museion on 29 May, 10:00-12:00.

Her previous books include “Liminal lives: Imaginations of the Human in Biomedicine”, “Playing Dolly”, “Babies in Bottles”. 

Location: Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, Fredericiagade 18, 1310 København. Everyone is welcome.

For more information, please contact Susanne Bauer at: sbau@sund.ku.dk