Interpellating Patients as Users: Patient Associations and the Project-Ness of Stem Cell Research

• Published in: Science, technology, & human values Vol. 36; no. 4; pp. 573 - 594
• Main Author: Langstrup, Henriette
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA Sage Publications 01.07.2011; SAGE Publications; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Althusser, Louis; Associations; Cell lines; Circulation; Development programs; Development projects; Diabetes; Diseases; Enactment; Engagement; Entrepreneurship; Funding; General points; History of science and technology; History of social organization of science and scientific research; Identity; Illness; Illnesses; Interpellation; Mass media; Media; Medical research; Parkinson disease; Patient associations; Patients; Scientific research; Sociology of science; Spinal cord; Stem cells; Stem-cell research; Technology; Type 1 diabetes mellitus; Century 20-21; engagement; stem cell research; patient associations; interpellation; Scientific research; Commitment; Social organisation of science and scientific research
• ISSN: 0162-2439; 1552-8251
• DOI: 10.1177/0162243910368397

The author traces the ways in which various patients and collective associations of patients come to regard themselves as the users of future stem cell technologies. The author uses Althusser's notion of interpellation (1971/2006), whereby an identity is the result of the situated encounter of a subject and an authority, to analyze the ways in which patient associations' current involvement with basic research is related to the enactment of science as a series of technology development projects. The author argues that this "project-ness" forms a certain privileged logic that interpellates patients and their associations in specific ways. Through the listings of illnesses circulated in the mass media, which are hoped to be treatable or curable with stem cell therapies, patients come to recognize themselves as the projected users of stem cell technologies. The author fleshes out the process of this userfication and the various responses made by patients and their associations when hailed by the entrepreneurial projects of stem cell research.