Building the world we want to live in
Caroline Engen is a CCBIO PhD candidate who presented at the S.Net conference in Bergen. Her lecture was titled "Why Targeted Therapy May Not Work", and was part of the CCBIO session "The Transition from a Blockbuster Model to Personalised Cancer Therapy". We asked Caroline to walk us through a medical researcher's perspective of the conference and the use of new technologies.
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"Last week, 11th to 14th September, I was fortunate to attend and present at听the conference "The Co-Production of Emerging Bodies, Politics and听Technologies"听organized by the Society for the study of New and Emerging听Technologies (). The main theme permeating the program was the听contemporary dawn of a new technoscientific-world, characterized by听technological solutions to real world problems.听
A听future healthcare system
This echoes a strong development we recognize in our own field of research. Concepts like "Nanotechnology", "Big data", "Synthetic biology", "Genetic engineering", "Machine learning", "Artificial intelligence", "Systems biology", and "Personalized medicine", are all currents adding up to a strong vision of a future healthcare system that we imagine able to predict, prevent, and treat disease in a significantly more efficient way than听we can today.
Technological advances versus core human values
The three keynote presentations by Silvio Funtowicz (幸运飞艇计划), Joseph Dumit听(Davis), and Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard) were all, in various ways, posing a听concern that the enthusiasm for technological and scientific advances were听undermining the worth of core human qualities and values, like rationality听and self-reflection.
Most medical practitioners and cancer researchers agree that emerging听science and technologies encompass a huge applicable potential for听improvements within current clinical and research practices. Anticipating听plausible impacts, both desirable and undesirable, reflecting and deliberating听on these various scientific advances and their accompanying technologies听does however remind us that it is not the science or technology itself but the听careful and considerate application of the science and technology that might听facilitate future health benefits. The way we choose to prioritize research听resources as well as how we choose to implement and apply new technology,听including new diagnostic tests and new therapeutic strategies, shapes not just听our health care sector in a organisational manner but also the various听identities within the healthcare system, the care providers, the patients, as听well as the society as a whole. New technology will even co-produce, or rather听co-evolve, our understanding of concepts like health and quality of life.
Connecting the pieces
The conference was a powerful reminder of one of the fundamental principles听in medical research and healthcare practices; when we take on the adventure听of discovering new things about health and disease by taking a closer look,听unravelling the details, by studying composite parts of the human biological听system, we are essentially fragmenting and reducing the human condition听to听the sum of its parts. It is in this setting crucial that we remember how all the听pieces connect together. When we make abstractions about how our findings听fit in the world, and we create suggestions for how they should be integrated听in the health care sector we must look at the impact of our invention or听intervention, not just on the part we studied, not even at the level of the听biological system, but rather in the context of the concept of health and at the听level of our society. It is imperative to remember that genetic impairment or听aberrantly expressed proteins alone do not define the degree of health loss听suffered. Health and health loss always and profoundly involves physiological, psychological and societal processes.
The power and excitement for novel and emerging science and technology is听therefore not about the world or health care service it could possibly allow us听to create, but rather about the possibility to imagine, create and build the听world we want to live in."
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Related articles
Also see below related content, articles about the CCBIO session at the S.Net conference听and the pre-conference event October 11th.
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S.NET CONFERENCE
S.NET
S.NET听is the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies, and is听an international association that promotes intellectual exchange and critical inquiry about the advancement of new and emerging technologies in society. You can .
S.NET Annual Meeting
The Co-Production of Emerging Bodies, Politics and Technologies:听The 8th annual S.NET meeting took听place in Bergen, Norway, October 12-14, 2016. Conference host is听the University of Bergen's Centre听for the Study of the Sciences and Humanities.
KEYNOTE LECTURES STREAMING
The keynote lectures have been recorded and are available for streaming. We recommend you to take a look!
