In this report we review recent work in geography which engages with innovative qualitative methods, focusing on three selected arenas: the archive, artistic collaborations and online engagements. ...Qualitative archival research illustrates the tensions around assembling accounts and incorporating uncertainty as geographers strive to animate the archives. Collaborative artistic endeavours, whether through participatory video, artistic installations or co-curating exhibitions, open new arenas for geographers to engage research subjects as well as possibilities for unfolding uncertainty into research practice. An exploration of the use of online environments for research also presents new ways to develop research collaboration and participation. Geographical experiments raise questions both about ethical frameworks for online research and about the ways in which power hierarchies may, or may not, be challenged.
Animal research is part of a complex web of relations made up of humans and animals, practices inside and outside the laboratory, formal laws and professional norms, and social imaginaries of the ...past and future of medicine. Researching Animal Research sets out an innovative approach for understanding and intervening in the social practices that constitute animal research. It proposes the idea of the animal research nexus to draw attention to the connections that make up animal research today and to understand how these elements have become entangled over time. The authors examine moves towards openness, inclusion, and interdisciplinarity in science, and open up questions that move debates beyond polarised pro- and anti-public positions. The book is written as a collaboration and conversation between historians, geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars, and engagement professionals, with commentaries from the arts, social sciences, and animal research sector. Through detailed qualitative analysis of regulation, care, expertise, and public engagement the book offers an unparalleled picture of the changing cultures, practices, and policies of UK animal research. By incorporating critical commentaries and examples of creative practices, it also seeks to animate and potentially transform the animal research nexus that it describes. As the social imaginaries and regulations around animal research continue to change in the UK and beyond, this book is a vital interdisciplinary contribution to the search for new ways to conduct and research animal research today.
The application of genome editing to animal research connects to a wide variety of policy concerns and public conversations. We suggest focusing narrowly on public opinion of genome editing is to ...overlook the range of positions from which people are brought into relationships with animal research through these technologies. In this paper, we explore three key roles that publics are playing in the development of genome editing techniques applied to animals in biomedical research. First, publics are positioned by surveys and focus groups as stakeholders with opinions that matter to the development of research technologies. Learning lessons from controversies over genetically modified food in Europe, these methods are used to identify problems in science–society relations that need to be managed. Second, people are recruited into research projects through participating in biobanks and providing data, where their contributions are encouraged by appeals to the public good and maintained by public confidence. Thirdly, patients are increasingly taking positions within research governance, as lay reviewers on funding panels, where their expertise helps align research priorities and practices with public expectations of research. These plural publics do not easily aggregate into a simple or singular public opinion on genome editing. We conclude by suggesting more attention is needed to the multiple roles that different publics expect – and are expected – to play in the future development of genomic technologies.
Familial hemiplegic migraine (FHM) is a rare autosomal dominant subtype of migraine with aura. It is divided into three subtypes FHM1, FHM2 and FHM3, which are caused by mutations in the CACNA1A, ...ATP1A2 and SCN1A genes respectively. As part of a regular diagnostic service, we investigated 168 patients with FHM symptoms. Samples were tested for mutations contained within the CACNA1A gene. Some tested samples (4.43%) showed an FHM1 mutation, with five of the mutations found in exon 5, one mutation in exon 16 and one in exon 17. Four polymorphisms were also detected, one of which occurred in a large percentage of samples (14.88%). The exon 16 2094G>A polymorphism, however, has been found to occur in healthy Caucasian control populations up to a frequency of 16% and is not considered to be significantly associated with FHM. A finding of significance, found in a single patient, was the detection of a novel mutation in exon 5 that results in a P225H change. The affected individual was an 8-year-old female. The exact phenotypic effect of this mutation is unknown, and further studies are needed to understand the pathophysiology of this mutation in FHM1. New information will allow for diagnostic procedures to be constantly updated, thus improving accuracy of diagnosis. It is possible that new information will also aid the development of new therapeutic agents for the treatment of FHM.
The principles of the 3Rs—replacement, refinement, and reduction—strongly shape discussion of methods for performing more humane animal research and the regulation of this contested area of ...technoscience. This special issue looks back to the origins of the 3Rs principles through five papers that explore how it is enacted and challenged in practice and that develop critical considerations about its future. Three themes connect the papers in this special issue. These are (1) the multiplicity of roles enacted by those who use and care for animals in research, (2) the distribution of “feelings that matter” across species and spaces of laboratory animal practice, and (3) the growing importance of “cultures of care” in animal research.
This paper reflects on the aims and outcomes of an innovative methodology of participatory technology appraisal, called Deliberative Mapping, which seeks to contribute to theoretical debates and ...practical experimentation around what it might mean to bring the technosciences into democracy. Deliberative Mapping is a hybrid methodology, involving both calculative and deliberative processes, which seeks to map the entanglements of biotechnological imbroglios, and translate these connections into the contexts of decision-making. Through application to the case study of organ transplantation, these procedures of calculation and articulation are critically examined, exploring their aim to reduce asymmetries between scientific, political, economic and other framings of the issue and their operation in contexts already complexly structured through existing power relations, which indicate the challenge of co-fabricating these experimental forms of intervention into political facts.
This paper explores what we can learn from the humanities and social sciences about how standards operate in and around science, in order to understand more about how ‘the gold standard’ can be ...shifted away from the use of animals in research and testing, and toward New Approach Methodologies (NAMs). These fields allow us to consider potential futures of NAMs as alternatives, replacements, or complements to animal use in testing and research. As we demonstrate, the questions that we pose and how they are framed are as important as the answers that result. Rather than asking how to ‘redefine the gold standard’, norms and expectations for NAMs must be actively debated and transparently defined. These considerations would be based, in part, on what has been learned in the past from non-human animal models and systems, but also use the norms within the fields from which the NAMs derive in light of the rich broader contexts within which they are being developed. As we argue, notions such as ‘a gold standard’ are limited and must be replaced by contextualised standards that depend on the scientific, sociocultural and other factors that contribute to our understanding of a particular method (new or otherwise) as ‘good’ for a particular purpose.
Alzheimer's disease patients have deficits in specific cognitive domains, and susceptibility genes for this disease may influence human cognition in nondemented individuals. To evaluate the role of ...Alzheimer's disease-linked genetic variation on cognition and normal cognitive ageing, we investigated two Scottish cohorts for which assessments in major cognitive domains are available: the Lothian Birth Cohort of 1921 and the Lothian Birth Cohort of 1936, consisting of 505 and 998 individuals, respectively. 158 SNPs from eleven genes were evaluated. Single SNP analyses did not reveal any statistical association after correction for multiple testing. One haplotype from TRAPPC6A was associated with nonverbal reasoning in both cohorts and combined data sets. This haplotype explains a small proportion of the phenotypic variability (1.8%). These findings warrant further investigation as biological modifiers of cognitive ageing.
This short paper adds to debates on the unfolding spaces and logics of biotechnological development bought together in the 2009 special issue of New Genetics and Society on 'Biopolitics in Asia'. ...Though an unlikely comparison between the development of the genomic sciences and the building of gambling casinos in the city state of Singapore, it reflects on the nature of political and technological investments in this South-East Asian city. It argues that Western expectations of a link between scientific practices, and civic epistemologies linked to democratic decision-making, are replaced by a rather different future orientation to scientific experimentation, economic investment and social development in Singapore.
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