[Sci-tech-public] STS Circle, October 24th - Joanna Radin - (Please RSVP)

[STS]

*STS Circle at Harvard*
[image: samuelevansresear/7D21F2C9.gif]
*
*
*Joanna Radin
*
*University of Pennsylvania
*
*
*
on

*Frozen Human Tissue and the Problem of Interdeterminacy
*
Monday, October 24
12:15-2:00 p.m.
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106

[image: samuelevansresear/7D21F2C9.gif]

Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts
<sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<sts at hks.harvard.edu>by 5pm
Thursday, October 20.
*
*
*Abstract:* The International Biological Program (IBP,1964-1974) was a
large-scale effort to take stock of the biosphere. Working within the
ecological framework of the IBP and, with new access to industrial
technologies of cold storage, certain human biologists endeavored to collect
and freeze tissue from populations depicted as close to nature and
endangered. In this talk I examine three episodes in the trajectory of these
preserved bodily extracts -- the circumstances of their collection in the
field, decades-long suspended animation in laboratory freezers, and
contemporary re-animation. I track the shifting socio-technical practices
applied to making cold blood into an enduring reservoir for knowledge
production and the ethical problems posed by the indeterminate nature of
this resource.

*Biography*: Joanna Radin is a doctoral candidate in History and Sociology
of Science at the University of Pennsylvania where she is completing a
dissertation titled "Life on Ice: Frozen Blood and Biological Variation in a
Genomic Age, 1950-2010."  Fundamentally, this work is about the relationship
between changes in biomedical infrastructure and changes in concepts of what
it has meant to be human. It is relevant to the challenges posed by efforts
to use stored tissues for purposes of personalized (and often
commercialized) genomics, epidemiology, and reproductive science and
medicine. She has also published on the history of the FDA, nanotechnology
and held fellowships at the Philadelphia Area Center for the History of
Science and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

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