Cords of collaboration: interests and ethnicity in the UK's public stem cell inventory

Williams, Ros

doi:10.1080/14636778.2015.1060116

Cited by 15 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In the one just above, race is enveloped by HLA. HLA is crucial, and race takes on what I have described elsewhere as an almost metonymic position as HLA's less specific stand-in (Williams, 2015). This reveals something of the ontological politics of the multiple views of the body at work here, as race oscillates 'between presence and absence' (M'charek, 2013, p. 436), in this absent moment embedded silently in the HLA of the individual donor.…”

Section: It Is Already There In the Hla-race And Tissue Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Fausto-Sterling notes of scholarship that speak of and visually depicts human difference but does not say the word race-'it stares out at us nonetheless ' (2004, p. 9). This is a point I have highlighted elsewhere in work mapping out the institutional context of UK stem cell donation in which overtly racialised language gets interchanged with descriptions of 'genetic diversity' as if they were metonyms (Williams, 2015).…”

Section: Finding Racementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, the inclusionary practice here is one of focusing UCB donation collection in specific places, a point I have explored in more depth elsewhere (see Williams, 2015). With the aim of redressing underrepresentation, it of course makes sense to question the spending of one's resources on banking what are believed to be common, 'white' stem cells when there is a lack of rare, 'minority' stem cells that could be addressed through focused collection.…”

Section: Lots Of Babies Good Diversity-race and Inventory Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Enactments of Race in the UK’s Blood Stem Cell Inventory

Williams

2017

Science as Culture

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent sociological analyses of the intersections of race and science recognise race's quality as an enacted object. Through this analytic lens, race is always materialising in the practices and processes that enrol it and therefore enjoys a kind of multiplicity. The context of blood stem cell transplantation, a scientific domain marked by a more and less explicitly racialised logic, offers an opportunity to see the conceptual assertion of race's multiplicity play out. Indeed, an exploration of the UK's stem cell inventory reveals-through analysis of interviews, policy and parliamentary meetings-how race materialises in the various practices that comprise this increasingly popular cancer treatment option. Looking at practices of recruitment, inventory management and tissue selection in particular provides an interesting window to look upon race and the many signifiers that implicate it. These cases reveal moments of race's stablisation and silencing; its oscillation between the status of vital information to the life of a public stem cell inventory, and of secondary data that provides little useful information to clinicians selecting tissue. Adopting an analytic lens that attends to race's multiple enactments allows us to begin asking why enactments take the shape they do, and why the particular practices that mobilise them come to be.

show abstract

Section: It Is Already There In the Hla-race And Tissue Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Finding Racementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Lots Of Babies Good Diversity-race and Inventory Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Enactments of Race in the UK’s Blood Stem Cell Inventory

Williams

2017

Science as Culture

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The manufacturing scale-up of cultured red blood cells depends on a supply of allogeneic cord blood which, in the first instance, will be sourced from NHS Blood and Transplant's public cord banks, and adult blood donations. The role of NHS Blood and Transplant is crucial as a site for the production of cultured red blood cells but also produces specific understandings of unmet need (Williams, 2015). While boundaries between public donation and benefit, and generation of value are intertwined or entangled, institutionally NHS Blood and Transplant remains within the frame of welfarist biopolitics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Synthetic Blood’: Entangling Politics and Biology

Kent

Meacham²

2019

Body & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is increasingly suggested that shortages in the supply chain for human blood could be met by the development of techniques to manufacture human blood ex vivo. These techniques fall broadly under the umbrella of synthetic biology. We examine the biopolitical context surrounding the ex vivo culture of red blood cells through the linked concepts of alienation, immunity, bio-value and biosecuritization. We engage with diverse meanings of synthetic blood, and questions about how the discourses of biosecurity and privatization of risk are linked to claims that the technology will address unmet needs and promote social justice. Through our discussion we contrast communitarian ideas that culturing red blood cells 'extends the gift' of adult blood donation with understandings of the immunitary logics that underpin the cord-blood economy.

show abstract

“…In order to cover HLA variability, UCB banks adopt strategies addressed to recruit donors from different ethnic groups. This generates what Williams (: 325) has defined as ‘messy relationships’ between social classifications and race and ethnicity, classifications that often overlap with inheritance, origin and also nationality (Williams ). In her view, race and ethnicity are largely enacted by strategies of addressing potential donors among immigrants and ethnic minorities.…”

Section: Valuing and The Biopolitics Of Ucb Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Values in tension. Clinical quality and civic participation in umbilical cord blood banking in Italy

Beltrame

2019

Sociology Health & Illness

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the dominant narrative of bioethics and biomedical discourse on public Umbilical Cord Blood (UCB) banking, the ethical value of donating UCB is unproblematically associated with the clinical quality of collected UCB. This article shows that this view is analytically untenable as it overlooks tensions and conflicts between the social values of donation and the clinical value of banked UCB in concrete arrangements regarding the logistics of UCB donation and collection. Adopting the notion of registers of valuing (Heuts and Mol 2013: Valuation Studies, 1, 2, 125-46) and analysing the case of the Italian network of public UCB banks and collection sites, this article shows how conflicting registers of valuing concerning UCB can shape different organisational models of UCB donation and collection, in which social values and clinical value are not unproblematically conflated. The article aims to demonstrate that the functioning of biobanking arrangements is dependent on how different values are accomplished and aligned in concrete practices of tissue donation and collection.

show abstract

Cords of collaboration: interests and ethnicity in the UK's public stem cell inventory

Cited by 15 publications

References 39 publications

Enactments of Race in the UK’s Blood Stem Cell Inventory

Enactments of Race in the UK’s Blood Stem Cell Inventory

‘Synthetic Blood’: Entangling Politics and Biology

Values in tension. Clinical quality and civic participation in umbilical cord blood banking in Italy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About