Biomedical Entanglements is an ethnographic study of the Giri people of Papua New Guinea, focusing on the indigenous population’s interaction with modern medicine. In her fieldwork, Franziska A. Herbst follows the Giri people as they circulate within and around ethnographic sites that include a rural health center and an urban hospital. The study bridges medical anthropology and global health, exploring how the ‘biomedical’ is imbued with social meaning and how biomedicine affects Giri ways of life.

An Anthropology of Biomedicine is an exciting new introduction to biomedicine and its global implications. Focusing on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies bring about radical changes to societies at large, cultural anthropologist Margaret Lock and her co-author physician and medical anthropologist Vinh-Kim Nguyen develop and integrate the thesis that the human body in health and illness is the elusive product of nature and culture that refuses to be pinned down. Introduces biomedicine from an anthropological perspective, exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history, environment, culture, and politics Develops and integrates an original theory: that the human body in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity Makes extensive use of historical and contemporary ethnographic materials around the globe to illustrate the importance of this methodological approach Integrates key new research data with more classical material, covering the management of epidemics, famines, fertility and birth, by military doctors from colonial times on Uses numerous case studies to illustrate concepts such as the global commodification of human bodies and body parts, modern forms of population, and the extension of biomedical technologies into domestic and intimate domains Winner of the 2010 Prose Award for Archaeology and Anthropology

Medical Entanglements uses intersectional feminist, queer, and crip theory to move beyond “for or against” approaches to medical intervention. Using a series of case studies – sex-confirmation surgery, pharmaceutical treatments for sexual dissatisfaction, and weight loss interventions – the book argues that, because of systemic inequality, most mainstream medical interventions will simultaneously reinforce social inequality and alleviate some individual suffering. The book demonstrates that there is no way to think ourselves out of this conundrum as the contradictions are a product of unjust systems. Thus, Gupta argues that feminist activists and theorists should allow individuals to choose whether to use a particular intervention, while directing their social justice efforts at dismantling systems of oppression and at ensuring that all people, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, class, or ability, have access to the basic resources required to flourish.

The philosopher Henry Richardson's short book is a defense of a position on a neglected topic in medical research ethics. Clinical research ethics has been a longstanding area of study, dating back to the aftermath of the Nazi death-camp doctors and the Tuskegee syphilis study. Most ethical regulations and institutions (such as Institutiional Review Boards) have developed in response to those past abuses, including the stress on obtaining informed consent from the subject. Richardson points out that that these ethical regulations do not address one of the key dilemmas faced by medical researchers -- whether or not they have obligations towards subjects who need care not directly related to the purpose of the study, termed "ancillary care obligations." Does a researcher testing an HIV vaccine in Africa have an obligation to provide anti-retrovirals to those who become HIV positive during the trial? Should a researcher studying a volunteer's brain scan, who sees a possible tumor, do more than simply refer him or her to a specialist? While most would agree that some special obligation does exist in these cases, what is the basis of this obligation, and what are its limits? Richardson's analysis of those key questions and the development of his own position are at the heart of this book, which will appeal to bioethicists studying research ethics, to policy makers, and to political and moral philosophers interested in the obligations of beneficence, one of the key issues in moral theory. " 'Philosophy recovers itself,' wrote John Dewey, 'when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.' Henry Richardson confronts a problem in the ethics of medical research that is often (as his many real-life examples show) a matter of life and death. The problem is unexplored and quite difficult: Richardson finds he must craft new theory to deal with it. The theory he creates shows how we become morally entangled with others without intending to, as we enter into intimacies with them. This theory of moral entanglement is a genuine discovery in philosophy, with application across a wide range of human relationships. Since the theory was designed for medical researchers it also provides a bespoke ethical framework, as well as specific guidance, for researchers in the field. This book shows practical philosophy at its best: inspired by real problems, responding with powerful solutions." -- Leif Wenar, Chair of Ethics, King's College London "A medical researcher investigating transmission of malaria may find that a subject has another disease. Does the researcher have an obligation to devote some of the team's resources to treating this disease? The traditional principles of research ethics do not ask much less answer this important question. In this theoretically and practically rich book, Henry Richardson seeks to provide an answer and to identify issues that need further exploration. He argues that "ancillary care obligations" are explained by "moral entanglement" and cannot be justified by traditional principles of justice or the duty to rescue. He is admirably soft-hearted and tough-minded in combining his long demonstrated philosophical acuity with a deep knowledge of the problems on the ground. Richardson's book is characterized by great generosity towards those who need help, towards the problems faced by researchers, and towards the scholarly community - even those with whom he disagrees." - Alan Wertheimer, Senior Research Scholar, Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health "In this important book, Henry Richardson sculpts a new path for research ethics, one that focuses on ethical obligations of ancillary-care in clinical trials and medical research, particularly in developing countries, but with relevance throughout the world. In Moral Entanglements, Richardson extends the reach of his analysis both deep within and outside the research itself, recognizing the broader moral backdrop relevant for society-wide judgments of justice, and the special relationships that exist within the medical research context, about what is or is not owed research participants in situations of medical need. Rather than leave such important decisions up to the vagaries of politics or ad hoc assessments, this book sets out a comprehensive theoretical framework with principles to guide such decisions in the everyday lives of both medical researchers and research participants. This book significantly contributes to the ethics of ancillary-care in medical and public health research and judiciously enlightens questions and potential resolutions to these vital global and domestic problems." - Jennifer Prah Ruger, Associate Professor, Yale Schools of Public Health and Medicine

During the 1990s, unprecedented numbers of Americans turned to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), an umbrella term encompassing health practices such as chiropractic, energy healing, herbal medicine, homeopathy, meditation, naturopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine. By 1997, nearly half the US population was seeking CAM in one form or another, spending at least $27 billion out-of-pocket annually on related products and services. As CAM rose in popularity over the decade, so did mainstream medicine's interest in understanding whether those practices actually worked, and how. Medical researchers devoted considerable effort to testing CAM interventions in clinical trials, and medical educators scrambled to assist physicians in advising patients about CAM. In Bounding Biomedicine, Colleen Derkatch examines how the rhetorical discourse around the published research on this issue allowed the medical profession to maintain its position of privilege and prestige throughout this process, even as its place at the top of the healthcare hierarchy appeared to be weakening. Her research focuses on the ground-breaking and somewhat controversial CAM-themed issues of The Journal of the American Medical Association and its nine specialized Archives journals from 1998, demonstrating how these texts performed rhetorical boundary work for the medical profession. As Derkatch reveals, the question of how to test healthcare practices that don't fit easily (or at all) within mainstream Western medical frameworks sweeps us into the realm of medical knowledge-making--the research teams, clinical trials, and medical journals that determine which treatments are safe and effective--and also out into the world where doctors meet patients, illnesses find treatment, and values, practices, policies, and priorities intersect. Through Bounding Biomedicine, Derkatch shows exactly how narratives of medicine's entanglements with competing models of healthcare shape not only the historical episodes they narrate but also the very fabric of medical knowledge itself and how the medical profession is made and remade through its own discursive activity.

Why our approaches to Alzheimer's and dementia are problematic and contradictory Due to rapidly aging populations, the number of people worldwide experiencing dementia is increasing, and the projections are grim. Despite billions of dollars invested in medical research, no effective treatment has been discovered for Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia. The Alzheimer Conundrum exposes the predicaments embedded in current efforts to slow down or halt Alzheimer’s disease through early detection of pre-symptomatic biological changes in healthy individuals. Based on a meticulous account of the history of Alzheimer’s disease and extensive in-depth interviews, Margaret Lock highlights the limitations and the dissent associated with biomarker detection. Lock argues that basic research must continue, but should be complemented by a public health approach to prevention that is economically feasible, more humane, and much more effective globally than one exclusively focused on an increasingly harried search for a cure.

In Rethinking Diabetes, Emily Mendenhall investigates how global and local factors transform how diabetes is perceived, experienced, and embodied from place to place. Mendenhall argues that the link between sugar and diabetes overshadows the ways in which underlying biological processes linking hunger, oppression, trauma, unbridled stress, and chronic mental distress produce diabetes. The life history narratives in the book show how deeply embedded these factors are in the ways diabetes is experienced and (re)produced among poor communities around the world. Rethinking Diabetes focuses on the stories of women living with diabetes near or below the poverty line in urban settings in the United States, India, South Africa, and Kenya. Mendenhall shows how women's experiences of living with diabetes cannot be dissociated from their social responsibilities of caregiving, demanding family roles, expectations, and gendered experiences of violence that often displace their ability to care for themselves first. These case studies reveal the ways in which a global story of diabetes overlooks the unique social, political, and cultural factors that produce syndemic diabetes differently across contexts. From the case studies, Rethinking Diabetes clearly provides some important parallels for scholars to consider: significant social and economic inequalities, health systems that are a mix of public and private (with substandard provisions for low-income patients), and rising diabetes incidence and prevalence. At the same time, Mendenhall asks us to unpack how social, cultural, and epidemiological factors shape people's experiences and why we need to take these differences seriously when we think about what drives diabetes and how it affects the lives of the poor.

In this landmark Companion, expert contributors from around the world map out the field of the critical medical humanities. This is the first volume to introduce comprehensively the ways in which interdisciplinary thinking across the humanities and social sciences might contribute to, critique and develop medical understanding of the human individually and collectively. The thirty-six newly commissioned chapters range widely within and across disciplinary fields, always alert to the intersections between medicine, as broadly defined, and critical thinking. Each chapter offers suggestions for further reading on the issues raised, and each section concludes with an Afterword, written by a leading critic, outlining future possibilities for cutting-edge work in this area. Topics covered in this volume include: the affective body, biomedicine, blindness, breath, disability, early modern medical practice, fatness, the genome, language, madness, narrative, race, systems biology, performance, the postcolonial, public health, touch, twins, voice and wonder. Together the chapters generate a body of new knowledge and make a decisive intervention into how health, medicine and clinical care might address questions of individual, subjective and embodied experience.

Thousands of people from more than eighty countries have traveled to China since 2001 to undergo fetal cell transplantation. Galvanized by the potential of stem and fetal cells to regenerate damaged neurons and restore lost bodily functions, people grappling with paralysis and neurodegenerative disorders have ignored the warnings of doctors and scientists back home in order to stake their futures on a Chinese experiment. Biomedical Odysseys looks at why and how these individuals have entrusted their lives to Chinese neurosurgeons operating on the forefront of experimental medicine, in a world where technologies and risks move faster than laws can keep pace. Priscilla Song shows how cutting-edge medicine is not just about the latest advances in biomedical science but also encompasses transformations in online patient activism, surgical intervention, and borderline experiments in health care bureaucracy. Bringing together a decade of ethnographic research in hospital wards, laboratories, and online patient discussion forums, Song opens up important theoretical and methodological horizons in the anthropology of science, technology, and medicine. She illuminates how poignant journeys in search of fetal cell cures become tangled in complex webs of digital mediation, the entrepreneurial logics of postsocialist medicine, and fraught debates about the ethics of clinical experimentation. Using innovative methods to track the border-crossing quests of Chinese clinicians and their patients from around the world, Biomedical Odysseys is the first book to map the transnational life of fetal cell therapies.

This book suggests a radical departure in approaching the mind-body problem. Instead of trying to causally relate subjective experience to the functioning of the body, it begins with the notion of the psychosomatic unity of the individual and looks for its conditions of possibility. This text shows that what makes this unity possible is the generalized entanglement relation that connects a person's subjective experience with its body functioning in a specific way.In addition to providing a significant contribution to the long-standing philosophical debate about the nature of the mind-body connection, this change of perspective based on the concept of generalized entanglement allows for exploring a holistic approach to health. It can for example explain the existence of body memory and leads to a better understanding of the genesis and evolution of internal diseases, allowing for the development of mind-body therapies. This volume also provides new insights into mental disorders and sets the theoretical basis of self-healing methods appealing to students, researchers and professionals in the fields.