ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Transnational Biopolitics in Laboratories: Animals and Humans at Risk

• In Event: Science and Empire in the Anthropocene: Towards an Environmental Shift 3 - (Post)-Imperial Ecologies

English Abstract

Some authors, such as Adriana Petryna (2009), have pointed out the shift that occurred after the Second World War in the search for biological materials when it was demonstrated that the human and animal models that had governed scientific practices since the late 19th century were not anymore acceptable. Conceptually, the bodies of some populations have been equated with ‘guinea pigs,’ that is, animal bodies; and some laboratory animals, no longer considered indispensable, were banished from caregiving practices. From 1983 to 2011, Mexican health institutions allowed more than 5,000 clinical trials to be conducted by American pharmaceutical companies in Mexican population. The lack of a reconceptualisation of our interdependencies between humans and animals to sustain laboratory practices and health policies has led to their erasure and has generated imbalances that have enabled pharmaceutical companies to decide which bodies matter. (Butler, 1983) This participation aims to contribute to the discussions about what Mexican bodies mean to large American pharmaceutical companies in a neoliberal world in crisis, lack of animals, and to outline what animal bodies have become for them.

Author

• Deyanira Cuanal Cano, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa