Bench, bedside, boardroom: negotiating translational gene therapy. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Addison, Courtney
• Is Part Of: New genetics and society. Volume 36:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 22
• Page End: 42
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: gene therapy -- detachment/engagement -- translation; Genetic engineering -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Biotechnology -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 660.65
• DOI: 10.1080/14636778.2017.1289468
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1463-6778

Abstract

Abstract : This article presents ethnographic material from a London-based group of gene therapists who received the opportunity to trial a device that, its makers claimed, would expedite and improve their cell work. The Vanguard cell processor elicits both enthusiasm and ambivalence from group members, which I seek to understand by examining the group's current manner of working alongside the device and its purported virtues. I show that cell processing currently involves complex practices of recognition, attention, care, and involvement, which answer to both the liveliness of cells and the experimentality of gene therapy. I read these practices as a well-honed configuration of productive engagements and detachments, which the Vanguard would thoroughly rearticulate. I thus argue that translational gene therapy is a site at which private and academic interests meet, and that translation more generally might be seen as a space where the relational format of science is renegotiated.