From Animal to Artifice: An Ethnographic Investigation of Scientific Research in the Experimental Realm of Human Organ Replacement

Barnard College, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Organ transplantation in the U.S. is frequently described as being plagued by a chronic shortage in donated human parts. In response, a range of scientists are engaged in developing highly experimental, non-human alternatives as a means to alleviate this scarcity. Currently two trajectories dominate the field: the first involves fist-sized, implantable mechanical devices that would fully replace human organs, with the heart defining an especially pronounced focus; the second is xenotransplantation, or attempts to develop transgenic animal species (primarily porcine) whose organs could be culled for human implantation. In this research project, Dr. Lesley A. Sharp will undertake research on how the scientific imagination figures within these two, often competing trajectories. That is, she will examine how involved scientists understand the social, clinical, and ethical ramifications of alternative technologies currently in experimental stages of development. As an anthropological study, the researcher will draw on ethnographic methods of investigation (including participant-observation, structured interviews, and life histories) as a means to uncover how involved scientists envision laboratory work and its broader and long-term social consequences. The project is comparative in several ways. First, it examines how the nature of the scientific trajectory (involving inert materials on the one hand, and animal species on the other) shapes social meanings and, in turn, ethical thinking. Second, it targets laboratory sites based within the U.S. and U.K. as a means to investigate whether national concerns shape the trajectories of these two highly experimental realms of science. As such, the project seeks to address the cross-cultural validity of currently universalized assumptions about the merits, dilemmas, and dangers of non-human forms of organ replacement. Finally, it will test to see whether the field of training, level of seniority, age, and/or gender of researchers affects their social, clinical, and bioethical concerns. The project thus seeks to offer a fresh perspective on the nature of experimentation and scientific inventiveness, one that extends beyond current coverage (particularly in the mass media) that focuses almost exclusively on the miraculous qualities of new ideas without concern for how involved actors think about the social, medical, and ethical dimensions of their work.