Experimental Transplantation
EXCERPT FROM MASTER'S DISSERTATION | CONCEPTUALIZING EXPERIMENTAL ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION: FROM NOVEL TO NORMAL
Douglas Adams, an English science fiction writer, claims in one of his essays on technology:
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reaction to technologies:
Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things (2002).
While Adams is neither anthropologist nor inventor, doctor nor social scientist, he makes an important point. Familiar technologies that people are often exposed to tend to seemnatural, while new technologies present opportunities or dangers (Bloomfield and Vurdubakis 1995). Adams uses age as a frame of reference: as people grow older it becomes harder and harder to keep up with constantly evolving technological developments. However, it provides an example of how social and contextual factors – whether it be age, health, wealth, setting, or a number of other elements – influence how people will conceptualize new or novel inventions. New medical inventions have compelling social value as well as cultural meaning (O’Connell 1996; Karim 2012). Biotechnologies influence discourses and discussions of health, agency, morality, survival, meanings of life and death, optimization of the body, constructs of the body, and commodification of living things. The development of new medical technologies – depending on the extent to which they are seen as novel, disconcerting, or potentially lifesaving – are often met with completely contrasting opinions and evaluations depending on context (Bloomfield and Vurdubakis 1995; Brown and Michael 2004; Mulkay 1993).
This dissertation will be focused on experimental organ transplantation, specifically on surgeries where organs are sourced from non-human origins. Xenotransplantation (hereafter noted as xeno) and artificial organ transplantation (AOT) are two experimental biotechnologies meant to provide an alternative source of organs for transplantation. Xenotransplantation involves the transfer of animal flesh into the human body in the hope that the cadaveric animal piece will function in lieu of the faulty human original (Lundin 1999:5; Sharp 2011a:43; Woods 1998). AOT is the replacement of a natal organ with a mechanic or biomechanical device that would fulfil the same duties as the original. These experimental biotechnologies and their acceptance or denial by certain populations can reflect cultural assumptions and senses of normality and acceptability. How environment and circumstance influence these views and potential acceptance is of particular focus here.
In this dissertation I identify and develop three different dominant spheres of knowledge and perspectives based in the EuroAmerican world in respect to the aforementioned technologies: the transplant imaginary, the patient imaginary, and the public imaginary. An imaginary is a set of conceptualizations about the undeveloped impacts of new technologies that forms a dominant discourse within a specific group of agents. These imaginaries are not based upon ideas of “illusion”, fantasy, or escape (Appadurai 1996; Rommetveit et al. 2013:162) – they are valid conceptualizations of the impact of these technologies. They constitute a type of “reality” in a setting where the concrete product is absent and discussion requires a certain extent of projection (Rommetveit et al. 2013:162; Thompson 1984). The term “imaginary” as I use it is based upon the “social imaginary”, a collection of interconnected values, beliefs, ethical structures, and symbols that are common to and shape a specific social group and their moral order (Rommetveit et al. 2013:163; Taylor 2004). The social imaginary provides a foundation of agreement and certain dimensions of similarity from which people are able to create a functional collective life (Thompson 1984:6). Before I go into more depth about the imaginary and how and why it is being used, I will provide a brief history of xeno and AOT and their current context. Additionally, there are certain theoretical frameworks that guide cultural assumptions that prove extremely relevant to discussions of these technologies. I will outline two different rhetorics that are used as building blocks to the different imaginaries, rhetoric being the set of background cultural assumptions and norms that shape a person’s opinion on a topic (Mulkay 1993:723).