Biomedical Odysseys

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priscilla Song
Keyword(s):  
Surgical Intervention ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Biomedical Science ◽  
Experimental Medicine ◽  
Fetal Cell ◽  
Cell Therapies ◽  
Anthropology Of Science ◽  
Innovative Methods ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Patient Activism

Thousands of people from more than eighty countries have traveled to China since 2001 to undergo fetal cell transplantation. Galvanized by the potential of stem and fetal cells to regenerate damaged neurons and restore lost bodily functions, people grappling with paralysis and neurodegenerative disorders have ignored the warnings of doctors and scientists back home in order to stake their futures on a Chinese experiment. This book looks at why and how these individuals have entrusted their lives to Chinese neurosurgeons operating at the forefront of experimental medicine, in a world where technologies and risks move faster than laws can keep pace. The book shows how cutting-edge medicine is not just about the latest advances in biomedical science but also encompasses transformations in online patient activism, surgical intervention, and borderline experiments in health care bureaucracy. The book opens up important theoretical and methodological horizons in the anthropology of science, technology, and medicine. It illuminates how poignant journeys in search of fetal cell cures become tangled in complex webs of digital mediation, the entrepreneurial logics of postsocialist medicine, and fraught debates about the ethics of clinical experimentation. Using innovative methods to track the border-crossing quests of Chinese clinicians and their patients from around the world, the book maps the transnational life of fetal cell therapies.

Negotiating Evidence and Efficacy in Experimental Medicine

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-94
Author(s):  
Priscilla Song
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare System ◽  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Experimental Medicine ◽  
Fetal Cell ◽  
Market Socialism ◽  
Cell Therapies ◽  
Cultural Mandate ◽  
Technological Modernization ◽  
National Salvation

This chapter examines how urban Chinese neurosurgeons have leveraged fetal cell therapies in order to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing healthcare system. Their experimental practices raise key questions about the ethics and epistemology of clinical experimentation at the “cutting edge” of biomedical practice in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the pursuit of science and technology is not just a strategy for individual triumph but a broader cultural mandate for national salvation, which is described as “technonationalism.” While changes in the financing and organization of healthcare sparked by China's transition to market socialism over the past few decades have enabled and encouraged entrepreneurial physicians to develop advanced therapeutic interventions, these high-tech desires must be situated in a broader Chinese program of scientific and technological modernization. The chapter also takes a closer look at the semiotics by which practitioners and patients recognize medical authenticity and charlatanism.

i-Witnessing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priscilla Song
Keyword(s):  
Glial Cell ◽  
Cell Transplantation ◽  
Experimental Medicine ◽  
Fetal Cell ◽  
Experimental Procedure ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Transplantation Surgery ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

As Dr. Huang and the New Century staff members were busy devising new methods to document the effects of their experimental human olfactory ensheathing glial cell transplantation surgery, patients and their families also developed their own ways of assessing whether the experimental procedure worked. This chapter focuses on how fetal cell recipients and their families have engaged questions of efficacy in the transnational realm of experimental medicine. Prospective transplantation candidates carefully parsed online reports of others' surgical experiences and analyzed the credibility of Chinese neurosurgeons' claims, while postoperative patients monitored their bodies for signs of difference and parsed these changes online. It is argued that the digitally mediated forms of knowledge they have produced offer a poignant challenge to what counts as expertise and data in the quest for “evidence” in experimental medicine.

scholarly journals Educational and Career Development Outcomes Among Undergraduate Summer Research Interns: A Pipeline for Pathology, Laboratory Medicine, and Biomedical Science

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 237428951989310
Author(s):  
Lydia Pleotis Howell ◽  
Sharon Wahl ◽  
John Ryan ◽  
Regina Gandour-Edwards ◽  
Ralph Green
Keyword(s):  
Career Development ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Clinical Laboratory ◽  
Doctoral Degree ◽  
Laboratory Medicine ◽  
Biomedical Science ◽  
Educational Goals ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Higher Educational ◽  
Strongly Agree

Nurturing undergraduate students’ interest in careers in science, technology, engineering, and medicine is important to developing the future health-care workforce. Summer research internships provide experiential learning that is important to sustaining students’ interest in science, technology, engineering, and medicine careers and inspiring higher educational goals. The Edmondson Summer Research Internship is a mentored program for undergraduate students in University of California Davis Health’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. To evaluate intern satisfaction, perceptions on the program’s influence on their career development, and higher educational outcomes, 102 former interns from a 15-year period were invited to participate in an online survey. Responses were received by 58 (57%) of 102 respondents. Not all respondents answered every question. Overall satisfaction was very high/high in 55 (95%) of 58. Ninety-three percent (54/58) strongly agreed/agreed that the internship was an important part of their career development. Almost all who applied to career/professional opportunities strongly agree/agreed that they perceived the internship to be advantageous (96%, 46/48). Forty-four percent (25/57) received additional education after completing their undergraduate degree, with 25% (14/57) receiving a doctoral degree. Few reported prior experience with a clinical laboratory (8/48, 17%), pathologist (10/48, 21%), or clinical laboratory scientist (12/48, 25%). Based on their internship experience, 55% (32/58) strongly agree/agreed that they positively considered pathology or laboratory medicine as a career choice. The Edmondson Summer Research Internship is seen as important to higher educational goals and career development, increases exposure to pathology and laboratory medicine, and demonstrates the value of hosting a mentored research program for undergraduates.

Virtual STEM Stories

2021 ◽  
pp. 494-514
Author(s):  
Shannon O. Driskell ◽  
Margaret F. Pinnell ◽  
Mary-Kate Sableski
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Innovative Methods ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Engineering Mathematics ◽  
The Face ◽  
Remote Learning

Literacy is critical for success in other areas, including science and engineering. As teachers responded to the demands of remote learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they developed innovative methods to teach both reading and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects in virtual environments. This chapter describes how one team of teachers adapted face-to-face STEM and literacy modules for a virtual environment. The authors describe the face-to-face modules and the process the teachers followed to transition them to a virtual environment. The Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate (ADDIE) framework—an approach to designing online learning—was used as a lens to analyze the process and the product of the virtual modules. Implications and recommendations for teachers seeking to adapt face-to-face lessons to a virtual environment are presented.

The historical origin of the term “meningioma” and the rise of nationalistic neurosurgery

2016 ◽  
Vol 125 (5) ◽  
pp. 1283-1290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Joseph Barthélemy ◽  
Christopher A. Sarkiss ◽  
James Lee ◽  
Raj K. Shrivastava
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
The United States ◽  
Biomedical Science ◽  
Experimental Medicine ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Medical Systems ◽  
Disease States ◽  
Final Development ◽  
Historical Origin

The historical origin of the meningioma nomenclature unravels interesting social and political aspects about the development of neurosurgery in the late 19th century. The meningioma terminology itself was the subject of nationalistic pride and coincided with the advancement in the rise of medicine in Continental Europe as a professional social enterprise. Progress in naming and understanding these types of tumor was most evident in the nations that successively assumed global leadership in medicine and biomedical science throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, that is, France, Germany, and the United States. In this vignette, the authors delineate the uniqueness of the term “meningioma” as it developed within the historical framework of Continental European concepts of tumor genesis, disease states, and neurosurgery as an emerging discipline culminating in Cushing's Meningiomas text. During the intellectual apogee of the French Enlightenment, Antoine Louis published the first known scientific treatise on meningiomas. Like his father, Jean-Baptiste Louis, Antoine Louis was a renowned military surgeon whose accomplishments were honored with an admission to the Académie royale de chirurgie in 1749. His treatise, Sur les tumeurs fongueuses de la duremère, appeared in 1774. Following this era, growing economic depression affecting a frustrated bourgeoisie triggered a tumultuous revolutionary period that destroyed France's Ancien Régime and abolished its university and medical systems. The resulting anarchy was eventually quelled through legislation aiming to satisfy Napoleon's need for qualified military professionals, including physicians and surgeons. These laws laid the foundations for the subsequent flourishing of French medicine throughout the mid-19th century. Subsequent changes to the meningioma nomenclature were authored by intellectual giants of this postrevolutionary period, for example, by the Limogesborn pathologist Jean Cruveilhier known for the term “tumeurs cancéreuses de la duremère,” and the work of histopathologists, such as Hermann Lebert, who were influenced by Pasteur's germ theory and by Bernard's experimental medicine. The final development of the meningioma nomenclature corresponded to the rise of American neurosurgery as a formal academic discipline. This historical period of growth is chronicled in Cushing's text Meningiomas, and it set the scientific stage for the modern developments in meningioma research and surgery that are conducted and employed today.

scholarly journals Internet clinical trials: examining new disciplinary experiments in health care

1970 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Advocat
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Access To Health Care ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Health Care Research ◽  
Anthropology Of Science ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Access To Health

Internet-based clinical trials are the latest example of how technology is involved in altering the relationships between medical research institutions and society. This has the potential to change drastically the creation, delivery and access to health care research. An anthropology of science, technology and medicine is well-suited to examine the ways in which relationships (such as doctor-patient) are rearticulated in light of the deployment of new technologies in biomedicine. This paper examines how internet-based clinical trials may create socio-technical networks that form new kinds of subjects. Drawing on actor network theory, I discuss how the internet is co-opted for health research as an experimental disciplinary technology to constitute, normalize and shape the conduct of nomadic consumer-subjects for the purposes of developing new regimes of governing the health of populations.

Science, Technology and Society

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Bridgstock ◽  
David Burch ◽  
John Forge ◽  
John Laurent ◽  
Ian Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Technology And Society ◽  
Science Technology

Work Engagement and Research Output Among Female and Male Scientists

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lonneke Dubbelt ◽  
Sonja Rispens ◽  
Evangelia Demerouti
Keyword(s):  
Work Engagement ◽  
Research Output ◽  
Research Performance ◽  
Daily Work ◽  
Time Control ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract. Women have a minority position within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and, consequently, are likely to face more adversities at work. This diary study takes a look at a facilitating factor for women’s research performance within academia: daily work engagement. We examined the moderating effect of gender on the relationship between two behaviors (i.e., daily networking and time control) and daily work engagement, as well as its effect on the relationship between daily work engagement and performance measures (i.e., number of publications). Results suggest that daily networking and time control cultivate men’s work engagement, but daily work engagement is beneficial for the number of publications of women. The findings highlight the importance of work engagement in facilitating the performance of women in minority positions.

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