The alienation of body parts and their transformation into commodities raises questions about ownership, property rights, and about possible violation of the moral order. This article focuses on the `social life' of objects, including body parts, and the multiple meanings attached to them that are made visible in systems of exchange. The transformation of DNA obtained in blood samples into immortalized cell lines for use in the Human Genome Diversity Project is introduced as an illustration of contested commodification. The meanings (...) attached to the blood samples by those from whom they are procured and their worth to the scientists who create the cell lines are of an entirely different order. Disputes about the HGDP that have erupted since it was first planned are presented in detail, followed by a discussion of the ethics of gene prospecting and the associated politics of biocapitalism currently proliferating in the private sector. (shrink)

Social attention is thought to require detecting the eyes of others and following their gaze. To be effective, observers must also be able to infer the person's thoughts and feelings about what he or she is looking at, but this has only rarely been investigated in laboratory studies. In this study, participants' eye movements were recorded while they chose which of four patterns they preferred. New observers were subsequently able to reliably guess the preference response by watching a replay of (...) the fixations. Moreover, when asked to mislead the person guessing, participants changed their looking behavior and guessing success was reduced. In a second experiment, naïve participants could also guess the preference of the original observers but were unable to identify trials which were lies. These results confirm that people can spontaneously use the gaze of others to infer their judgments, but also that these inferences are open to deception. (shrink)

Worldwide, antibiotic use is increasing, but many infections against which antibiotics are applied are not even caused by bacteria. Over‐the‐counter and internet sales preclude physician oversight. Regional differences, between and within countries highlight many potential factors influencing antibiotic use. Taking a systems perspective that considers pharmaceutical commodity chains, we examine antibiotic overuse from the vantage point of both sides of the therapeutic relationship. We examine patterns and expectations of practitioners and patients, institutional policies and pressures, the business strategies of pharmaceutical (...) companies and distributors, and cultural drivers of variation. Solutions to improve antibiotic stewardship include practitioners taking greater responsibility for their antibiotic prescribing, increasing the role of caregivers as diagnosticians rather than medicine providers, improving their communication to patients about antibiotic treatment consequences, lessening the economic influences on prescribing, and identifying antibiotic alternatives. (shrink)

One result of routine use in intensive care units of the medical apparatus known as the artificial ventilator has been the creation of human entities whose brains are diagnosed as irreversibly damaged, but whose bodies are kept alive by means of technological support. Such brain-dead bodies have potential value as a supply of human organs for transplant. This article, drawing primarily on ethnographic data collected in intensive care units, examines why procurement of organs from brain-dead bodies has been fully institutionalized (...) in North America for more than two decades, in contrast to Japan. It is argued that the basic medical discourse is essentially the same in both locations and that it is largely unexamined tacit knowledge formed from an amalgam of local values, discursive formations in law, medical guidelines, policy formulations and public commentary, that accountfor the difference. This situation, that has dramatically different effects on the transplant enterprise in the two locations, is not culturally determined and the respective dominant ideologies are widely disputed in both North America and Japan resulting in a situation of chronic flux. (shrink)

As genetic tests become cheaper and more readily available, pressure is increasing to routinely test individuals for susceptibility genes for complex common disorders. Using Alzheimer’s disease as an illustrative example, it is shown how population databases of AD cases on which individual risk estimates are based are faulty due to confusion about the AD phenotype. Furthermore, the APOEe4 genotype associated with increased risk of AD is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause AD. The article concludes with ethnographic findings that result (...) from interviews with individuals who have been tested for their APOE status. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Most Useful Gift: Altruism and the Public Policy of Organ Transplants. By Jeffrey Prottas.

The quasi-ubiquity of ICT is transforming contemporary politics and seems to deteriorate democracy, for the technologies undermine debates, contest the grounds of reason and truth, and influence people’s votes. Donald Trump’s election and Brexit are good examples of their effects on public opinion. More fundamentally, these technologies cause theoretical problems to the way we traditionally conceive public opinion. Thus, I seek to rethink public opinion beyond conventional approaches. Departing from Deleuze and Guattari’s work, I develop the first steps of a (...) post-representational theory of public opinion as a regime of political truths that has new dimensions of truth production with information and communications technologies. (shrink)

Discourse in EuroAmerica in connection with menopause is selectively naturalized, with specific consequences for practice, deflecting attention away from non-biological aspects of ageing. The medicalized discourse of North America is compared with that of contemporary Japan, where emphasis is focused predominantly on social rather than biological change. Following Latour and Haraway, it is argued that culture and nature are not dichotomous. Further, both biology and culture are contingent. `Local biologies', that is, subjective experience constituted from culturally informed knowledge, expectations and (...) practices, are in part shaped by physical sensations and symptoms, that differ quantitatively in Japan and North America. This difference influences - but does not determine - the production of discourse and medical responses to this stage of the life cycle. Situated cultural practices of creating culture/nature boundaries are sites for moral and political disputes, which in turn influence subjective experience, the discourse of medicalization and the politics of ageing. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Most Useful Gift: Altruism and the Public Policy of Organ Transplants. By Jeffrey Prottas.