Biomedicine on Display

Jens Hauser has just written to tell us that SymbioticA’s next Biotech Art workshop takes place in Stavanger, 18-21 November 2008 (part of the Stavanger ARTICLE BIENNALE 15-30 November. The workshop will accommodate 15 participants to learn techniques of microbiology, DNA extraction, genetic transformation of bacteria, gel electrophoresis, tissue culture and embryo rescue. More here.

Last week, ten representatives of the major medical historical collections and museums in the Nordic and Baltic countries — i.e., Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden — gathered for a two-day meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, with three aims in mind:

• to create a network between individuals and institutions in the Baltic-Nordic region about the development of medical and medical history museums.
• to identify important issues of common interest, like joint exhibitions, teaching programmes, acquisition projects, joint research projects, fund-raising, new museum development plans, etc.
• to discuss the best ways of strengthening the cooperation between Baltic-Nordic medical and medical history museums, university programmes for the history of medicine and medical science studies, and other regional and international professional organizations.

In an introductory three-hour roundtable we got an overview of the richness and variety of the historical collections, research programmes, exhibition projects and outreach activities in the medical museums in the region.

Lisa Mouwitz presented the Medical History Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, a general history of medicine and health museum which is organisationally a part of the Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

Maie Toomsalu told us about the collection management, research and outreach activities at the University of Tartu Medical Collections.

Morten Skydsgaard and Olav Hamran (behind) from the Steno Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, and the Norwegian Technical Museum in Oslo, respectively, shared their experiences of creating popular exhibitions for the general public about, for example, reproductive technologies.

Juris Salaks presented the rich collections and manifold activities of the Paul Stradin Museum in Riga, Latvia.

Ramunas (’Ray’) Kondratas, formerly curator of medical history at the National Museum of American History (Washington, DC), now retired in Lithuania, gave an overview of the two museums in Kaunas and Vilnius.

Anna Thorbjörg Torgrimsdottir told us about the exciting plans for an entirely new medical history museum in Iceland, close to the present Nesstofa in Seltjarnarnes outside Reykjavik.

Sigurd Sandmo, from The Leprosy Museum (part of Bergen City Museum), Norway, explained, among other things, how local lepra museums are engaged in an international co-operative network.

Finally, the writer of this humble post (who also held the camera) did his best to give an impression of what we are doing here at Medical Museion in Copenhagen.

(Unfortunately Henna Sinisalo from the Helsinki University Museum (Arppeanum), couldn’t attend the meeting).

The meeting was hosted by Kerstin Hulter Åsberg, County Council of Uppsala, one of the co-founding bodies of the Medical History Museum in Uppsala. We also found time to visit this gem of a museum. where we were met by the chairman of the museum board, Henry Johansson, and its director, Eva Ahlsten.

The next network meeting is planned to be held in Kaunas and/or Vilnius. Lithuania, in the autumn of 2009.

For further information about the new network, contact either Kerstin Hulter Åsberg (kerstin.hulter.asberg@lul.se) or me (Thomas Söderqvist, ths@sund.ku.dk).

We all know how babies can be conceived in test-tubes, that we can clone eggs in petri dishes, and that embryos can be stored in the freezer. Old-fashioned sex is increasingly substituted with artificial conception. But what does a leading bio-artist and art historian think of all this? Suzanne Anker from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, gives a seminar in Cambridge on Tuesday (HPS Dept, Free School Lane at 5pm), asking questions like:

When posed with the classic quandary, where do babies come from, will the mythology of life’s creation soon also include glassware and the bio-lab? Has the bundle-carrying stork been exiled from fairy-tales? And with the bio-printing of replacement organs and tissues on the research horizon, at what cost is this further quest for immortality?

Suzanne wrote The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (with Dorothy Nelkin in 2004), so she’s well placed to opine on this interesting technoscientific field.

The emergence of evidence-based medicine is one of the most interesting issues in the history of contemporary medical history. Wish I were in Stockholm on Monday 3 November when Ingemar Bohlin from the STS Section at the University of Gothenburg will speak about evidence-based decision making in a science-based society and the origin, distribution and limits of the ‘evidence movement’ in an afternoon seminar at the Nobel Museum. Ingemar will reconstruct four strands of historical development that together led to current evidence-based medicine, and describe the relations between them in order to throw light on procedures for contemporary knowledge production. Write to bokning@nobel.se if you want to participate; a background text is available. More info from Paul Sjöblom, paul.sjoblom@nobel.se.

The Art|Sci Center at University of California, Los Angeles, organizes a ‘Body Art Disease’-symposium on 6 November, featuring presentations, exhibitions, installations, roundtables, social gatherings, curated talk, and tours in the vaults of UCLA’s Special Collections. Participants include a number of interesting and creative people: Philip Beesley (University of Waterloo), Jill Scott (The Neurobiological Lab at the Institute of Zoology, University of Zürich), Phillip Warnell (Warwick University, UK), Susan Kozel (SMARTlab Digital Media Institute at the University of East London), Barbara Drucker (Art, UCLA), AJ Willcocks (Australia), Virocode (Peter D’Auria and Andrea Mancuso) and Caitlin Berrigan (MIT). More info here.

MR-neuroimaging and other methods for studying brain function have been used for some time now to provide criminal defence evidence in courtrooms, at least in the US. But how does neurowiring relate to classical judicial concepts like ‘intent’ and ‘responsiblity’? Can neuroscience offer excuses for criminal activity? The Triple Helix Cambridge (www.camtriplehelix.com) organizes a debate about recent adances in neuroscience and the law, next Tuesday, 21 October. Raymond Tallis, Nikolas Rose (BIOS Centre, LSE) and Ian Treasaden (Forensic Neuroscience, Imperial College) will give short presentations followed by questions from and discussions with the floor. More on Facebook here. 

A recent announcement for a lecture by Tim Hunt, joint winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, at the Royal Institution of Great Britain tomorrow, Thursday 9 October, reminded me of the problems with using scientists as sources for biographical stories.

Tim Hunt will be talking about the inspirations behind his life in science. Says the announcement:

It was in his weekly science lesson at the Dragon School near Oxford that Tim grew to find biology an easy subject, and from then on he felt he never really had to make any more career decisions. When he was 14, Tim moved to another school where science played a much larger role in the curriculum. He loved Chemistry in particular, and the class were allowed considerable freedom, on more than one occasion started fires from distilling volatile flammable solvents.

Well, this may be true. Or it may not. It’s difficult to say, because autobiographical stories are notoriously problematic as sources of what ‘really’ happened, for example what was ’really’ the inspirations behind someone’s life in science. Having written the biography of another (then still living) medical Nobel laureate (Niels K. Jerne) I know all to well how shaky autobiographical reports turn out to be when you are able to compare them with the written record. By and large, autobiography is better understood as a fictional genre.

That said, autobiographical stories can be great fun and good entertainment. And like great novels, they can be used as ‘mirrors’ for us to compare ourselves in. For that purpose it doesn’t really matter if they are true or not.

So from that point of view the lecture at the Royal Institution could be interesting. In London tomorrow at 7pm — find it here.

Tomorrow, Tuesday 9 September at noon, we’re having a lunch seminar with Sebastian Abrahamsson, doctoral student at Jesus College, University of Oxford. Sebastian will speak about ’Dead bodies in science and art’ — a topic which is very central to our research and exhibition work here at Medical Museion, so we’re expecting a lively discussion.

Here’s Sebastian’s abstract:

My research is interested in the ways in which dead human bodies are transformed into artistic and/or scientific objects.

As a point of departure, my project maps the work of an artist (www.angelaspalmer.com) who – together with museum curators, radiologists and Egyptologists – has been working with a mummy child making his body and journey the focus of an art exhibition in a gallery in London. This work brings this particular body through a set of heterogeneous milieus (museum, hospital, studio, and gallery) and environments – each with its own practices, routines and experts – thus changing the significance and interpretation of the body at each stop that it makes: going from museum object to aesthetizised sculptures.

Secondly, I look at the changing status of dead bodies (educational and scientific specimen turning into contested and controversial human remains) in British museums, taking Manchester Museum and their Egyptian collection as an example. Recently three of their unwrapped mummies were covered, provoking massive public reactions (mainly negative). The museum curators had clearly taken a controversial decision, but why this outrage? Here I argue the mummies become the focal point of a sort of public experiment, the outcome of which is still to be decided.

As a final example my project looks at Von Hagens’ Body Worlds as the site where a scientific/educational and artistic ethos come together to stage an encounter with dead bodies, where the above distinction between art and science is more or less erased. Out of these three examples emerges the question concerning how we can experience encounters with dead bodies differently.

If you want to attend, please call our technician Folke Jørgensen at +45 3532 3822, who can give you more detailed info about the location of the seminar room in Fredericiagade 18, Copenhagen, and how to get into the house. Bring your lunch! 

(Image above from Angela Palmer’s website)

Everyone in southern Scandinavia interested in genetics and democracy should take the opportunity to attend a seminar series organised at the University of Lund in October through December. Dates and preliminary speakers include:

October 27

• A. Hedgecoe, Sussex: “The Politics of Personalised Medicine”

November 17

• A. Clarke, Cardiff: “Genes, Knowledge and Autonomy: Whose Knowledge? What Knowledge? When?”
• H. Gottweis, Vienna: “Operating Biobanks: Towards the Governance of Disappearing Bodies”

December 8

• L. Koch, Copenhagen: “The Politics of Life – past and present use of genetic knowledge”
• B. Wynne, Lancaster: “Genetic Risk – expert and lay perceptions”

More details later (or contact Niclas Hagen, Niclas.Hagen@svet.lu.se, for more info).

On Friday, June 13 2008 (2:00 - 5:00 pm) Dr Andrea Tone will talk about “The Age of Anxiety: A History of America’s Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers” at Medical Museion in Copenhagen. Here is the abstract of Andrea’s talk:

“In the last 50 years, we have increasingly turned to a pharmaceutical solution for the problem of everyday nerves. Today, drugs for anxiety are a billion-dollar business in the United States. Yet as recently as 1955, when the first prescription tranquilizer –Miltown - became available, pharmaceutical executives worried that there would not be a market for anxiety-relief. Instead, Miltown became a commercial sensation, the first prescription psychotropic blockbuster in United States history. The drug’s financial success and cultural impact revolutionized perceptions of anxiety and its treatment.”

Andrea Tone will provide the first comprehensive account of the rise of America’s tranquilizer culture based on her new book ”The Age of Anxiety” (forthcoming with Basic Books, December 2008). Drawing on a range of original sources – manufacturers’ files, FDA reports, letters, government investigations, popular culture, and interviews with inventors, physicians, patients and activists – Andrea Tone has explored the history of the drug’s development, popularity, and later discrediting within the political, economic, and cultural contexts in which America’s contested but enduring relationship with tranquilizers took shape.”

Andrea Tone is Canada Research Chair in the Social History of Medicine at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She is the author of numerous articles and books including ”Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America”, named one of the best books by Washington Post.
 
Moderators: Rikke Krølner (DSPM) and Jesper Vaczy Kragh (Medical Museion)

Registration: Due to limited seating, registration recommended before Friday, June 6th, 2008. Send replies to: sej@si-folkesundhed.dk, indicate ‘Andrea Tone’ in the subject line.

See http://www.dspm.dk/ for more information.

On Friday 13 June, Andrea Tone, Canada Research Chair in the Social History of Medicine at McGill, will give a talk at Medical Museion about her new book ’The age of anxiety: A history of America’s turbulent affair with tranquilizers’ (forthcoming on Basic Books). Among her earlier books are Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America and Medicating Modern America: Prescription Drugs in History (with Elizabeth Siegel Watkins). Now she’s working on the history of post-WWII psychopharmacology, which is one of our active research areas here at Medical Museion — see more about Jesper Vaczy Kragh’s research project here.

The meeting, which begins at 2pm, is co-organised by Jesper and the Danish Society for Psychosocial Medicine (Rikke Krølner). Please pre-register at sej@si-folkesundhed.dk.

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

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

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

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

Last year, Medical Museion co-organised a reading group titled “Towards a New Materialism? Exploring Artifactuality and Material Culture in History of Science, Technology and Medicine” together with the History of Technology Division at the Danish Technical University and the Research Policy Institute in Lund — and with Mats Fridlund (on-and-off guest researcher here at Medical Museion) as the main organiser and driving force. The reading group was a great success with some 10 PhD-students following it.

Now Mats is exporting the concept to his new provisional alma mater, the University of Aarhus, with a reading group along the same lines, titled “Things, Tools and Touch: Exploring New Materialisms in Science, Technology and Medicine Studies”. (First brown bag seminar after the intro seminar on 30 April, will be given by our own Adam Bencard, titled “Affects and Materiality” on 14 May.) Great initiative!

A propos our historical and curatorial interest in invisibles (see earlier post here)—the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford is inviting to a lecture on Wednesday 5 March by renowned philosopher of science Rom Harré, who will talk about one the most common assumptions of modern science, “namely that our experience of the natural world is to be explained in terms of tiny entities”. What kind of knowledge can we have of this invisible world?

The lecture is titled ’Big questions about small worlds” and takes place in the museum building on Broad Street. For small inquiries, contact Stephen Johnston (who has co-curated the exhibition ‘Small Worlds’, which opened last October and runs until 6 April; see earlier post here).

It probably hasn’t escaped anyone that the really material (and not just talking-about-it material) culture of science has become a hot area.

For example, I just saw this message about the newly formed TRAFIK working group for cultural studies (’Kulturwissenschaft’) in Vienna which will hold its first meeting 16 May on ‘the virulence of material objects in the current historiography of knowledge’ (’Virulenz materieller Gegenstände in der aktuellen Historiographie des Wissens’).

The workshop format is pretty innovative too (and here is where the ‘really material’ comes in). Participants are invited to bring a small object (small enough to fit into a pack of cigarettes) which they believe ‘organises, infects, structures’ their own research. Each is expected to give a 5 min. presentation of it to inspire the discussion about the relations of the objects and the networks and worldviews formed by these things – and if possible to bring them in ‘intelligible / surprising / disturbing’ (‘einleuchtende / überraschende / verstörende’) connections with each other.

This is a great idea and a wonderful format for a workshop; and the venue—the WerkzeugH in Vienna—looks like the perfect place for this kind of discussion. My only caveat is the current ’things-that-talk’ jargon that informs the event. I don’t have any problems with discussing objects with other people, but I get slightly worried about the prospect of having to argue and discuss with the objects themselves (’mit den Dinge, zu argumentieren und diskutieren’). Or, as the organisers say, ’the things in themselves shall have their say’ (to let ’die Dinge gleichsam selbst zu Wort kommen’).

The idea of letting things have their say reminds me of Hobbes speaking to Calvin. Frankly, I haven’t heard any convincing argument for why ’things-that-talk’-talk may be useful. But maybe I’ve missed some important metaphorical virulence here :-)

Read more (in German) here (and thanks to my intellectual buddy Michael for the tip!)