From Animal to Artifice: An Ethnographic Investigation of Scientific Research in the Experimental Realm of Human Organ Replacement

美国的器官移植经常被描述为长期缺乏捐赠的人体器官。作为回应，一群科学家正致力于开发高度实验性的非人类替代品，以缓解这种短缺。目前，这一领域主要有两种发展方向：第一种是拳头大小的可植入机械装置，它将完全取代人体器官，其中心脏是一个特别突出的焦点；第二种是异种移植，即试图开发转基因动物物种（主要是猪），其器官可以被剔除用于人类移植。在这个研究项目中，莱斯利·a·夏普博士将研究科学想象力如何在这两种经常相互竞争的轨迹中发挥作用。也就是说，她将研究科学家是如何理解目前处于实验发展阶段的替代技术的社会、临床和伦理后果的。作为一项人类学研究，研究人员将利用民族志的调查方法（包括参与者观察、结构化访谈和生活史）作为揭示科学家如何设想实验室工作及其更广泛和长期的社会后果的手段。该项目在几个方面具有可比性。首先，它考察了科学轨迹的本质（一方面涉及惰性物质，另一方面涉及动物物种）如何塑造社会意义，进而塑造伦理思维。其次，它以美国和英国的实验室为目标，作为调查国家关注是否影响这两个高度实验性的科学领域发展轨迹的一种手段。因此，该项目旨在解决目前关于非人类器官替代的优点、困境和危险的普遍假设的跨文化有效性。最后，它将测试研究人员的培训领域、资历水平、年龄和/或性别是否会影响他们的社会、临床和生物伦理问题。因此，该项目旨在为实验和科学创新的本质提供一个新的视角，一个超越当前报道（特别是大众媒体）的视角，这些报道几乎只关注新想法的神奇品质，而不关心参与者如何考虑他们工作的社会、医学和伦理层面。

Organ transplantation in the U.S. is frequently described as being plagued by a chronic shortage in donated human parts. In response, a range of scientists are engaged in developing highly experimental, non-human alternatives as a means to alleviate this scarcity. Currently two trajectories dominate the field: the first involves fist-sized, implantable mechanical devices that would fully replace human organs, with the heart defining an especially pronounced focus; the second is xenotransplantation, or attempts to develop transgenic animal species (primarily porcine) whose organs could be culled for human implantation. In this research project, Dr. Lesley A. Sharp will undertake research on how the scientific imagination figures within these two, often competing trajectories. That is, she will examine how involved scientists understand the social, clinical, and ethical ramifications of alternative technologies currently in experimental stages of development. As an anthropological study, the researcher will draw on ethnographic methods of investigation (including participant-observation, structured interviews, and life histories) as a means to uncover how involved scientists envision laboratory work and its broader and long-term social consequences. The project is comparative in several ways. First, it examines how the nature of the scientific trajectory (involving inert materials on the one hand, and animal species on the other) shapes social meanings and, in turn, ethical thinking. Second, it targets laboratory sites based within the U.S. and U.K. as a means to investigate whether national concerns shape the trajectories of these two highly experimental realms of science. As such, the project seeks to address the cross-cultural validity of currently universalized assumptions about the merits, dilemmas, and dangers of non-human forms of organ replacement. Finally, it will test to see whether the field of training, level of seniority, age, and/or gender of researchers affects their social, clinical, and bioethical concerns. The project thus seeks to offer a fresh perspective on the nature of experimentation and scientific inventiveness, one that extends beyond current coverage (particularly in the mass media) that focuses almost exclusively on the miraculous qualities of new ideas without concern for how involved actors think about the social, medical, and ethical dimensions of their work.