The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Creating identity with biotechnology: the xenotransplanted body as the norm

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

One of todays great issues is how an advanced medical technology like xenotransplantation should be applied. It is well known that medicine brings not only potential but also risk. On the cultural level, xenotransplantations are equally complicated; they arouse thoughts about whether our outlook on humanity will be influenced now that modern techniques can correct our defective bodies. The article asks whether xenotransplantation creates new cultural meanings. That is, how do newly emerging ideas of a technologically created normality raise a set of moral questions about nature and culture, mind and body? The discussion is based on interview studies with patients suffering from diabetes and Parkinsons disease. The former have been given porcine islets, while the others have had human fetal cells transplanted into the brain; the latter are also potential recipients of xenotransplants. This empirical material becomes the basis for discussing how diseases can lead to a crisis in which it is essential - on a concrete, everyday level - to find strategies for dealing with the consequences. In this process of identity and normalization, advanced biomedicine is an important factor.

Publishing year

2002

Language

English

Pages

333-345

Publication/Series

Public Understanding of Science

Volume

11

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Ethnology

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0963-6625