[Sci-tech-public] Reminder: Wen-Hua Kuo's dissertation defense

[Kris Kipp]

>Copies of Wen-Hua's dissertation are available for review in the STS 
>office (E51-185)
>
>Please join us for Wen-Hua Kuo's dissertation defense:
>
>
>Japan and Taiwan in the Wake of Bio-Globalization:
>Drugs, Race and Standards
>
>Wen-Hua Kuo
>
>Thursday, August 18, 2005
>
>1:00 PM
>
>E51-275
>
>
>
>ABSTRACT
>
>
>This is a study of Japan and Taiwan's different responses to the expansion 
>of the global drug industry. The thesis focuses on the problematic of 
>"voicing (FASHENG)," of how a state can make its interests heard in the 
>International Conference on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for 
>Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH). The ICH is a unique 
>project that facilitates the formation of a single global market by 
>creating universal standards for clinical trials and drug approvals. 
>Tracing, through "slow motion" ethnography, step by step, why Japan claims 
>a racial difference requires additional local clinical trials with "Asian 
>bodies," this thesis rejects conventional interpretations of protectionism 
>for Japan's resistance to globalization. It argues that more than 
>protectionism is involved, and that a rich ethnographic understanding of 
>Japan's medical infrastructure is required to understand the claim of 
>biological, cultural, and national differences, as well as biostatistical 
>arguments about the ambiguities of "extrapolation" of clinical data from 
>one place to another.
>
>The inherent ambiguities of efforts to create "bridging" studies as a 
>temporary solution to these problematics created a deadlock in the ICH, 
>and provided an opening for Taiwan, another Asian state, which does not 
>enjoy formal recognition from the world, to speak for itself to this 
>conference, and to create the fragile, but politically critical, 
>possibility of becoming a clinical trial center for Asian populations. The 
>language of genomics and biostatistics become in the more recent period 
>the vehicles for both Japanese and Taiwanese efforts at "voicing" their 
>concerns. Both genomics and biostatistics look different in these contexts 
>than they do from the United States or European Union.
>
>In sum, (1) Japan's and Taiwan's (with a briefer look at Singapore) 
>response, as well as "global ethnographic objects" such as the ICH, 
>provide important tools to rethink the comparative method as well as 
>universalizing claims of harmonization. (2) Race, culture, and the 
>nation-state are transformed as categories through the contemporary 
>reworkings of genomics and biostatistics. (3) The thesis demonstrates that 
>abstract accounts of the spread of clinical trials and resistance in 
>various parts of the world are not to be trusted unless they include 
>detailed probings of local understandings, identity issues, and problems 
>of voicing.

Kris Kipp
Academic Administrator
Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, and
Science, Technology and Society (HASTS)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Mass. Ave., E51-185
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: 617-253-9759
Fax: 617-258-8118
Email: kipp at mit.edu 
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