The Department of Anthropology
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
presents a seminar by:

Priscilla SONG
Centre for the Humanities and Medicine
The University of Hong Kong

Biomedical Odysseys: Fetal Cell Experiments from Cyberspace to China

Friday, 15 February 2019
1:00 – 2:30 pm
Room 115 Humanities Building
New Asia College, CUHK
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/en/seminars.php

In a world where technologies and risks move faster than laws can keep pace, thousands of people from more than eighty countries have journeyed to China to undergo fetal cell transplantation. This talk will examine the challenges of regulating experimental medical treatment in a globalized era, the ways in which digital communication technologies are transforming patient activism, and the unintended consequences of Chinese healthcare reforms. Drawing on the book Biomedical Odysseys, Priscilla Song will illuminate how poignant journeys for fetal cell cures become entangled in complex circuits of digital mediation, entrepreneurial frameworks of post-socialist medicine, and fraught debates about the ethics and epistemology of clinical experimentation.

Priscilla Song is a medical anthropologist whose research examines the social and ethical implications of transnational biomedical and information technologies in urban China. She is the author of Biomedical Odysseys: Fetal Cell Experiments from Cyberspace to China (Princeton University Press 2017), and is working on a new book on end-of-life care technologies in the context of China's rapidly aging population and unevenly privatized healthcare system.

ALL INTERESTED ARE WELCOME

A light lunch will be served at 12:30 pm. First come first served.

Department of Anthropology
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
anthropology@cuhk.edu.hk