Biomedicine on Display

Medical museums are usually full with old and new medical science instruments. But they tend to be kept in storage because it is difficult to display them in a meaningful way. It’s much easier to put moulages, pickled organs and surgical instruments on show. Medical science instruments usually need truckloads of description and contextualisaton to make sense in museum displays. (Probably because they don’t ‘talk’, some people would say :-)

Neither do many museum curators give much thought to the historicity of their display techniques. How have display practices changed over time and how do these practices reflect museum culture, politics and technologies?

Such question wil hopefully be discussed at the 29th symposium of the Scientific Instrument Commission, which will be held in Firenze, 4-9 October 2010 on the theme ‘Instruments on display’, i.e., how instruments have been presented in scientific collections, museums and permanent and temporary exhibitions throughout modern history up to the present:

Did didactic, scientific, celebrative, propagandistic and rhetorical considerations significantly influence the manner of displaying instruments? How were instruments presented in a Wunderkammer of the Renaissance, in a 18th-century cabinet or in a 19th-century exhibition? How and why are they shown in contemporary science museums?

This year’s symposium is sponsored and organized by Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (Museo Galileo) and Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica. The meeting is open to “anyone interested in the history, preservation, documentation of use of scientific instruments”, whether academic scholars, curators, collectors or students.

Send abstract before 1 June, 2010 by filling in this template.
More info on the symposium website.

Speaking about Jim Edmonson and the Dittrick Museum (i.e., the medical museum at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland), I’ve forgotten to tell you that they have just launched an institutional blog called — ‘Dittrick Museum’. Follow it here. Welcome to the medical museum blog sector!

I just had a long and nice phone conversation with Jim Edmonson at the Dittrick Museum in Cleveland. We talked, among other things, about museum blogging – and Jim claimed, among other things, that writing blog posts is probably a good preparation for writing artefact showcase labels.

I agreed in principle, but after hanging up I realised that Jim is both right and wrong. In fact, the best preparation for writing artefact labels isn’t blogging, but microblogging. And if Twitter were restricted to 70 characters instead of 140 it would be the ideal training ground for exhibition curators. No showcase labels should be more than 70 characters.

As I’ve announced in an earlier post, we’re opening the next show in the external exhibition area in the Panum Building — titled ‘Healthy Aging: A Life Span Approach’ — on next Monday (8 February) at 2pm.

Yesterday, exhibition architect Mikael Thorsted and our own museum assistant Jonas Paludan were hanging some of Liv Carlé Mortensen’s colleages of centenarians:

. 

Special curator Camilla Undén removed old texts from the former exhibition (’Primary Substances’):

And Mikael was also busy doing some welding angle grinding to adjust the wrought iron locks of the freestanding showcases:

More about the background for the exhibition here.

(thanks to Bente for shooting the pics yesterday)

As Bente writes on our Danish blog (Museionblog), we thought at first that Sven Erik Hansen (former consultant rheumatologist, now guest researcher here at Medical Museion) had a fit of belated Xmas nostalgia when he hanged this ’thing’ made of coloured gift wrappage ribbons in our lunch room earlier today.

But it’s actually more museum-related than we first thought. Turned out it’s a play on one of the central images involved in the preparation phase we’re in right now for the next show in our external exhibition area in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences.

 We — i.e. Sven Erik, Adam Bencard, Bente Vinge Pedersen and myself — have decided that the exhibition (to be opened in October) shall be a reflection on some of the central aspects of current research on the relation between obesity and type-2 diabetes.

We have started reading some of the scientific literature on G-proteins and G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR, not be confused with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution :-), which play a crucial role in these and many other metabolic processes.

Sven Erik’s coloured ribbon decoration is a spontaneously made simple model of such a GPCR receptor. Here’s a more scientifically accurate one:

(from here)

I’m not suggesting that we shall aim for a low-budget exhibition. But it reminds me that sometimes you don’t need fancy 3D-software to make evocative molecular models.

We’ll get back with more news about the progress of the exhibition in the next couple of months.

[This is a guest blog post by Martin Fenner, who normally blogs at Gobbledygook. It raises a problem of great importance for the preservation of the contemporary medical heritage]

The first email was sent in 1964, but that first email has been lost forever. - Lucy Nowell

As we have moved to digital formats both for primary research data and scientific publications, digital preservation has become critical to secure permanent access to scientific information. Digital preservation turned out to be much more difficult than creating digital content, as preservation requires long-term thinking about many issues including file formats, storage solutions and funding. Digital preservation turned out to be too big for individual libraries, publishers or research disciplines, and large collaborative efforts were started in the last five years.

Alliance for Permanent Access
The Alliance for Permanent Access is a European strategic framework for digital preservation of scientific information. The alliance coordinates the efforts of different funders, research support organizations and major european research laboratories (e.g. CERN or ESA).

Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet)
Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners is a digital preservation project by the National Science Foundation. The deadline for proposals was May 2009, and $100 million will be awarded over the next five years. Wow.

Portico
Portico is a not-for-profit digital preservation service for scholarly content. Portico was launched in 2005 with initial support by JSTOR, Ithaka, the Library of Congress, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Portico archive currently contains close to 15 million papers and is archiving journal content for many publishers and libraries for a fee. Portico steps in (a so-called trigger event) when a publisher

• stops operations
• ceases to publish a title
• no longer offers back issues
• has a castastrophic failure of the delivery platform

File formats
PDF/A was approved as an ISO standard for long-term archiving of electronic documents in 2005. Before PDF/A, many organizations (including our institution) used the raster graphics format TIFF. The major advantage of the PDF format is the handling text and vector graphics in addition to raster images, allowing full-text search and smaller file sizes. Because the PDFformat is constantly changing, PDF/A was based on a specific PDF version (1.4) with the following specifications:

• self-contained, no external images or fonts
• no sound or movies
• metadata in the XMP format
• no password protection

Most scientific papers are now produced in XML, usually using the NLM DTD. The Archiving and Interchange Tag Set is a flavor of the NLM DTD that is intented for archiving.

Storage solutions
Hard disks, tape and optical media are possible storage solutions. Tape is the ideal solution for long-term storage of research papers, but the digital preservation of research data in many areas (e.g. sequencing, high-energy physics) can’t be done with tape because of the exponential growth of these data. Hard disk storage has another problem: the energy requirements of data centers.

We live in a digital world, and this of course includes how we do and communicate science. It is surprising that we have barely started to think about digital preservation.

Can’t wait to avoid seeing Repomen when it is released in a theatre near me later in the spring. The trailer shows Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and a lot of lesser known stars running around killing each other in a near future when artificial organs can be bought on credit and some people can’t afford to make the payments on hearts, livers and kidneys they’ve purchased. Probably says more about the cultural expectations around the new transplantation future than about medical research. The dramaturgy doesn’t look particularly inspiring either.

The 23rd Nordic Medical History Congress will be held in Oslo, 25-27 May 2011. Contact Olav Hamran, Norwegian National Medical Museum (medisin@tekniskmuseum.no) for more info.

Just saw the early spring Monday seminar program at UCL’s STS department. I like the nice British analytical touch to it. Much more interesting than the usual fashionable Latouresque ANTsemiotics and other STS’ese sociolects. For example:

• Jeremy Howick, ‘When can we trust the experts? Defending the Evidence Based Medicine stance’, 25 January
• David Healy, ‘They used to call it Medicine’, 1 February
• Sam Schweber, ‘Writing the Biography of Hans Bethe’, 8 February
• Jane Gregory, ‘Producing the post-Fordist public, or: What is Science Communication for in a post-industrial society?’, 22 February
• Helena Sheehan, ‘What (if anything) has Marxism to contribute to science studies?’, 8 March
• Jeff Hughes, ‘Before the bomb: on writing the history of unclear physics’, 22 March

Wish I were in London more often, would love to discuss production of a post-Fordic public or hear Jeff unfold his ideas about ’unclear physics’ (no typo, it’s an intended joke, says Jon Agar, who sent the programme around).

This is the last part of my project description for the Ph.D.-project called “A genealogical study of the concept of ’successful aging’ and its relation to the idea of ‘human enhancement”. See the first two parts here and here.

 ’Successful aging’ in the neurosciences and the link to ‘cognitive enhancement’
In order to narrow the problem field, the project will look closely at how the notion of ‘successful aging’ has been understood and defined in the field of neuroscience in the last decades, and how ‘successful cognitive aging’ has played together with discussions — both in the scientific literature, in science policy documents and in general public discourse — about the possibility for so called ‘cognitive enhancement’ (‘neuro-enhancement’) [12][13][14][17]. Both in the scientific literature and in policy documents on ‘successful aging’ and ‘human enhancement’, the neurosciences are considered as the primary field of research; neuroscience also figures prominently in the corresponding public discourse [7][21][23], cf. [25]. The brain and cognition are ascribed significant cultural value in the emerging ‘knowledge society’; healthy cognitive abilities are considered necessary for a life-long contribution to the labour market and for well-being in everyday life, and not surprisingly some of the exponents for the notion of ‘knowledge society’ are also exponents for ‘converging technologies’ [17][21].

Current developments in the field of aging research also have strong discursive links to cognitive enhancement. As the aforementioned EU parliament study argues: “The growing problem of neurodegenerative diseases in ageing societies has turned research and development in therapeutic cognitive enhancers into a very dynamic field with significant resources” [21:26]. Likewise, in enhancement discussions special attention is being ascribed to cognitive enhancement: “’neuro/ brain enhancement’ as a research field stands at the centre of the CT [converging technologies] debate. It attracts the largest share of attention due to its plans to simulate and manipulate brain processes, which – if realized successfully – could directly affect our concepts of the human self and identity” [17:382], cf. [21][23][25]. Also here there may be a significant aspect of user-driven innovation: medications developed in research into age related diseases like Alzheimer’s disease is already being used by young, healthy individuals to (presumably) enhance their cognitive abilities [14][17][21], and, conversely, one could therefore expect that the market for cognitive enhancement may stimulate research in the prevention and treatment of age-related neurodegenerative diseases.

These interconnected arenas of aging research, enhancement discourse and general ideas about successful aging will be the focus point of this project. The point of departure is that the connection between the discussion about successful aging and the discussion about human enhancement has been overlooked in the scientific literature and that the two discourses are more closely related than usually presumed. Shedding light on the historical relation between the two notions both in the scientific and popular discourses will potentially have significant consequences for future research, for research politics and for the public understanding of successful aging.

References:
7. Kirk, H. (2008). Med hjernen i behold – Kognition, træning og seniorkompetencer. København: Akademisk Forlag.
12. Balling, G. (2002) (ed.). Homo Sapiens 2.0. Når teknologien kryber ind under huden. København: Gads Forlag.
13. Balling, G og Lippert-Rasmussen, K. (2006). Det menneskelige eksperiment. København: Museum Tusculanums Forlag.
14. Greely et al. (2008). Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy. Nature, 456, 702-705.
17. Beckert, B., Blümel, C and Friedewald, M (2007). Visions and realities in converging technologies. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 20(4), 375-395.
21. European Parliament Science and Technology Options Assessment (2009). Human Enhancement Study. Awailable at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/publications/studies/stoa2007-13_en.pdf (14.08.09)
23. http://www.humanityplus.org/read/2009/07/human-enhancement-what-should-be-permitted-geneva-october-20-21-2009/ (14.08.09)
25. Dumit, Joseph (2004). Picturing Personhood. Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press

It’s soon time for a new meeting in the ‘Artefacts’ series (for posts on earlier meetings, see here, here, here and here). This is the 15th annual meeting since the inception of the series in the mid-1990s, and this year’s theme is ‘Knowledge on the Move: Conflict, Displacement and Re-Engineering Society: 1933 to 1989′:

The mass movement of people displaced in Europe was a transformative social phenomenon of the period leading up to and following the Second World War. Many of those immigrants were scientists, engineers, designers and others with technical skills and pent up innovative energies. Their institutions and innovative technologies were left behind or unceremoniously stripped away but their knowledge of science and technology, aesthetic theories and convictions invigorated their new environments and adopted institutions. The result, from the turbulent ‘30s to the end of the Cold War, was a technological and cultural transformation of their — and our — world. This Artefacts workshop will investigate that transformation and movement of scientific and technological artefacts — from communications, to computers, art, music, and, of course, science.

Artefacts XV is held at the Canada Science and Technology Museum and Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa, September 19-21, 2010. Deadline for proposals for sessions and papers is Friday, 11 June; send to Randall Brooks at RBrooks@technomuses.ca; and, most importantly, please indicate in the proposal how selected objects will play a critical role in your presentation.

This is the second part of my project description for the Ph.D.-project called ‘A genealogical study of the concept of ’successful aging’ and its relation to the idea of ‘human enhancement’. See the first part here.

The relation between ’successful aging’ and ‘human enhancement’
The project will particularly focus on an analysis of the possible connection between ideas about the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases, on the one hand, and the current merging discourse on ‘human enhancement’, on the other. Like ‘successful aging’, the notion of ‘human enhancement’ — including a large variety of different ideas about the future possibilities for technological improvements of human bodies — became widely spread in the 1980’s and 1990’s [11][12][13][14].

A preliminary survey of the literature indicates that the notions of ‘successful aging’ and ‘human enhancement’ often seem to appear together in the scientific literature and in medical and health policy documents. For example both the European Union (EU) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have published reports that deal with so called ‘converging technologies’, usually defined as a convergence of nano-, bio-, info-, and cogno-sciences and technologies (NBIC). In such reports, the notion of ‘human enhancement’ is a central concept, around which the discussion of the aging population in the developed countries revolves [15][16][21], cf. also [17][18][19][20]. As a study commissioned by the EU Parliament says, “it is safe to say that a side effect of the fast-growing research and development into pharmaceuticals for age-related neurodegenerative diseases will be a number of new drugs which can be used for the enhancement of performance of young, healthy people.” [21:7]

Similarly, in a large number of websites and blogs published by organisations and individuals that support and promote the notion of ‘human enhancement’, the possibility for using such technologies as life extension devices and for delaying age-related physical and/or cognitive decline constitutes one of the central arguments for developing enhancement technologies [11][22]. Websites that express the opinions of the so called transhumanist (posthumanist) movement is one of the most vociferous exponents of this argument. Both these pro-enhancement advocates and science policy reports (like the EU parliament study and the NSF reports) emphasize the fact that the biomedical sciences, biotechnologies and medicotechnical technologies are increasingly producing new technologies capable of simultaneously enhancing the capacities of healthy people and treating diseases, especially age-related diseases [16][21][23]. Thus the discourse about ‘human enhancement’ and ‘successful aging’ are discursively intimately connected.

In addition, this integration of the ‘human enhancement’ and ‘successful aging’ discourses seem to have a strong element of user involvement. The strong ideological commitment to the integration between the two notions among individuals that view themselves as members of a loose ‘transhumanist’ intellectual movement is probably the best example of user involvement. It is unclear, however, to what extent the scientific community, the ‘transhumanist’ intellectual movement and the public at large differ with respect to an active commitment to integrating the two notions. However, I will suggest that the increasing use of performance-enhancing drugs in the general population (especially among young people) and the increasing dissemination of pro-enhancement policies and visions that challenge traditional views of the use of medicine both work in favour of a similar integration between the two notions.

Furthermore one might expect that the general and widely spread popular attitude to performance-enhancing drugs in Western cultures is an underlying Zeitgeist which supports the current political, scientific (and ethical) discussions about the integration of the two notions in the ‘transhumanist’ movement and among scientists. Finally, one might also expect that such popular attitudes will effect strategic market evaluations in the pharmaceutical industry and thus spill over to strategies for future drug pipelines. In all these respects, the integration of the notions of ‘human enhancement’ and ‘successful ageing’ may well be framed with reference to broader user involvement and user driven innovation (cf. [14][15][16][21][24]). These are preliminary hypotheses only, however, which need further empirical substantiation.

References:
11. Bostrom, N. (2005). A History of Transhumanist Thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(1).
12. Balling, G. (2002) (ed.). Homo Sapiens 2.0. Når teknologien kryber ind under huden. København: Gads Forlag.
13. Balling, G og Lippert-Rasmussen, K. (2006). Det menneskelige eksperiment. København: Museum Tusculanums Forlag.
14. Greely et al. (2008). Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy. Nature, 456, 702-705.
15. Roco, M and Bainbridge, W (2002) (eds.). Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance. NSF/DOC-sponsored report. Awailable at http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_report.pdf. (29.05.2009)
16. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 20(4) (December 2007). Special Issue: Converging Science and Technologies: Research Trajectories and Institutional Settings.
17. Beckert, B., Blümel, C and Friedewald, M (2007). Visions and realities in converging technologies. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 20(4), 375-395.
18. Det Strategiske Forskningsråd (2006). Det aldrende samfund 2030 – Rapport fra Styregruppen for det strategiske fremsyn om det aldrende samfund 2030. Awailable at http://fi.dk/publikationer/2006/det-aldrende-samfund-2030-rapport-fra-styregruppen/det-aldrende-samfund-2030.pdf (29.05.2009)
19. Murphy, T. F.(1986). A cure for aging? The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 11(3): 237-255
20. Veatch, R.M. (1979). Life Span: the Hastings Center report on values and life-extending technologies. New York: Harper and Row.
21. European Parliament Science and Technology Options Assessment (2009). Human Enhancement Study. Awailable at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/publications/studies/stoa2007-13_en.pdf (14.08.09)
22. http://www.humanityplus.org/learn/philosophy/transhumanist-values (14.08.09)
23. http://www.humanityplus.org/read/2009/07/human-enhancement-what-should-be-permitted-geneva-october-20-21-2009/ (14.08.09)
24. Maher, Brendan (2008). Poll results: Look who’s doping. Nature, 452, 674-675

How is one’s personal identity constructed these day? I’m asking, because I just read the announcement for a series of workshops and a special issue of the journal Minds and Machines on ‘The Construction of Personal Identities Online’.

Makes me think about how, over the last five or ten years, I have probably spent more and more time at the computer screen than face-to-face with my colleagues and staff here at the museum or talking with colleagues in seminars or at conferences. My sense of professional self — who I am, my identity as a professional, etc. — as well as other people’s sense of who I am has no doubt been formed, even to a considerable extent, through email and blogging and other online activities. (In contrast to my identity as a father, which I don’t believe has been much affected by my online activities.) Scary!

I’ve just begun my ph.d.-project here at Medical Museion. Titled ”A genealogical study of the concept of successful aging and its relation to the idea of human enhancement”, the project is financed by the new Center for Healthy Aging at the Faculty of Health Sciences.

Below is the first part of the project description concerning the notion of successful aging. In two following parts I will first introduce the possible relation between successful aging and human enhancement, and then my attempt to narrow the project to cognitive aspects of ageing and cognitive enhancement. Comments to one or all three parts are much appreciated.

The genealogy of the notion of ’successful aging’
At present there is much focus on the notion of successful aging (healthy aging, optimal aging) in Denmark and other developed countries. The increasing life expectancy of the population in combination with low birth rate and low rate of immigration gives rise to both political and economic concerns about the future maintenance of the living standards for an aging workforce. The increasing number of elderly people gives rise to new demands for developing new knowledge about how individuals can live a healthy life and remain healthy, even in old age.

The notion of ‘successful aging’ is not new. It can in fact be traced back to at least the 1960’s and became ubiquitous in the field of aging research in the 1980′ and 1990’s [1][2][3][4][5]. The dissemination of the notion is connected to a development trend in aging research, whereby scientists gradually changed their understanding of aging as a research object for gerontological/geriatric research. From primarily being concerned with the treatment of diseases in later part of a life course to an increased focus on disease prevention and to a broader public health oriented approach to aging involving several different scientific fields, also beyond the biomedical sciences [4][6], cf. [7].

The aim of this project is to undertake a genealogical study[8][9] of the development of the notion of successful aging from the increased focus on prevention in the middle of the 1980’s until today. The literature on the subject is sparse, consisting of a few short chapters with an overview of the historical development of age research, cf. [6][10]. A more detailed historical study of this development based on the primary literature (scientific articles, textbooks, policy documents, etc.), is supposedly going to produce a deeper and better understanding of the notion of successful aging, which in turn will help qualify the current scientific and public discussions about the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases. The study will thus hopefully also help identify some of the conditions that may influence future understandings of what ‘successful aging’ is and the ways in which the future research in the field might develop.

References:
1. Williams, Richard H., and Wirth, Claudine, G. (1965). Lives through the years: styles of life and successful aging. New York: Prentice-Hall.
2. Rowe, J. W. and Kahn, R. L. (1987). Human Aging: Usual and Successful. Science, 237: 143-149.
3. Rowe, J. W. and Kahn, R. L. (1998). Successful aging. USA: Pantheon Books.
4. Baltes, P. B. and Baltes, M. M. (1990) (eds.). Successful aging: Perspectives from the behavioral sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
5. Bond, L. A., S. J. Cutler, and A. Grams (1995). Promoting Successful and Productive Aging. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
6. Amstrup, K og Poulsen, I. (2007). Geriatri – en tværfaglig udfordring. København: Munksgaard Danmark.
7. Kirk, H. (2008). Med hjernen i behold – Kognition, træning og seniorkompetencer. København: Akademisk Forlag.
8. Villadsen, K. (2006). Genealogi som metode: fornuftens tilblivelseshistorier. Kaspar Villadsen & Ole Bjerg (2005) (eds.). Sociologiske metoder: Fra teori til empiri i kvalitative og kvantitative studier. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur.
9. Foucault, Michel (1992). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Routledge.
10. Bengtson, V.L. and Schaie, K.W (1999) (eds.). Handbook of Theories of Aging. New York: Springer Publishing Company, inc.

Historians of medicine and medical museum curators have invested a lot of interest in changing historical conceptions of death and the material remains that signify death and afterlife.

But few have turned their attention to death on the internet and other digital media. The announced one-day seminar on ‘Afterlife & Death in a Digital Age’ to be held at the National University of Singapore on 17 April promises to provide some interesting input to how museums could incorporate these new conceptions of death:

How is the dash between life and death, being and oblivion reflected in the age of digital media? How can we approach the subtleties of different cultural practices and beliefs through design? What is the technological response to the ephemerality of our digital and physical existence? What are the issues around ordinary technologies transforming into memorials, evoking powerful memories, nostalgia etc? What is the function of different projects offering technological response to death and afterlife? Are we simply witnessing technological sentimentality and kitsch and designing new forms of ‘earthly and ridiculous immortality’ as Milan Kundera would inspire us to think? What are different design solutions responding to? For example, are they trying to respond to the immense indifference of nature and the universe to human life and death? How can we respond to the ever-increasing mass of digital refuse or ‘dead’ data and what are the implications of and insights provided by reflecting on the inevitable end of ‘civilisation’? What are the legal and ethical implications of ‘freedom of choice’ being supported through technology, digital desecration and the hybridisation of (the remains of) the dead with the living?

Keywords include:

• possible immortality and afterlife through digital media
• cultural issues with dying, death, afterlife and technology
• new forms of grieving and commemorating via emerging technologies
• the motivation, role and function of technological responses to mortality
• digital archiving and the preservation of self and society
• the ethics of supporting death and desecration through technology
• the hybridisation of once living, sentient beings with other biological and robotic entities.

Excellent questions and topics. Hope one of the organizers would like to come over to Copenhagen one day and create an exhibition around these themes with us.