The "Me" in the "We" Anthropological Engagements with Personalized Medicine

From the introduction: No one can doubt the current relevance of personalized medicine in Danish society. "The state will steal your DNA" and "Critique: DNA project is high risk” are but two catchy newspaper headlines from a heated public debate about the planned state-run national genome bank in Denmark, Nationalt Genom Center. What has spurred discussion is the government’s suggested organizational and ethical framework for collecting, banking, and using genomes from the Danish people as part of its realization of personalized medicine in Danish health care. The framing of "stealing" and the articulation of this project as "high risk" points to the discussion’s central issue of how to treat and administer genomes as concomitantly part of the "me" of the person and the "we" of the welfare state. Anthropology has a lot to offer in understanding the intertwining of the person and the collectivity. But before I discuss what anthropology can bring to personalized medicine and this question, let me begin with what anthropology is

Collaborative intimacies

Pigs and pig organs are frequently used prior to human trials in experimental transplant research into how to optimise human transplantation. But what exactly happens when transplant professionals perform experimental research on pigs? Similarly, what happens when a pig is on the surgical table? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Danish transplant research laboratories, we investigate how pig experiments facilitate ‘collaborative intimacies’ among medical professionals. Collaborative intimacies are used here as an empirical and theoretical framework for conceptualising and re-imagining the social relationships between species and the medical disciplines that emerge in laboratory work. Collaborative intimacies in the lab provide medical training and facilitate moral reflection and social networking among transplant professionals. As such, we argue that research utilising animal models is not only about technological progress and ethical dilemmas; rather, collaborative intimacies make us understand how intimate relations among medical professionals in translational research unfold and how such relations matter for professional and technological futures

Fortællinger om slægtskab i cancergenetisk rådgivning

Tilhører gener individet eller familien? Hvad betyder det at være genetisk forbundet? Der bliver stillet skarpt på forståelser af gener, krop og slægtskab, som de kommer til udtryk i forbindelse med cancergenetisk rådgivning og testning

Differentiation of Palaeogene sand by glauconitic and geochemical fingerprinting, Siri Canyon, Danish North Sea

The submarine Siri Canyon is NE–SW-oriented and located in the Danish North Sea (Fig. 1). It contains a number of oil reservoirs with glauconite-rich sand. The reservoirs of interest in the Nini oil field are the Late Paleocene Tyr Member of the Lista Formation and the Kolga Member of the Sele Formation (Schiøler et al. 2007), presumably of Early Eocene age. These members have previously been known as the Ty and Hermod members (Hamberg et al. 2005; Poulsen et al. 2007). The sand shows signs of injection, both in cores and in seismic data. The aim of this work is to chemically characterise and fingerprint the sand in order to reveal the origin of the sand found in three horizontal wells, which could have been injected from one or both of the Tyr and Kolga members. Core samples were collected from two vertical wells of known stratigraphy to make a basis of comparison, whereas samples of the cuttings were collected from the three horizontal wells with ages primarily corresponding to the Kolga Member. The purpose was moreover to evaluate whether cuttings samples can be used for fingerprinting as an alternative to core samples

„JEG“ OG „VI“: ANTROPOLOGISK ENGAGEMENT I PERSONLIG MEDICIN Professor MSO, tiltrædelsesforelæsning, den 26. februar 2018

Ingen kan være i tvivl om den aktuelle relevans af personlig medicin i det danske samfund. Diskussionen har omhandlet regeringens forslag til den organisatoriske og etiske ramme for indhentning, opbevaring og brug af genomer i forbindelse med implementeringen af personlig medicin i det danske sundhedssystem. Omtalen af indhentning af genomer som „tyveri“ og italesættelse af projektet som „højrisikabelt“ sætter fingeren på diskussionens centrale problemstilling: at genomer både kan forstås som del af individet og del af velfærdsstaten – som en del af personens „jeg“ og kollektivets „vi“. Antropologi har meget at bidrage med, når det gælder relationen mellem person og kollektiv

Postnatal consultations with an obstetrician after critical perinatal events:a qualitative study of what women and their partners experience

Objective The objective of this study was to explore women’s and their partners’ experiences with attending postnatal consultations with an obstetrician after critical perinatal events.Design Qualitative interview study. We did semi-structured individual narrative interviews exploring the lived experiences. Interviews were analysed using a phenomenological approach and the thematic analysis was validated by a transdisciplinary group of anthropologists, obstetricians and a midwife.Setting Department of obstetrics at a large hospital in Denmark.Participants We did a qualitative study with 17 participants (10 women and 7 partners) who had experienced critical perinatal events.Results Five major themes were identified: (1) a need to gain understanding and make sense of the critical perinatal events, (2) a need for relational continuity, (3) the importance of discussing emotional effects as well as physical aspects of occurred events, (4) preparing for future pregnancies and (5) closure of the story.Most of the participants emphasised the importance of knowing the obstetrician undertaking the postnatal consultation. The majority of the participants described a need to discuss the emotional effects of the experience as well as the physical aspects of occurred events. The postnatal consultation served as an approach to obtain a positive closure of their birth story and to feel confident about potential future pregnancies.Conclusions This interview-based study suggests that postnatal consultation with an obstetrician might be an important tool for women and their partners in understanding the course of events during the critical birth experience and in processing it and preparing for future pregnancies. It appears to be important to assign an obstetrician whom they already know and to encourage them to discuss not only physical aspects of what happened but also the emotional effects of the experience