Biomedicine on Display

In August, the Danish Initiative for Science, Society and Policy (ISSP) will arrange a ‘discussion of the broader implications of living technology’ that might be interesting to anyone who thinks the boundary between inorganic and organic, living and dead, or technology and humans is exciting. Or to anyone who wants to get a glimpse of the future of science and medicine, maybe?

As the organisers write on their webpage:

Today, genetically modified organisms are designed and used in the laboratory to allow pharmaceuticals to be synthesized with precision in large quantities; autonomously working robots acting on the same principles thought to underlie insect behavior are increasingly introduced not only in industrial production but also healthcare; and adaptive network traffic controllers are currently being developed to control the flow of the ‘arteries’ of working life.

I first wondered at the scale of this technology — is this ‘just’ another word for nano-technology or are we talking robots of the more impressive kind (in terms of size)? And is it then robots like the robotic seal used for Alzheimer’s patients or something more science fiction-like, as the picture above, taken from the ISSP website, implies? The answer, according to ISSP, is that it is all of this:

Three examples of living technology are synthetic biology attempts to make living systems from scratch in the laboratory, ICT systems exhibiting collective and swarm intelligence distributed across the world wide web, and robots currently cleaning our households, providing companions for the autistic, and the like.

The preliminary programme for the discussion does not seem to emphasise healthcare, though the need for “thinking through the implications” of this technology looks to me to be particularly important in this field. The concept of living technology might appear to be a contradiction in terms (just like ‘synthetic biology‘), but maybe it will become the next big thing in healthcare.

Here’s the introduction to a talk titled ‘Cultures of Meaning and Cultures of Presence: The use of material objects in the history of science, medicine and technology’ that I gave at the Museo da Ciencia da Universidade Lisboa two weeks ago (see flyer here and resumé in Portuguese here); the images are from the web and for general illustration only:

Before I went into history of science and medicine (and then medical museology), I took a Masters in chemistry, zoology and historical geology (major).

Today, when I look back on my student years at a distance, I realise these disciplines were very much about the handling of tangible material stuff, involving all five senses. Chemistry, zoology and geology students were not just thinking about or viewing the world — we were also listening to it, smelling, tasting and touching it.

Chemistry was (at least when I was a student) about reactions between palpable chemical substances; it involved handling glassware and physical measuring instruments; lots of stuff was pretty smelly, we were constantly exposed to the sounds of boiling liquids and suction pumps; experiencing glowing heat and freezing cold were parts of the daily experience in the lab.

Zoology was very material too. We observed birds in the field, collected insects and marine animals, killed and dissected them, made microscopical thin sections and grinded organs down to cells and molecular extracts. Animal beings weren’t just genomic code — they were sometimes smelly, often noisy, always tangible. 

Historical geology, finally, was about handling real stones, minerals and sediments with axes, spades, knives and brushes. We spent weeks in the  field working outcrops and long hours in the lab afterwards, sorting out physical fossil specimens.

After this undergraduate immersion in the material world of science, I started in a PhD-programme in biochemistry at Karolinska Institute. I collected blood from animals which I had killed with my own hands, stood in the lab’s cold room for hours purifying blood proteins, degraded them with chemicals, separated the fragments in chromatography columns which I had packed myself, and then handled different kinds of lab glassware and measuring instruments to elucidate their amino acid sequences. The protein laboratory was a very physical place with lots of machines and chemicals — and again it involved all the senses.

So science was a very material and sensory practice. And if I hadn’t been confronted with its potentially deadly consequences — one day I swallowed a radioactively labelled substance by mistake (always remember to use a pipette bulb!) — I might have become a real scientist.

Instead, I left science to pursue my high school philosophical interests — what is classification? what’s a concept? what’s the relation between a name, a concept and reality? what’s stuff made of? (all classical epistemological and ontological questions) — took courses in philosophy of science and history of ideas, and then started a new PhD project on the historiography of 20th century science, more precisely the historiography of ecology.

The history and philosophy of science was, I realise now, an entirely different experience. Instead of manipulating and being surrounded by material objects, I found myself sitting at a desk, reading old scientific papers and books. I visited archives to look for handwritten documents and interviewed elderly scientists about their past.

In other words, history and philosophy of science was a world of words and texts (written or spoken). There were actually no material objects in my new disciplinary identity, except for the pulp the texts were written on.

Shifting from PhD-studies of the historiography of ecology to postdoc studies of the historiography of immunology, didn’t change my textual practice. True, I sometimes met practicing immunologists in conferences about the history and philosophy of immunology, but these meetings still revolved around texts and words. People read conference papers based on readings of other texts. Again — text, text, text.

My own research practice was also totally text-based. I spent eight years of my life going through the huge archive of a contemporary immunologist, and spent hundreds of hours talking with him. And when I visited his former colleagues to interview them, we talked and inspected documents and photographs together. We never went to their labs to handle a piece of immunological lab equipment together.

It was as if the material and sensory world of science which I had been so thoroughly immersed in on a daily basis when I was a student totally disappeared when I entered history and philosophy of science. From a world of stuff, smells, sounds, tastes and manual touch I had stepped into a world of disembodied text.

What is most remarkable, now when I look back on it, is that I wasn’t at all aware of the gulf that separated the material and sensuous world of science, and the textual and disembodied world of history and philosophy of science. It was as if I had lost the ability to experience the material and sensory qualities of the laboratory, as if I saw the world of science through the textual spectacles of history and philosophy of science. To the extent that when, occasionally, I visited laboratories, I only ‘saw’ papers, inscriptions and documents, maybe a few images here and there.
[..]

(thanks to Martha Lourenco at the Museu da Ciencia da Universidade Lisboa for inviting me to give the talk — this post contains the introduction only, the rest needs revision before being put online).

As you may remember, we here at Medical Museion have a soft spot with the aesthetics of decay, especially delapidated medical instruments (see, for example, this post).

This great image epitomizes the notion of the aesthetics of decay.

It’s shot in an abandoned surgery room somewhere in the eastern part of Berlin, in the former Sovjet sector.

Photo by Andreas Swane © All rights reserved. Used with kind permission. More here. 

Andreas describes himself as “a hobby photographer from Oslo”, who hopes that his future photo specialty “will be derelict / abandoned places here and there”.

“The beauty of old and decayed places fascinates me”, he says on his Flickr page.

(thanks to Øystein for the tip)

I just got a mail saying that the Canada Science and Technology Museum is organising a summer institute in material culture research on the theme ‘Reading Artefacts’, in Ottawa, 16-20 August.

Anyone interested in material research and museum artefacts — grad students, postdocs, faculty “teaching history through artifacts” and historians who are “looking to expand their research methods” — are welcome to attend. Because of the venue, there will probably be a lot of focus on sci, tech and med museum artefacts.

Great initative. My only hesitation is the title — Reading Artefacts. What do the organisers actually mean by reading an artefact?

In my understanding of reading, there is a text to be read. But an artefact is not a text (unless there is a label glued on to it), so there is nothing to read.

The only way I can make sense of the title is that they use the verb ‘read’ metaphorically. That is, they probably don’t believe that an artefact is a literal text which is read like the text you are reading now. What they probably mean is that curators and historians engage with artefacts in a way that is analogous to the way readers read texts, and they use the verb ‘read’ as a short-hand for this analogy.

But how useful is it to think about our engagement with artefacts in analogy with reading texts? Granted, it may be useful as a rhetorical device, or for science journalism purposes. But I’m afraid the analogy is counterproductive from a scholarly point of view, because it draws one’s attention away from the epistemologically thorny issues at stake:

How do we actually engage with material artefacts? How do we make sense of them? How do they actually influence us? Is there any kind of seimotic interaction going on between humans and dead material things, or is it ‘merely’ physical interaction?

In other words, ‘reading artefacts’ is not one of those metaphors that curators ‘live by’. On the contrary, I suggest it’s one of those metaphors that kills the curatorial imagination.

That said, however, the course looks very useful; it will give the participants an opportunity to:

• investigate artifacts, trade literature and photographic collections as resources for research, teaching, and the public presentation of history
• work with leading collection scholars in a national museum setting to explore material culture methodologies and approaches
• use artifacts as the centre of discussion and hands-on activities
• immerse themselves in a material culture perspective of the technological past
• learn the basics of conservation, cataloguing and developing collections in local environments – a growing and essential resource for history studies.

Tuition fee is 250 Can. $ for students, 350 for postdocs and 450 for faculty and professionals (but it includes breaks, lunches, and a field trip; and students can get some financial support). Register here before 16 June, but do it long before then, because they can only accomodate 30 participants. Further info from Anna Adamek, aadamek@technomuses.ca. One can also join the Google Group here.

Recently I announced a quiz to get more information about a historical syringe that a couple of friends had bought for me. This quiz was far from easy since we had no information on the syringe whatsoever. Medical Museion’s guest researcher and former chief physician Sven Erik Hansen was the first to make a suggestion on our Danish blog — he thought it might had been be used to treat haemorrhoids.

Sven Erik’s was a qualified guess, but it seems like the area of expertise that we are dealing with here is rather odontology. Thomas put a query about the syringe on rete, the mailing list for curators, historians, students, collectors, dealers, etc, interested in the history of scientific instruments, and immediately received some very interesting answers. First out was Frank Manasek: 

This type of syringe was common in dentistry or in minor surgery where local anesthetics (such as lidocaine) would be used. Later syringes of this style were designed to use disposable ampoules of anesthetic, and disposable needles. (This one predates both.) The needle on this example is long, suggesting its use in mandibular blocks.

Following Franks lead Alistair Kwan elaborated:

I was just about to write almost the same thing. The last time I asked a dentist about the move away from these, he said that patients are more scared of them because they are big and shiny, and harder to
keep out of sight — convenience and cost of disposables did not play into his decision, though they are primary issues in debates between surgeons, surgical nurses and hospital administrators.

If you compare with today’s common disposables, the plunger design involves a different handhold that increases control through tight spaces and increases pressure on the contents. If you try them out, you can experience how the palm-grip hold is much less subject to little wobbles in the finger and thumb joints. (A high-stability grip for the disposables is to wrap them in all four fingers of a fist, which limits where you can work.)

You can also experience how the palm-grip hold and the lighter two-finger hold are suited to injecting targets at different heights and orientations. You cannot comfortably inject straight down with the
palm grip hold unless you are leaning right over the patient. But your forearm is positioned for easy aiming sideways or forwards or upwards, as into the nerves in the mandibular joint.

For times when you want a pistol or palm grip (e.g. in veterinary medicine), there are handles for disposable syringes. The handles derive from earlier syringes in which they were inbuilt. In recent years (decades?) they have simply had the syringe removed, leaving a hollow or brackets in which to insert a disposable. Similarly with ring grips, now marketed for use by non-medical people with frail hands who need to administer to themselves or family members, and for cake decorating.

Easy disassembly makes cleaning easier but it sometimes owes more to manufacturing processes than concern for scrubbing and autoclaving. A device like this is often cheaper to mass-produce from standard stock than by building all components from scratch. If it goes together easily, it often follows that it comes apart easily as well. Today’s one-way barbed fasteners and sonic welders have of course
cancelled that rule.

Now what began as an artefact without a history suddenly had spawned a fascinating insight into the world of dentistry. Peter Morris continued (still on the rete list):

These syringes are still in very common use by dentists in the UK. I don’t recognise the disposables mentioned by Alistair. Personally I always try to avoid the jab if I can which provokes friction between me and the dentist. I would say the needle is a little bit thicker than it appears in the photograph, but it may just be a matter of the scale of the photograph (and the psychological effect of it going into your mouth). A quick look on the web throws up JS Dental Manufacturing Inc of Ridgefield Connecticut. I cannot find out how long it has been in business but it seems well established.

And back to Alistair:

I should clarify a bit though: the common disposables are less stable than the big dental model when used in the mouth owing to how they  have to be held. What I originally wrote (in a low-energy moment at the end of work yesterday) was unclear, though I’m sure that your exhibit writers will have no trouble doing better. (I’m now at the start of the day so am more critical of what I write!)

And that critical attitude might be what made Alistair return with one last comment:

It might also be worth indicating that some anaesthesia techniques begin with aspirating by withdrawing the plunger to suck a little on the tissue that the needle has entered. This tests whether you are in the right place: the colour of the liquid obtained indicates the extent of blood supply. If you get blood, you know to withdraw the needle and start again. (I find needle-guiding techniques very clever. Other common rules are to locate external markers for guidance, and to hit bone or a sudden resistance change as an indicator for depth. Some markers for mandibular anaesthesia are in the ear which is why the dentist puts his finger there — as target to aim for — while inserting the needle.)

Aspiration is reflected in some plunger handles: they have a ring for the thumb.

It’s more difficult to aspirate with pistol-grip and palm-grip syringes because pulling and pushing require different holds. That may entail having an assistant steady the patient’s head.

Following Peter’s post, I had a quick look at some on-line catalogues and saw that both metal and disposable plastic syringes are sold by dental equipment suppliers.

So thanks to our fellow histrorians and curators on the rete list, we’ve been able to construct a much more detailed curatorial story about the syringe than I ever imagined when I first posted the original quiz.

And so we need a winner. The stern panel of judges (who will remain anonymous) has decided to a name Alistair Kwan the winner. So Alistair, whenever you come to Copenhagen, please visit us here at Medical Museion and claim your prize.

As mentioned in a previous blogpost, I’m currently doing a ph.d.-project here at Medical Museion concerning the history of the concept of successful aging in neuroscience and its relation to ideas on cognitive enhancement.

Part of my work, therefore, is going to conferences like this one, held in Copenhagen last week:

The conference was arranged by the Danish research center GNOSIS, and featured both neuroscientists and philosophers – as an attempt to bridge the disciplinary boundaries and maybe produce some kind of synergy.

The first day especially had that feeling. Themed under the headline ‘Brain Plasticity’ and featuring, among others, the English philosophical-minded neuroscientist Steven Rose, German phenomenological philosopher and psychiatrist Thomas Fuchs, and Danish biologist and anthropologist Andreas Roepstorff, there was a real feel of cross-disciplinary science communication. A science communication which was also a communication of the immense complexity of the brain and of the production of knowledge concerning it.

As Steven Rose pointed out, neuroscience is ‘data rich, but theory poor’, needing some theorizing on how best to manage the complexities of the huge amount of collected data. One common perspective to most of the talks at the conference were that the brain’s workings can best be understood viewed as a complex, irreducible and indeterminate, continuously developing process. This was conceptualized from both phenomenology, developmental systems theory (or autopoiesis, as Rose termed it), and biosemiotics – all in one way or the other emphasizing the brain as embodied (or the body as ‘embrained’, as someone smartly put it), and emphasizing the body’s embeddedness in the world (emworlded). Dichotomies and dualisms, determinacy and reductionism were (with maybe one exception) not only forcibly opposed, they were long left behind, it seemed.

But still there was a sense that, despite agreement on the general perspective, this did not solve the concrete methodological challenge of, for instance, going from correlates to causality, inducing from the particular to the common, or explaining the relationship between brain and mind/consciousness/awareness/attention etc. Neuroscience, it seems, brings new attention to a lot of old philosophical problems. The multidisciplinary collaborations within the field of neuroscience, and the demand for new theoretical developments and new conceptualizations, may not find a solution to these problems, but it sure sets the stage for interesting theoretical developments in the years to come.

As for the link to my project on successful aging, this development in neuroscience seems to run almost parallel to the overall development of the field of gerontology and aging research in the last couple of decades from around the time that the concept of successful aging was introduced. Many of the same philosophical problems are also seen in other parts of aging research than the parts including the neurosciences.

Aging research (as well as maybe most other fields in the health sciences?) is becoming a multidisciplinary field where dichotomies and dualisms between brain-mind, body-world, and individual-society are being tested and challenged.

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.

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

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.

One of the challenges for a museum of medicine intent on collecting recent and contemporary medical artefacts is to get an overview of the historical development of medical instruments, medical technological systems and the medical device industry.

Trade shows and their catalogues (published or online) are excellent sources. But memoirs and reminiscences of people who have been engaged in the trade show business can also be useful —  they add a more personal perspective to the dry historical data, they are more fun to read than catalogues, and you can probably construct a useful picture of trends by piecing their more or less idiosyncratic stories together.

Take for example Wolfgang Albath, a pioneer in laboratory medicine and one of the founding organisers of the world`s largest medical trade show, MEDICA in Düsseldorf,. He has just summarized, shortly, his view of some of the important trends in the last 40 years of medical hospital technology (in the 12 Nov online issue of European Hospital):

Medica trade show 1974

In summary, his view of the recent history can be described in three words: mechanisation, automation and digitalisation. When MEDICA started (in Karlsruhe) in 1969, it focused exclusive on laboratory diagnostics. Most lab analysis were then carried out manually and in pretty small series.

One of the few automatic systems was the Technicon Auto-Analyzer, introduced around 1960; for a contemporary evaluation of it, see here): “Based on a system of continuous flow analysis [the Technicon AA] revolutionised lab diagnostics and paved the way for analysers to work through organ-specific parameters in batches”.

In the 1970s came immunofluorescent techniques for detecting auto-antibodies and infectious agents, and in the 1990s advances in molecular biology opened new diagnostic opportunities at the picomolar level.

Iinformation and communication technology has not only made possible automation in the clinical lab, but all kinds of hospital practices. The first patient monitoring systems, which are now taken for granted in intensive care and neonatal unit, were introduced in operating rooms and wards in the mid-1960s. In the clinical laboratory, computer development made possible large-scale diagnostic tests in the 1970s.

Another area which depends heavily on IT  is radiology and medical imaging. In the 1960s “the triumph of real-time ultrasound diagnostics began”; in the 1970s came the CT-scanner; the first digital image archives, radiology information systems and laboratory information systems arrived in the mid-1980s; about the same time came MRI, and in the 1990s PET. 3D reconstructions of CT, MR and ultrasound images also became possible in the mid-1990s.

Surgery too has undergone enormous technological changes; eg., keyhole (laparoscopic) surgery began in gynaecology in 1969; the first keyhole gallbladder removal was performed in 1985 and in the early 1990s keyhole surgery in the abdomen. And then there is laser technology which has “lit up the medical sky” for 30 years, not least in ophthalmology, where doctors hardly cannot imagine work without lasers today.

While we are waiting for the sequel to Joel Howell’s seminal Technology and the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early Twentieth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), reminiscences like Albath’s are among the best ways to get an overview of the complexities of the recent history of medical technology. I haven’t made a systematic search for memoirs and reminiscences of similar kinds — but I’m convinced there are many out there, although they can be difficult to find.

(Btw, for a useful academic course syllabus for the history of medical technology, see here).

The creative editors or Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science (see earlier mention here) are planning a focused discussion section on scientific instruments in a forthcoming issue of the journal.

With the “practical turn” in history and philosophy of science came a renewed interest in scientific instruments. Although they have become a nexus for worries about empiricism and standards of evidence, instruments only rarely feature as primary sources for scholars in the history and philosophy of science. Even historians of technology have been accused of underutilizing the evidence embodied in material objects (Corn 1996). The fundamental questions are not settled. First, there is no general agreement as to what counts as a scientific instrument: Are simulations instruments? Can people function as instruments? Do economic or sociological instruments operate in the same way as material instruments? There is a second, related debate about how scientific instruments work: Is there a unified account? Do instruments produce knowledge or produce effects? Do they extend our senses (Humphreys 2006) or embody knowledge (Baird 2006)? Third, HPS has seen a variety of approaches to fitting instruments into broader historical and philosophical questions about scientific communities and practices: Shapin and Schaffer (1985) relate instruments to the scientific life, Galison (1997) gives instrument makers equal footing with theorists and experimentalists within the trading zone of scientific discourse, and Hacking (1983) elevates instruments to central importance in the realism-antirealism debate. Finally, it seems plausible that there are methodological concerns specific to scientific instruments: What lessons can we draw from anthropology, material culture, and other allied fields?

I hardly need to emphasise that many instruments for medical and biomedical research fall into the category of ’scientific instruments’ — so, if you’ve got a good idea for a 1000-3000 word essay, don’t hesitate to send your submission before 26 February 2010.

For more details, see http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations

After the large-scale renovation of its permanent collection in 2005, the Hunterian Museum in London has expanded its outreach programme under the leadership of senior curator Simon Chaplin.  Today, the museum opens another new temporary show,  “Sci-Fi Surgery: Medical Robots“.

Running until 23 December, the exhibition displays the world of medical robotics. Things like the Probot (1991), a robot designed to aid prostate gland surgery; Freehand, a robotic camera holder for keyhole surgery; mini-robots designed to make their own way around the inside of the human body; the prototype Robotic Camera Pill (2005); and the ARES Robot prototype (2009) which requires patients to swallow up to 15 different modules which then re-assemble inside the body into a larger device that can carry out surgical procedures.

The exhibition will also feature medical robots from sci-fi: from the 1920s ‘Pyschophonic Nurse’ to Japanese Manga and Anime, raising the question  to what extent scientists are inspired by the representation of medical robots in films, books and comics.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that the exhibition has been funded by, among others, The Japan Foundation and The Japan Society.

Sci-Fi Surgery: Medical Robots events including anime and film screenings, discussions and robot family workshops.

Sounds like a great show — I cannot attend the opening — but it looks a must for the annual London trip.

The program for the Artefacts meeting at Science Museum, 20-22 September, has been finalised. It looks great! Medical Museion’s former senior curator Søren Bak-Jensen (now at the Copenhagen City Museum) will present some of the ideas behind the current exhibition ‘Split+Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine’. Here is the whole list of papers for the meeting:

• Bruce Lewenstein, Cornell University.
  Can museum visitors learn about the relation of science and technology in museums?
• Peter Donhauser, Vienna Museum of Technology.
  Science versus technology in a museum’s display. Changes in the Vienna Museum.
• Benjamin Gross, Princeton University.
  “The Antithesis of the Attic”: Historical Artifacts, “Interactive” Exhibits, and the Presentation of Science at the Franklin Institute Museum.
• Pnina Abir-Am, Brandeis University.
  “DNA at 50” in Museums of Science and Technology: Regional Culture, Medium, and Message.
• Søren Bak-Jensen,  Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen.
  Relaying the aesthetic and artistic aspects of recent biomedical technologies.
• Alfons Zarzoso, Museu d’Història de la Medicina de Catalunya. Gabarro’s Chess-Board Excision and skin grafting: medical exile in Word War II England.
• Alison Taubman,  National Museums of Scotland.
  From Ships to Chips:  Collecting contemporary Scottish engineering.
• Ben Russell, Science Museum.
  James Watt’s Workshop: from steam pioneer to creative professional.
• Dirk Bühler, Deutsches Museum.
  Portraits of Architectural and Engineering Achievements.
• Klaus Staubermann, National Museums of Scotland.
  Science and Technology as Practice: Dividing Engines in Museums.
• Dirk van Delft, Director, Museum Boerhaave.
  The Quest for Absolute Zero: A Human Story about Rivalry & Cold.
• Jane Wess, Senior Curator of Science, Science Museum.
  Pure Mathematics?: The Cleaning up of Context.
• Jennifer Landry, Chemical Heritage Foundation.
  Beyond the Black Box: A different approach to interpreting the history of chemistry.
• Frank Dittmann, Deutsches Museum.
  Paper on Robotics (title to be confirmed).
• Tom Crouch,  National Air and Space Museum. Capable of Flight? The Interplay of Science and Technology In the Aeronautical Work of Samuel Pierpont Langley.
• Jennifer Levasseur & Margaret A. Weitekamp, National Air and Space Museum.
  Moving Beyond Earth: Exhibiting the Space Shuttle and Future Human Spaceflight.
• Paul Forman, National Museum of American History, Reflection on the workshop