Embodied material encounters and the ambiguous promise of biomedical futures: The case of biologically derived medicines

Abstract

Therapies and prophylactics using biologically derived materials such as cells, microbes or tissues are often portrayed as key to increased future health. This article investigates the material preconditions of such visions. Building on feminist new materialist approaches, it explores the embodied material encounters between biologicals administered into living bodies and the vibrant materiality of the body. We investigate embodied material encounters through two biologicals, pandemic vaccines and stem cell therapies, focusing on vaccine-associated narcolepsy during the 2009 pandemic, and adverse reactions in an experimental stem cell therapy targeting an eye disease called AMD. We propose that the concept of embodied material encounter provides an important tool for STS by making visible the constitutive situatedness of risk and promise and the multiplicity of futures in therapeutically harnessed biological processes. We argue that ethically accountable visions of biomedical futures need to be anchored in a nuanced understanding of these embodied processes.