Aditya Bharadwaj Discusses Cultivated Cures: Ethnographic Encounters with Contentious Stem Cell Regenerations in India
In October, the CSSD working group Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics and Culture hosted Aditya Bharadwaj, Professor of Anthropology and Sociology of Development at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, who presented his work on “Cultivated Cures: Ethnographic Encounters with Contentious Stem Cell Regenerations in India.”
Bharadwaj’s research generated a provocative discussion on the diaspora of stem-cell research and its ecological detriments in India, leading the discussants to explore caveats of cure, disease and illness from the perspective of communities that reside in the fringes of Indian society.
Bharadwaj questioned his own position as a scholar-researcher who investigates and gives voice to the rural and largely invisible people of India. He also questioned the dogmas of Western models of scientific research and the ethical dilemmas that govern their approaches to the study of human suffering as experienced by marginalized groups.
Bharadwaj opened his talk by posing alternative conceptualizations of illness and health. Health, generally considered to be a normative or neutral state, was redefined as a dormant state without evident disease or illness. Health and disease co-exist within the body and a paradigm shift is required to understand the state of good health as not a mere absence of disease, but rather a dormancy of disease, according to Bharadwaj. In a nutshell, “health exists in the moments when disease sleeps and is cast aside when disease awakens.”
Bharadwaj emphasized that the prevalence of problems like underdevelopment, malnutrition, and disease in many developing countries, including India, are a direct result of pressures created by a corporatist intelligentsia and market-driven socio-ecological changes that degrade living environments. The global hegemony of Queen Victoria’s Britain was central to this process, neglecting the social justice concerns and ecological sanity of indigenous people, he claimed.
The group discussed the need to redefine and decontextualize “justice” while researching the indigenous diaspora. The guidelines of scientific and behavioral research into fringe cultures, including clinical trials, are defined by teaching professionals from elite institutions in developed countries, leading to incorrectly assumed prophylaxes and etiologies of illness, the group agreed.
The group discussed the possibility of creating a middle ground within an eco-politics strategy that might be more inclusive of indigenous cultures and benefit affected communities more directly. Due to India’s lack of evidence-based baseline and needs-assessment indicators, investment projections for stem cell research remain ambiguous.
The group also discussed how health care and social markets function differently from business markets. Bharadwaj explained that efforts to develop and incorporate indigenous methods of “cultivated cures” and treatment should be prioritized and valued, in order to balance the impact of more modern models of care that are standardized in the developed world.
In response, many in the group questioned the science behind this model. Coming from the tradition of Western science, some defended the need for peer-reviewed articles and government oversight. Without this structure, some cautioned, clinics in developing communities may be able to dabble in pseudoscience and peddle “cures” to desperate patients without power or choice.
Contributed by Srishti Sardana & Christopher Cadham
Laura Ciolkowski's Rape Culture Syllabus in Public Books
Laura Ciolkowski, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference and Adjunct Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, published her Rape Culture Syllabus in the October 15th issue of Public Books.
Rape culture, the trivializing of sexual violence and the tendency to blame victims while exonerating or excusing assailants, also refers to the racial disparities in arrests and sentencing of accused rapists, according to the piece. Published in the wake of the public furor that arose in connection to the sexually predatory and misogynist comments of then-presidential hopeful Donald Trump, the Rape Culture Syllabus has been circulating widely on social media and republished on a range of sites, including Melissa Harris-Perry's Anna Julia Cooper Center and Feminist Wire.
Photograph: Florida supporters of Donald Trump, 2016. By mollyesque / Instagram
"The syllabus was indeed one of our most viewed and shared articles of the past few months. It circulated widely on Facebook and Twitter, and generated lots of appreciative comments," said Liz Maynes-Aminzade, Digital Director at Public Books.
The thirteen-week syllabus covers subjects as far-reaching as the history of gender-based violence in the United States and the politics of rape, to toxic masculinity and racial and state violence. "What would the conversation around sexual assault, police bias, and the legal system look like if investigators, police officers, and judges read deeply into the literature on sexuality, racial justice, violence, and power?" wrote Ciolkowski.
Read the full rape culture syllabus here.
Katherine Franke Writes about #BlackLivesMatter and the Question of Palestinian Genocide
Katherine Franke, CSSD Faculty Fellow and Professor of Law and Director, Center for the Study of Law and Culture, Columbia Law School, blogged on The Nakba Files about #BlackLivesMatter and the question of genocide in Palestine.
According to Franke, the Movement for Black Lives has criticized the U.S. government for providing military aid to Israel, saying "The U.S. justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”
In response, critics accused authors of the statement and its supporters of antisemitism in connection to their use of the word "genocide" with respect to Israel.
Franke explained that the term “genocide” has particular relevance in this context: “Genocide can be applied to the destruction of a people or a national group as a viable group, and that can be both with their being driven from a land or the rendering of their language no longer legal, or just the destruction of their national identity.”
Read the full post here.
James Tabery Traces History of The Human Genome Project with CSSD's Precision Medicine Working Group
On September 15, the Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture working group kicked off its first semester with a talk by James Tabery, Professor of Philosophy and Medicine at the University of Utah.
Tabery’s talk on “Collins’ Cohort: The Path from The Human Genome Project to the Precision Medicine Initiative” provided historical perspective on the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) announced by President Obama in his 2015 State of the Union address, a plan to recruit a cohort of 1,000,000 or more American volunteers to provide biological, environmental, and health information over an extended period of time.
At the time, Tabery explained, the proposal made headlines because of its ambitious scope and exciting medical promise. The idea, however, was not a new one. As the Human Genome Project was wrapping up in 2003, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute sought to set the NIH off on another bold genetic initiative—to create a large, longitudinal, national cohort that would allow for examining the genetic and environmental contributions to health and disease. The path from that initial idea in 2003 to the public announcement at the State of the Union address in 2015 was marked by technological advances, logistical challenges, ethical dilemmas, and political hurdles. That historical legacy also reveals a great deal about what we can expect (and not expect) from the Precision Medicine Initiative.
Tabery reviewed the history of successes and failures among previous initiatives such as the American Family Study, The American Genes-Environment Study, and the Genes, Environment, and Health Initiative. With the 2015 State of the Union address, he explained, the dream of Frances Collin, director of the NIH, was realized. The PMI would seek to enroll 1 million people in a cohort reflecting the diversity of the US population, with the goal of creating personalized clinical care based on genes, environment, and lifestyle. It would aim to provide personalized, clinical care for both rare and common disorders, as well as learning about what makes people healthy.
Some of the worries about PMI are unfounded, according to Tabery. Although many worry that the PMI is moving too fast, history tells us that it is the product of over a decade of thought. And although some also worry that the PMI will fail in its goal to recruit a million subjects, Tabery claims that Collins will deliver.
A more serious concern regards what it would mean for the PMI to succeed. Since the PMI is really concerned with genetic, there is a lot of talk about the environmental factors that cause disease but little attention to specifics. Since other countries are already doing these kinds of studies, some ask why the United States should replicate their work? And finally, Tabery wondered whether the sample collected will really be representative.
Tabery closed by reminding his audience that the PMI is a work-in-progress. Given that Columbia is one of the enrollment centers, this is an exciting time to be thinking about the questions raised and to witness, on the ground, how they are addressed.
Photo above is of members of the Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture working group.
CSSD Co-sponsors Dissent Issue Launch Concerning the Feminist Movement's Response to Trump Presidency
Dissent magazine’s editors and contributors are gathering Tuesday, November 22, 6:30 p.m. at The New School for an issue launch focused on the challenges feminists will face under a Trump presidency, and how feminist movements can fight back.
One contributor to the discussion is Premilla Nadasen, Associate Professor of History at Barnard College and co-director of CSSD's working group on Social Justice After the Welfare State.
Others speaking are Dawn Foster, Ann Snitow, and Sarah Leonard. Dawn Foster is a London-based writer on politics, social affairs, and economics, and the author of Lean Out (Repeater, 2016). Ann Snitow, a co-founder of the Network of East-West Women, is a professor of Literature and was the Director of Gender Studies from 2006 to 2012 at The New School. Her most recent book is The Feminism of Uncertainty: A Gender Diary (Duke University Press, 2015). Sarah Leonard is a senior editor at the Nation and co-editor of The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for a New Century (Macmillan, 2016). She is a contributing editor to Dissent and the New Inquiry.
A flyer for the event says "A virulent misogynist is now president of the United States. He has bragged about sexually assaulting women, threatened to repeal abortion rights, and will refuse to protect transgender individuals from discrimination. His proposals to ban immigrants, reject refugees he deems “terrorists,” and cut federal climate spending will have serious consequences for everyone, especially women. And if he follows through on his promise to "bomb the shit" out of countries he deems his enemies, women abroad will suffer too."
The event is co-sponsored by Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies, The New School; CSSD; and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, Columbia University.
See the Facebook event page here.