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Creating identity with biotechnology: the xenotransplanted body as the norm

In English

Författare

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.

Publiceringsår

2002

Språk

Engelska

Sidor

333-345

Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie

Public Understanding of Science

Volym

11

Issue

4

Dokumenttyp

Artikel i tidskrift

Förlag

SAGE Publications

Ämne

  • Ethnology

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt

  • ISSN: 0963-6625