Imagined Publics In Medical Research Collections: Tracing Circulations And The Making Of Public Value(s)

• In Event: Collating Publics In Collections Of Human Biological Material And Data 1

Abstract

Public engagement has grown into a prominent concern for medical research, motivated by the assumption that this will make individuals more likely to participate in research projects. Especially in the context of large scale collection, storage and study of materials and data in so-called ‘biobanks’, engagement appears to have achieved the status of an ethical principle on par with traditional issues such as ownership, confidentiality and consent. Nevertheless, a substantial body of work in STS has shown the limitations of public engagement and its projections of (a) public(s) affected by technoscientific activities. In this paper, I seek to extend this line of thinking by exploring how particular configurations of relevant publics are imagined in the collection, storage and research practices of medical biobanks (conceived broadly) in the United States, Singapore, and India. On the basis of interviews and analysis of study documents, I propose a preliminary typology of different forms of ‘publics’ imagined for these collections. These include a public of participants to be recruited and maintained as research objects; a public of scientific peers who should be attracted as collaborators; and a broader global public that stands to benefit from insights generated in these studies. I argue that through these diverse imaginings of the public, collections are positioned as sites for the production of knowledge that has both local and universal validity. This paper thereby provides insight into how contemporary medical science is made to travel and, moreover, how such travels intersect with imaginations of science’s public value(s).

Author

• Erik Aarden, University of Vienna