Discussion Notes 9/24

-       Turning in assignments: 

o   When you turn in the final draft of a paper in this class, please turn in previous copies with comments as well

-       Syllabus changes: Virtual worlds, social media portion will stay intact (tweaks are still possible)

-       Keeping session on radiation sickness and Chernobyl

-       For next week – Continue to read what is on the syllabus.  Rather than read the entire book, read ch1, 2 from Petryna. 

-       Medical tourism/global organ trafficking and experimental stem cell studies in China will be a part of the new syllabus

-       More changes upcoming to syllabus – Dr. Song will send it out

From last week: Ways that Race is being Changed via Genetic Research

-       Big business tied up in commercialization of personal genetics.  We concluded that we as consumers should be skeptical of these companies

-       Native American genetic testing:  DNA testing changing the ways that tribes define themselves. 

-       What are the dangers of equating genetic markers with cultural/historical groups?

o   There are a lot of pitfalls along this argument

o   As this research becomes more commercialized and widespread, we must be more and more careful

DNA Fingerprinting in Forensics:

-       Alec Jefferies: developed method to identify individuals based on their DNA

-       RFLP Analysis (Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms)

o   Measures length of DNA fragments called VNTRs (variable number tandem repeats) derived by using restriction enzymes to digest DNA

o   These are highly specific sequences.  If they compare more and more sequences it reduces the likelihood of the DNA matching by chance

o   Technology used to solve the Pitchfork Double Rape-Murder investigation in the 80s

-       OJ Simpson Trial: first widely publicized use of DNA evidence. 

o   Because of doubts about the validity of the results obtained via DNA evidence, among other things, he was eventually acquitted.   

Session 5: Technologies of Repair

Sarah Wagner – To Know Where He Lies

- DNA analysis used to identify bodies that were exhumed (in pieces or otherwise)

- DNA profile match only begins the process of matching.  Short Tandem Repeat (STR) Analysis is the technique of choice.  Use PCR to amplify small pieces of DNA that are extracted.

- more sites that have the same number of repeats – higher the chance that the sample matches

à trying to match victims with families.

-       Wagner originally researched whether Bosnians are returning to their homes after the war.  Found out that families of most people had been killed, and they were interested in finding answer about what happened to their loved ones. 

Historical Background:

-       Formerly Yugoslavia.  Federation of 6 republics bringing together groups under Communist regime.  President Tito kept the tension down but when he died in 1990, these groups tried to establish their own identity.

-       à outright armed conflict when two of these states declare their own independence

-       Conflict between Bosnians (Muslims), Bosnian Serbs (Christian), Bosnian Croats, in close proximity. 

-       The Serbian army targeted the Bosniacs (Muslims) and destroyed the capital city, put many of them into concentration camps, genocide, violence.

-       Violence ended in December 1995 – Dayton Peace Agreement. 

-       St. Louis chosen by the US state department as a place to resettle some of the Bosnian refugees.  Over 50,000 in St. Louis

-       There is still tension in the country between the Serbs and Bosnians

Secondary Graves: An “innovation” – Called this by Wagner

-       very deliberately done by the Serbs to further dehumanize their victims

-       Wagner comparing the practice to the Nazis for effect, contrasting with the technology being used to identify the scattered remains of victims.

-       Body parts all mixed up and scattered, same done with possessions as well.

ICMP (international commission on missing persons) Blood Collection – Trying to create a large enough database to make DNA identification possible via matching

-       ideal match: Very hard to tell if someone is part of a family.  To do so convincingly, they need blood samples from many family members

Discussion:
- Why keep looking for their families’ remains?

-       psychological benefits to closure:  Knowing what happened to a lost family member

-       having that knowledge is important as well. 

-       Having an open question in your life about the death of a loved one is extremely difficult. 

-       Talked about how, from a public model, once an idea takes hold, it is hard to halt public discourse and opinion.  There was a public outcry about the missing members so the government sought assistance from other sources to help out. 

o   Public was not giving the government the option to ignore this crisis.  Other governments have tried to push something like this under the rug. 

-       Religious importance: finding remains and something to bury.  There must be some kind of ceremony and ritual.  Having the full body of the victim is important to some religious groups, this may be the case here

-       Maybe there is an element of race here.  Cosovo(?) was saved from invasion by the Serbs by a US bombing campaign, this likely prevented a similar level of destruction that happened to the Bosnians

o   Clinton now has almost hero status there, statue erected and memorialized. 

-       Bringing identity back to a mass of victims is a way to reclaim individual identity

Comments on the Ethnography:
- Use of statistics as a form of knowledge – way that it is used to establish the credibility and believability of science

-       gives the results this ‘aura’ of credibility?

-       How to convince the family that these are the remains of their loved ones?

-       Different forms of knowledge brought up

-       Extrasensory memories of family members

-       The contrast between casual nature of the anthropologists vs her fear and her reaction to the grave sites

o   Example: anthropologist almost falls face-first into the gravesite but brushes it off casually.  Author’s reaction to something like that happening would have been much more severe

-       Having the visualization of these scenes when reading the book is very useful.

-       Organization felt the necessity to explain necessity of DNA testing to verify, differing from the websites that we looked at last week.  Explaining the results and trying to translate them using a cultural and experiential methodology is extremely important to establishing differing forms of knowledge

-       Passage describing process of how scientists go through sequences.  Requires scientist and technician to look at the dataset, not automated at all.  Technicians perform “genetic detection work”. 

-       Describes this passage, identities must be described by numbers before they can be translated back into actual people/real identities.

-       Contrast between types of knowledge: going to fortune tellers/witch doctors versus getting DNA testing.  Even the director was someone who “paid their 3 marks” when trying to figure out what had happened to a loved one.  Possibility that going to a witch doctor added closure to the families before empirical testing was even possible

-       “To be absent is to be missing in time and space”. 

-       Does the government have responsibility to these people?  Opinion seems to think so, and there is a push for the DNA project

-       presence of US-funded organization in the country may bring back memories of the event?

-       Guilt in the European context in failing to save a lot of the Bosnians that were murdered by the Serbs

-       Psychological aspects of this effort:  Example – trying to figure out which of the two sons the remains belonged to. 

-       They brought in the mother, and she denied that the remains were either of her sons

-       Fixation on the physical body:

o   People need remains of family members

o   Muslims (bosniacs) have a great reverence for the dead, so finding the remains is especially important

-       Focus on the body also comes from medical traditions.  Religious tradition also shaping their acceptance of this

-       What role do we give DNA, is it useful, detrimental, etc?

o   What are the unintended consequences of DNA technology?

-       More broadly, what are the unintended consequences of advancement in technology?