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Book Cover
E-book
Author Song, Priscilla, author

Title Biomedical odysseys : fetal cell experiments from cyberspace to China / Priscilla Song
Published Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2017]

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Description 1 online resource
Series Princeton studies in culture and technology
Princeton studies in culture and technology.
Contents Introduction -- part I. Online mediations -- Interlude : planet paralyzed -- Mobilizing the paralyzed online -- Cyberanatomies of hope -- Where the virtual becomes visceral -- part II. Chinese experiments -- Interlude : ode to olfactory ensheathing cells -- Medical entrepreneurs -- Borderline tactics -- part III. Heterogeneous evidence -- Interlude : clinical outcomes -- Seeking truth from facts -- i-witnessing -- Epilogue : on the cutting edge
Summary Thousands of people from more than eighty countries have traveled to China since 2001 to undergo fetal cell transplantation. Galvanized by the potential of stem and fetal cells to regenerate damaged neurons and restore lost bodily functions, people grappling with paralysis and neurodegenerative disorders have ignored the warnings of doctors and scientists back home in order to stake their futures on a Chinese experiment. Biomedical Odysseys looks at why and how these individuals have entrusted their lives to Chinese neurosurgeons operating on the forefront of experimental medicine, in a world where technologies and risks move faster than laws can keep pace. Priscilla Song shows how cutting-edge medicine is not just about the latest advances in biomedical science but also encompasses transformations in online patient activism, surgical intervention, and borderline experiments in health care bureaucracy. Bringing together a decade of ethnographic research in hospital wards, laboratories, and online patient discussion forums, Song opens up important theoretical and methodological horizons in the anthropology of science, technology, and medicine. She illuminates how poignant journeys in search of fetal cell cures become tangled in complex webs of digital mediation, the entrepreneurial logics of postsocialist medicine, and fraught debates about the ethics of clinical experimentation. Using innovative methods to track the border-crossing quests of Chinese clinicians and their patients from around the world, Biomedical Odysseys is the first book to map the transnational life of fetal cell therapies
Analysis ALS
CareCure
China
Chinese clinicians
Chinese medicine
Chinese neurosurgeons
Dr. Huang Hongyun
Huang Hongyun
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
biomediation
biomedical practice
biomedical research protocols
biomedical science
biomedicine
chronicity
clinical experimentation
cybersociality
experimental medicine
experimental medicines
experimental surgery
experimental therapy
experimental treatment
fetal cell transplantation
foreign patients
hope
illness
institutional practice
market socialism
medical entrepreneurialism
medical entrepreneurs
medical practice
neurodegenerative condition
neurodegenerative disorders
neurosurgeon
olfactory ensheathing cells
olfactory ensheathing glia
online discussion forum
paralysis
patient activism
regenerative medicine
spinal cord injuries
spinal cord injury
surgical intervention
technonationalism
transplantation
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject Stem cells -- Research -- China
Hematopoietic stem cells -- Transplantation -- China
Medical ethics -- China
Human Embryonic Stem Cells -- transplantation
Medical Tourism -- psychology
Therapies, Investigational -- ethics
HEALTH & FITNESS -- Diseases -- General.
MEDICAL -- Clinical Medicine.
MEDICAL -- Diseases.
MEDICAL -- Evidence-Based Medicine.
MEDICAL -- Internal Medicine.
MEDICAL -- Ethics.
Hematopoietic stem cells -- Transplantation
Medical ethics
Stem cells -- Research
Medizinische Ethik
Periphere Stammzellentransplantation
SUBJECT China
Subject China
Form Electronic book
ISBN 1400885280
9781400885282