Biomedicine on Display

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize winner Ragnar Granit’s essay on the distinction between discovery and understanding as two separate modes of scientific work, which, he suggested, are differentially distributed throughout a scientist’s life-course — young researchers are impatient to discover something new, whereas older scientists are more interested in getting insight, he suggested.

Even more interesting, in my view, is Granit’s thoughts about how researchers ‘keep track’ and ‘take care’ of their identity in order to achieve understanding and insight:

By “keeping track of one’s identity” I mean cultivating the talents of listening to the workings of one’s own mind, separating minor diversions from main lines of thought, and gratefully accepting what the secret process of automatic creation delivers.

In all creative work, including scientific work, Granit said, there is ”need for a good deal of time for exercising the talent of listening to oneself”, and this self-listening is “often more profitable than listening to others”. Listening to oneself is at any rate more important than going to scientific seminars and conferences, which the ageing neurophysiologist thought was a pretty overrated activity:

There are so many of these meetings nowadays that people can keep on drifting round the world and soon be pumped dry of what is easier to empty than to refill.

Granit was aware of the possibility that some colleagues might regard his notion of ’keeping track of one’s identity’ as idiosyncratic. But he also knew others, who, like himself, when looking back on their lives, might recognise ”a main line of personal identity in the choice of their labors”. And maybe these colleagues would also agree with his own conviction that “if one can take care of one’s identity, it, in turn, will take care of one’s scientific development”.

Today, such ideas seem largely anathematic. Any graduate school programme will tell their students how important it is to engage with others, go to seminars, attend conferences, and read the literature systematically. Period. Few, if any, graduate school programmes would tell their students to listen to their own selves and take care of their scholarly identity.

The reason I find Granit’s idea of ‘keeping track’ and ‘taking care’ of oneself interesting is that it is pretty close to the ancient notion of ‘care of self’. I don’t know if Granit read Socrates or the Stoics or about the Epicureans. But his ideas are close to the notions of ’spiritual excercises’ and ’souci de soi’, which have been reintroduced into contemporary philosophy by Pierre Hadot, and later by Michel Foucault.

Such ideas — whether expressed by French philosophers or Finland-Swedish medical Nobel Prize winners — are definitely not on the agenda of present-day research governance agencies, who view researchers in more neo-liberal terms. It’s also a far cry away from the contemporary tradition of social studies of science, which shuns the idea of researchers taking their destiny in their own hands.

Prompted by a recent guest blog post on the Scientific American site, I’ve just revisited an almost 40 year old essay titled “Discovery and understanding” by the Finland-Swedish neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize Winner Ragnar Granit.

Growing out of a talk (see video here) that Granit gave at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1972, the essay was published in the Annual Review of Physiology later the same year. I remember dimly having read it when I was a PhD student a few years after it was published, but apparently I didn’t really appreciate it then — and didn’t understand the deeper significance of the message either.

But now I think I’ve got it. And it’s quite interesting for discussions about the culture of science, especially the contemporary political emphasis on scientific competition and race for publication.

The thrust of Granit’s argument is the distinction between discovery and understanding (and later insight) as two separate modes of scientific work that are differentially distributed throughout a scientist’s life-course. Discovery is all-important in the younger, passionate, phase of a scientist’s life, he suggests, whereas understanding and insight is the mark of more mature and detached scientists (which is probably why I didn’t understand the deeper significance of his essay when I was 30).

Young scientist are, he writes, characterised by an “impatient passion” to make discoveries. They want to ”see something that others have not seen”. They are on the outlook for what’s new, unexpected, and exciting, they are ”ruled by ambition”, they crave for “immediate satisfaction” and “instantaneous excitement”.

It’s easy to believe, he continues, that this passionate quest for discovery is the goal of science, partly because discoveries perpetually initiate new lines of experimental work, but partly also because they are more visible through popular media: “It catches the eye and, in the present age [1972] is pushed in the limelight by various journals devoted to the popularization of science”.

But even if the history of science is full of important discoveries that have “led to major advances”, they are nevertheless not what science is fundamentally about; they are just the means for the “real goal” of scientific work, which is “to try to realize some fundamental ideas about biological structures and their functions, that is to promote understanding”. And “gradually understanding will ripen into insight”.

If Granit had lived today he would probably have been horrified by the fetishisation of long publication lists, impact factors, and bibliometrics:

This attitude [understanding and insight] toward scientific work has the advantage of permitting the experimenters to devote themselves quietly to their labors without filling various journals with preliminary notes to obtain minor priorities

Was the distinction between discovery and understanding valid back in 1972? If so, is it still valid? Is there still a divide between the young postdoc’s passionate quest for rapid discovery and fast publication, on the one hand, and the older professor’s slower and more detached search for insight, on the other? And if so, is it only a question of psychology and individual ageing, or are there other, structural, factors at play?

I am currently researching a piece on rollators. Based on artistic research investigating the aesthetics and materiality of these essential but perhaps under appreciated objects I am struggling with finding some further information.

It is generally accepted that the first rollator appeared in the 1970s and was designed by Bernt Leander from Sweden. There is no record of a ‘first’ rollator and no history of the initial designs. Unable to find a person responsible for design and manufacture of rollators  I emailed the general Swedish inquiry contact at Invacare, the overall worldwide distributor but I have had no reply. I know that Dolomite was taken over by Invacare and their factory is in Anderstorp. A specific question I asked is regarding the range of colours available, particularly in 1997 in the Dolomite Futura range.

Thomas has kindly emailed his science/tech colleagues in Sweden but I wondered if anyone else might also have information. Academic texts are few and are mainly concerned with the effects on the joints of rollator users and effects on patients with other health issues and in assisting rehabilitation. There is very little about the actual object and its history.

Can anyone point me in the right direction for further information? Any help would be greatly appreciated

On Friday 13^th May, Adrian Bertoli, Morten Hillgaard Bülow and I attended the University of Copenhagen Center for Healthy Aging (CEHA) retreat day at the DGI Congress Center here in Copenhagen and we have decided to bring our experiences of the day together in one blog post.

Lucy says:
Everyone involved in each of CEHA’s five programmes was required to participate and it was definitely a day of two halves. CEHA Managing Director Lene Juel Rasmussen introduced the proceedings and her talk was followed by short overviews given by each of the programme leaders. The morning was dominated by traditional PowerPoint based presentations used to display schematics, charts, diagrams and arrows that sometimes became overcomplicated and confusing. Then PhDs and postdoctoral researchers presented research highlights from each programme. One very interesting presentation was by PhD student Aske Juul Lassen on Programme 5 who described his field studies and collaboration with No Age innovative solutions for elderly people in his research into technologies and communities for the active elderly

After lunch we were split into groups and invited to join in ‘The Hunt for the Elixir of Life’ – a cross-disciplinary dialogue. This was organized by the young researchers and involved the groups going into a series of rooms where different scenarios were enacted. In the ‘TV/Fitness’ room an elderly man watching TV phoned his busy daughter while she was working out at the gym. In the ‘Nursing Home’ room an elderly diabetic resident was shown being left to eat her lunch alone. In ‘General Practice’ room the scenario played was of a stressed, pregnant woman and a clock watching GP. In the ‘Chess Club’ room an elderly man playing chess with his regular partner became frustrated about starting to lose games and in the ‘Work Place’ room cigarette-smoking workmen with backaches had a health assessment.

Each different scenario played out gave rise to discussion on different aspects of ageing research. The overall question was how we might go about asking questions or researching topics raised in the scenarios from across all our disciplines. This part of the day was a great success and in my opinion the ‘Chess Club’ room worked best. Here, not only was a scenario enacted but we were asked to engage in an activity. We were given five cards with pictures on. We had to choose the top two cards we felt represented things to help with the problem shown in the performance and explain our reasons for choosing them. This participatory activity led to good discussion and the chance for all to voice opinions not just a few who had previously dominated conversations.

At times the differences between wet and dry sciences were seen as a hindrance and there were still signs of hierarchy between disciplines. Though it is hard to tell whether the aim of interdisciplinarity across the programmes will be achieved, it was valuable to bring all members of CEHA together in one space.

Adrian says:
A day of two halves is a very apt summary of the Center for Healthy Aging’s retreat. I can appreciate the need to have an overview of the five programmes, and the importance of allowing young researchers to present research highlights. It was nice to hear what goes on within the Center, I personally knew little about the other programmes, but the presentation format means that for the most part the researchers remained faceless names on the screen. The afternoon was a great success, the creativity and ‘unorthodox’ method of engaging researchers has set the bar high for future CEHA events.

What was missing for me was a chance to do more informal networking and socializing, especially among PhD students and Postdoctoral researchers. It is one thing to know the general research interests of the programmes, but another to know more about the people behind these. If we are to bridge the differences between the wet and dry sciences and create a common language, perhaps more informal channels would be effective. It might be a cultural difference in choice of words, but when I picture a retreat, I think of various social activities and games, chances to see the lighter side of your colleagues. This happened to some extent in the afternoon sessions, but was still somewhat plagued by power dynamics between senior and junior staff. There was a social hour afterwards; perhaps people were a bit tired after a full day of activities as not many stuck around. Even fewer of us made it out afterwards where we went out for dinner and drinks.

On the whole the day was interesting and entertaining, the venue was nice and we were well catered to in terms of food and drink. I just came away at the end of the day not knowing much more about the people who are on paper my colleagues at the Center for Healthy Aging. We are physically isolated among various campuses, the challenge becomes how to make the most of the unfortunately too seldom times we are all gathered together.

Morten says:
As one of the organizers of the last part of the CEHA Retreat, I was very curious about how it would turn out. From the start when we were asked to organize the afternoon, our small group of PhDs and postdocs all agreed that we wanted to do something different than another line of talks or poster-sessions. I think it was Bjarke Oxlund who first came up with (and was given responsibility for) the idea of a ‘treasure-hunt’  – which was not actually a hunt for the elixir of life, but rather a hunt for interdisciplinarity, which we had been told was to be the theme of the day.

In this hunt we wanted to avoid thinking in research programmes and instead think of themes or situations that could be viewed from different disciplinary perspectives. And we wanted to facilitate discussions that would illuminate differences and similarities between disciplines – and preferably, in the process, show the value of each research perspective and how they might fertilise each other.

I don’t know if we succeeded, but the process of coming up with these themes and situations in itself was a challenge and a learning experience. Setting it up to involve participants demanded serious considerations – our main worry was that nobody would want to discuss these issues or that they would think the whole set up too light hearted and oppose it. After all, we wanted this event to bring participants ‘outside’ the boundaries of the traditional disciplines; outside their scientific comfort zone, so to speak. For some participants this did indeed seem to imply that what we did was also un-scientific (in the broad sense of the word). It was sometimes difficult to keep the discussions going or to go up against a certain understanding of what can or what cannot count as relevant (research) questions.

But there were also mostly great discussions and interesting topics coming up so that the allotted 20 minutes per group often felt too short a time. People were just warming up to the subject of the workshop when you had to rush them out the door to receive the next group. The groups were very different – group dynamics were central to how the discussions went, and actually seemed much more important than what disciplines were represented.

This for me stressed the importance of having an open attitude towards other people and disciplines and of having enough time to develop this openness in a suitable context. For interdisciplinary discussions to work, this seemed an important take-home message.

On my continuing investigation into the aesthetics of rollators I was told about the Danish Queen Ingrid. After falling and breaking her hip, she appeared in the summer of 1998 for the first time publically using a rollator. Photographs and news footage of her shows her dressed in a glamorous couture gown and pushing a matching coloured rollator. Going to a gala wearing her prom dress and matching rollator and proudly escorted by her grandson Prince Frederik became a powerful image that encouraged others not to be ashamed of their rollators.

Determined to draw this culturally and historically important artifact I found that there was an exhibition about Queen Ingrid’s life at the Amalienborg Museum.

In the final room many of Queen Ingrid’s clothes were on display and in a long glass display cabinet that filled the entire wall of one room was her famous prom dress and there, peeking out shyly from behind the dress that lumpy, squat rollator lurked.

The accompanying sign reads:

“Rollator. With advanced age Queen Ingrid experienced difficulty in walking. In 1998 she attended a public event for the first time with a rollator-a wheeled walking frame. This had great significance for elderly people in the country, who then, with Queen Ingrid as role model, no longer felt that it was embarrassing to use a rollator”

I was slightly disappointed to find that the rollator was partially hidden as though embarrassed of being on display.

I wrote to ask for permission to draw it and was informed that this was not in fact the Queen’s rollator but an exact replica. In further conversations all was explained. This is not the actual one used by Queen Ingrid because, as happens in the case of every Danish citizen, when she died the original rollator was returned to the commune and once more became the property of the health service. No one will ever know if they are using the same rollator as the Queen Mother once used. The one on display is the same model manufactured at the same time and representative of the one she used. It is an Opal Futura 450 made by Dolomite and manufactured in early 1997 so was an up to the minute model when used by Queen Ingrid. Importantly the colour, which is mint, was not made to match her dress. The material for the dress was found to match the rollator.

The staff at the Amalienborg museum were incredibly helpful. Every morning I would arrive just after 8am and the rollator was carefully removed from its case and placed in the middle of the room for me. I was then left to draw until 11am when the museum opened.

Queen Ingrid’s rollator is not ‘special’, it was not specially designed or commissioned or bespoke made to royal requirements. She used the same rollator as anyone else but chose a bright mint coloured one. And like other users, she probably felt it was ‘her’ rollator and relied on it in the same way as any other user would.

I’ve spent some time last week watching, in fascination, Buenos Aires-based photographer Irina Werning’s ”Back to the future”, a series of juxtapositions of images of individuals at different ages.

She finds people who have portraits of themselves as a young child (not very difficult, most of us have) and then re-enacts the portrait with a contemporary version of the same person placed in the same position, showing the same face expression, wearing the same clothes. Here, for example, is ”Lucia in 1956 & 2010, Buenos Aires”:

I think these images are fascinating, because they support the experience I’ve made through biography writing, namely how little people actually change over time. They have an identity (from ‘identidem’: repeatedly, continually, constantly). In spite of many attempts in the humanities and social sciences over the last dacades to deconstruct the notion of individual identity, people usually remain the same over decades.

In the case of biography writing, one is confronted with the constancy of individual thoughts and verbal expressions over time. In the case of Werning’s photo series, one is confronted with the constancy of physiognomy. The re-enactment in terms of positioning, clothing etc. only enhances the physiognomic identity.

(thanks to Carsten Timmermann for the tip about Irina Werning)

Upon arrival at Lotte residential care home on 7th December, I was greeted with the trappings of a party. The dining room had been recently decorated with candles and baubles for Christmas and the tables were set with Danish flags and napkins in honour of a resident’s birthday.

A chair was placed for me at a table. I sat next to Ingrid and opposite Inge and Nis. I had met Nis the previous week but he had no memory of me. He was very pleased to talk and introduced Inge to me as his fiancée.  Ingrid remembered me but did not recollect that I had drawn her. She seemed very pleased to see the drawing of herself when I showed it to her.

After eating together, I chose to depict Inge and Nis sitting next to each other in one drawing. Inge was very elegant and beautiful. Her silver hair still had a luster and a stylish wave. She wore a black fur sleeveless body warmer and a shirt with fashionable wide collar and cuffs. Strings of large beads and a set of smaller beads adorned her neck. Her mottled discoloured arms denote cellulitis but her hands did not seem to have signs of arthritis. She is 100 years old.

Nis always sits next to Inge. His adoration of her was obvious and on the day of my visit he was very proud to show her off to me. Nis who is 97, boasted about Inge’s age. He was an architect and was keen to look at my drawings. Every time I looked at Nis to draw him, he would make a funny face at me and chuckle. His high arching eyebrows betrayed his cheeky nature and his large cheeks became lost in the large ribbed neck of his cosy Nordic sweater.

They ate their meals; Nis had a special one as he is a vegetarian. They had a glass of wine and then enjoyed birthday cake and coffee.  Whilst both were rather hard of hearing they were clear and articulate.

After drawing Nis and Inge I drew Ruth. She had wanted me to draw her for the last couple of weeks. She is a youngster for Lotte, a mere 78 years old and had been there for 4 years. She is wheelchair bound and has restricted use in her right side, almost none on her left side and has problems speaking clearly but her intentions are always clear. Determined to perform the tasks of eating and drinking for herself as much as possible, Ruth was keen to participate.

Before we began she made a request, that I wait until someone came with her false teeth. It was very touching that she wanted to look her best for the drawing. She spent as much time as she could grinning at me, smiling as if for the camera but trying to sustain it through the long drawn out session. Her face is small and her petite body seemed to be even smaller in the big wheelchair she uses. Ruth’s already large eyes were enlarged through the thick lenses of her glasses and they gazed at me, smiling at me throughout the time I drew.

I returned to Lotte on 12^th January. I sat with Karen. She was a petite lady aged 97 with her white hair cut into a smart bob style. She had fallen before Christmas and gashed her forehead and had required 16 stitches but seemed to be quite happy that it was healing well. Lines were deeply etched around her cheeks and eyes and her strong nose seemed disproportionate to her small delicate face and large eyes.  Her mouth was in constant flux, never resting and never maintaining the same position for long.

She received a letter from her daughter, an artist living in California and only needed a little help to open the envelope. She was keen to show me a photo of her because I am an artist too. Sitting in her cosy cream cardigan she seemed very gentle but very able. Her pride in her daughter’s work was clear and her enjoyment of being drawn was obvious.

x

Visiting Lotte residential care home is always an experience. The first thing you notice upon entering is there are no signs warning you of something or pictograms and ideograms giving instructions. The next thing you notice is the lack of plastic. No carers in wipe down aprons, no wipe clean table clothes, plastic beakers or bibs. The tables have tablecloths, the residents have lunch as anyone would, using normal cutlery and china plates and they have beer or wine with their meals. This is not an institutionalized feeling care home.

My first session of drawing there was on November 24^th. After sitting and speaking with the delightful Nis who was an architect responsible for the main design around Rådhuspladsen, I sat next to Ingrid as we all played Bingo (Danish: Banko). Ingrid is 96. I had noticed her on my first visit because she wore a bright red, star shaped hair slide.

Ingrid was again wearing her star shaped hair slide. She was curious about my large hooped earrings and I pointed out when I am 96 I will probably still be wearing them. Her haircut was in a very smart bob style, which fell forward as she leaned over her cards to place buttons on the numbers being called. She has arthritis in her hands and the joints were swollen and enlarged, pulling the surrounding flesh taught across her hands. The hair caught up in her slide fell in a layer shorter than the rest of her hair and the tip of one arm of the star was partially obscured by the white strands.

I sat next to her; she was at the head of the table concentrating on her game, I sat on her right. I watched her and drew her while she was engaged in her activity. Several times she checked with a carer on her left which number were being called, just to be sure she had heard correctly. Once in a while she looked up and caught my eye. She smiled and shook her head. She was surprised and bemused that I was looking at her so intensely. She did not think she would be very interesting to draw.

She was. There were a great number of deep wrinkles on her face. Her brow and forehead had lines so deep they almost seemed to separate areas of her skin. Carved like plots of farrowed land. Shapes formed under her eyebrows and around the top of her nose and the deep lines etched by her lips formed long flowing crevasses. The teardrop droop of her jowl rested low and the extra flesh under her chin swept down by her neck. The shawl thrown around her shoulders had a fringe and was knotted at her sternum.

I asked her what career she had been in. She replied she was nothing special, just an ordinary person who never did anything special, just looked after the home and raised her children. That’s a pretty special thing in my opinion.

Rollator drawings, 30^th September – 4^th October 2010:

Continuing my appreciation of the aesthetics of seemingly ugly and mundane artefacts we associate with ageing, I investigated a second rollator.

This was a contemporary model. It had a clear plastic tray, a wire shopping basket and four wheels rather than three for extra stability. It was squatter, sturdier and in some ways even uglier than the earlier three wheel model. The hidden complexities and detailing within the design meant it took much longer to draw than I had anticipated.  I intentionally drew it from the position someone would see it if they were approaching it to use it.

The moulded plastic on the handles had been textured for extra grip and had an organic quality. The bolts and connections remained evident but were more refined.

What I found was how much I appreciated the qualities that I had previously missed. The curve of the front bumper and the connection on the front wheel shafts were particularly elegant and the sweep of the handles, handgrips and ergonomic brakes were much more aesthetically thought out than I had initially noticed. The light reflecting on the clear plastic tray formed bright curves and rainbow patterns in contrast to the opaque density of the black mat handles and shelf. The network formed by the basket was highly detailed and the intersecting areas had been welded neatly to form the grid of the shopping basket.

Interestingly, on the back of the rear metal legs were two orange rectangular strips of reflective material to ensure safety at night. The four wheels were not as fat as in the earlier model and the two at the back remained fixed whilst the two front wheels acted more like a shopping trolley.

Other things had not changed. The cuffs around the wheels remained the same, the mechanism for folding had not changed and the brake system appeared to be similar. The handles used to adjust the height of had become elongated and needed less effort to use.

Perhaps because these objects are so new, they are too close to us to be perceived as historical objects so have yet to become ‘artefacts’ i.e. something worthy of being presented within the auspices of a curated museum display where they would be expected to attract crowds who wish to engage with them. What would a member of the public hope to see when looking at an object such as this?

When objects are utilitarian, essential to many and in such common usage they can easily become invisible. The rollator is associated with assisting those who do not suffer from a terrible incurable disease but simply aids those who are just ageing as we all are, and need a little extra help. Is it because this is so uneventful, so usual we are not interested in looking at items associated with this natural process? Is it because the materials are thought of as utilitarian and not beautiful, or is it because we choose to turn away and not see something we find distasteful or fear but certainly do not welcome and embrace – the everyday process of ageing?

Rollator drawings  27^th–28^th, 28^th–29^th September 2010:

When I began drawing the rollator I asked myself why I was drawing something that was so boring, so ugly with no interesting features.

I was reminded of the talk Nurin Veis, Deputy Head Sciences – Science Communication and Senior Curator of Human Biology and Medicine at Museum Victoria, Australia, gave at the EAMHMS conference. In her talk about issues in displaying the cochlear implant, Nurin stated that the problem lies with our insistence in seeing the ‘black box’ item as ugly and not suitable as a museum artefact. Rather than trying to avoid it, rewrite it change or replace it with something explaining something about it, she asked why couldn’t we just accept it and learn to appreciate it? Maybe it is our job to see the aesthetic qualities of these ‘black box’ objects rather than try and avoid them.

The rollator’s use is essential to many, there is no doubt about that, but as an object, as a thing, it is so unappealing and uninteresting. It would not take long to draw such a simple plain thing.

Or so I thought. As I began I realized that the plastics had degenerated and the handles and wheels had an organic, sticky feeling to them. The way the brakes were attached to the wheels were far more complex than I had at first seen, but they were also connected by crude looking bolts. Mass produced steel rods had a feeling of hand madeness at the apex where they joined and the whole object took on a far more complicated nuance and styling than I had realized.

After 2 days, the amount of detail I had noticed changed my view of this object from boring and ugly to beautiful and fascinating. It’s complexities were hidden behind my prejudices and became seen clearly through my making the effort to spend time actually looking at this object and to stop making huge assumptions about it. How it worked, how it was made and the aesthetic of the object became more and more apparent during the two days I spent drawing it. Paying attention to such a modest and overlooked ungainly looking object showed it to be far more than I had at first perceived.

Overlooking such a vital yet seemingly unattractive object highlighted the need to spend time looking and building relationships with artefacts. The rollator has become, in my opinion a very beautiful object and reactions from others have been surprising also. Others have seen far more beauty in the drawing than they thought would ever be found in such an object. Maybe they will re-look at them and see them in a new way.

So many things associated with the ageing process are thought to be boring, ugly, utilitarian and uninteresting to look at. I am discovering for myself how wrong this assumption is. The toothless skull, so iconic of the image of ageing is fascinating and beautiful rather than ridiculous and unattractive.

Objects that help and assist the elderly, items used to test for ailments associated with ageing and objects used for treating them are all seen as having little aesthetic value as objects in their own right. And often the ageing population, the people themselves, are not regarded as being aesthetic so ingrained is it that beauty is connected with youth and newness.

Spending time looking at them, overcoming assumptions about them, elevating them from mere boring utilitarian thing to being experienced as unique, beautiful and fascinating encounters helps to re-see aspects of ageing in a much wider and more positive way.

At last month’s conference, Jan-Eric Olsén talked about the tendency in contemporary medicine and society in general to constantly monitor our own health.

Jan-Eric pointed to the fact that there is a fine line between monitoring and surveillance, and that patients should be aware of that before uncritically embracing these new technologies. Read Jan-Eric’s full abstract here.

In the discussion afterwards it was pointed out that some patients can actually gain personal freedom from a smart textile t-shirt taking over the constant monitoring of their vital signs. One person said that she wouldn’t have been able to attend the conference, if it hadn’t been for these very technologies helping her monitor her diabetic child over a great distance.

On the other hand, many of these products are advertised for people without a diagnosis, to constantly reassure them that they are healthy. What are the consequences of constantly monitoring your own health? Some suggested it might lead to some sort of universal hypochondria.

The discussion (at the end of the video clip) included comments from Lucy Lyons, Karen Ingham, Jim Garretts, Danny Birchall, Wendy Atkinson, John Durant, Nurin Veis and Ken Arnold.

See a list of the abstracts here. Read more about the EAMHMS video clip project here.

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).

We’ve just set up the installation ‘An Ageing World’ in the main lobby of the Faculty of Health Sciences here in Copenhagen.

The installation has been made to mark the IARU-conference on Ageing, Longevity and Health that takes place 5-7 October, organised by the Center for Healthy Ageing.

The simple idea was to make a commentary on the rapidly changing demographic of the human population:

Protruding from a round earth disc, soaring a couple of feet above the floor, are age structure diagrams (histograms) from seven countries around the world (Denmark, China, Japan, United States, Bolivia, Malawi and Papua New Guinea) for the years of 1950, 2000 and 2050. The histogram protrusions are illuminated from below by means of fiber optics in contrast to the dark-blue earth disc.

Age structure diagrams, especially in poor countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas, traditionally take the form of pyramids (lots of kids and decreasing number of adults as the population grows older). But in the rich countries of the world the pyramids are already now turning into pillars, and in 2050 they will become mushroom shaped. In short, this is a major demographic challenge, which has enormous consequences for global health systems.

Bente and I got the idea to the installation from the way she, Camilla Mordhorst and architech Anne Schnettler used physical age structure diagrams in the Oldetopia exhibition here at Medical Museion a couple of years ago — this idea in turn had grown out of discussions we had with Susanne Bauer and Sybilla Nikolow over how statistics was displayed in the old Deutsche Hygiene Museum in the 1930s.

We then discussed different design solutions with exhibition designer Mikael Thorsted and graphic designer Lars Møller Nielsen (Studio 8), and eventually agreed on the light disc with a pixel-ish world map — with East Asia in the center, and with Europe and the US on the rim — and with the protrusing illuminated histograms. The disc was produced by Exponent Stougaard A/S, using a new printing method

Here are images from the installation of the disc in the main lobby of the Panum building last Thursday:

After four hours all 21 ‘pyramids’ were glowing and ‘An Ageing World’ was completed.

Throughout the day, students and staff stopped by, gathering in small groups and discussing the diagrams.

What started as an icon for the IARU conference, thus turned out — quite unexpectedly — to be a informal engagement site for understanding global demography.

My earlier mentioned participation in the ‘Good life better‘ workshop in October will hopefully help me develop a good paper for the conference “Neurosociety… What is it with brains these days?” to be held at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, in December. They have just accepted my abstract (see earlier post), and I’m looking very much forward to participating.

As the conference website states:

The last twenty years have seen unprecedented advances in the neurosciences, in fields such as psychopharmacology, neurology and behavioural genetics. A growing number of ethicists, social scientists, legal scholars and philosophers have begun to analyze the social, legal and ethical implications of these advances, from the use of fMRI imaging in legal cases, to the medical benefits and risks of the increasing prescription of psychotropic drugs such as Prozac and Ritalin. Some attention has been paid to the economic questions raised by the commercial development and application of new technologies, and the extent to which subfields such as neuroeconomics and neuromarketing are generating commercially and clinically valuable findings. The conference aims to bring together academics and practitioners from this wide range of disciplines to attempt a critical evaluation of the current state and future prospects for neuro thinking.

The neurosciences are really at the centre of attention these days!

Monday morning when the conservator arrived at the Medical Museion, and went down to the basement to continue her work on some damaged bones from the collection, she found herself standing in water up to her ankles.

Like in many other parts of Zealand the heavy rains on Saturday had unexpected and unpleasant consequences for the Medical Museion. By far the largest part of the medical machines, historic books on health and hospital curios of the Medical Museion collection is kept in store rooms and basements around the buildings, out of the public eye. There simply isn’t enough room on the exhibitions.

The flood alert sounded around the Medical Museion. Hundred year old black and white photographs looked like autumn leaves, as they lay spread out on tables to dry. Books where put in drying cabinets, or pressed under lead weights.

The rooms of the museum turned, one after the other, into hospital wards for the drowned books and objects. The water was swept back into the drains with brooms. Meanwhile scientific research and museum planning continued on the top floors.

Perhaps this experience of the vulnerability of the medical objects will provide new ideas for the research into our own biodegradable materiality in the upcoming conference about healthy ageing. When it comes to aging doctors and medical scientist are, in a way, conservators working with the fabric of the human body.

For more pictures of the drowned objects visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53284874@N02/