Cells and Human:

Back to Origins or a Challenge of Revaluation.

The Case of Stem Cells.

Jekaterina Kalēja

- Since the beginning of time and until today there have been existing phenomena which one can always encounter.

Now have a look at photos! Does anybody see what they have in common? Liv!

-There are people at all of them.-Exactly! It’s a wonderful answer! Whatever

part of the world you travel to, you will find communities of people, similar as yours. You are also a community. You are pupils, family.

Mary Douglas

• Universal schematism of cognitive systems – universal categories and schemas to organise our experience

• Society is an example and model of building any schemas of classifications

Mary Douglas Stem Cells as a Symbolic Category

• Order vs.ambiguity• Certain categories vs. transcending, mixed

(uncertainty/ unclearness)

• Gray zone: opportunity or danger• Media discourse analysis• “We <...> are positively re-ordering our

environment, making it conform to an idea.” (M.Douglas, 2002 [1966]: 2)

Basics of Human Origin

• Progressive technology explores the starting and recovery point of human [body?]

• Progressive technology translates a miracle of conception and maintaining wholesome to processes of cell development and regulation

Basics of Human Origin

• “...protection of life, health, privacy and dignity of human subjects in biomedical research...”

(The Newsletter of the International Association of Bioethics/ Issue No. 21/ Nov 2008/ Bioethics in Singapore/ S. Lim and W. C. Ho/ 23 – 27pp.)

• Living/ non-living• Whole/ part• Person/ non-person• If living/ person could be a material?

Origin of Material

• Embryonic, fetal stem cells and adult stem cells

• iPC (induced pluripotent cells) – adult non-pluripotent cells transfected/

“infected by transformation” to pluriponent state using retroviruses affecting certain stem cell-associated genes

Challenge of Revaluation

• Unrevealed/unnoticed part ob the body => object of study and knowledge => actor graced with agency (own voice)

• Example of redefinition of family (kin lines – extended family)

• Why now stem cell has a force to cause the redefinition of symbolic categories?

• Why people are paying real money for innovation which just seems to occur?

M. Callon,B. Latour, J.Lawand Actor-Network Theory

• Heterogenous relations - material-semiotic networks/ relations (transient, consistnat making – remaking=> relations repeattedly “performed”)

• Astors• Alianses - networks• Translation of interests into acting

Stem Cells and ANT

• Especially during last 20 years stem cells are not just a part of human bodies

• In collaboration with scientists in laboratories and with doctors in clinics stem cells have got a new status

• Stem cells became a new actor, who the scientists and the doctors introduced to us,

• but who has its agency to act through the network scientists and clinicians participate in and to give a rise for new networks as well

Stem Cells and ANT

• Questions• What is the problem/ field? • Who are the actors? Mediators?• What are the interests of actors?• Alianses

Back to Origin - Progressive Biotechology, but Still Asking the Same Questions?

• Who has knowledge?• Who has resources (money, qualified personal)?• Who has power economical and political?• Who is a recipient of realization of this

knowledge and power (gender matters)?• Who has opportunities?• Revaluating/ reshaping borders of symbolic

structure? Significant symbolic relations should be repatedly reaffirmed

Who comes back to origin?Chicken and Egg Dilemma

• Stem cells are an origin of us• We are an origin of stem cells