Technoscientific Musings at WUSTL

One parallel between this week’s readings and my own research is the idea of the “nutrient.” Banner introduces several terms to discuss the ways that digital technology has re-shaped how patients think about illness: biomediation occurs when a digital representation of an illness is accepted as corresponding to the truth of the body. “Through practices of turning the self into data, embodiment itself begins to be contoured through statistical data.”

During the 1950s through the late 1970s, when food aid started to expand in earnest across the globe, the focus was on a condition called “protein-energy malnutrition,” academic speak for people aren’t getting enough to eat. However, as a result of green revolution policies and fairly rapid increases in calories, public health nutrition shifted towards the idea of “hidden hunger,” micronutrient deficiencies which could be quantified through tangible biomarkers. A person may not be visibly hungry, but a quick blood test could reveal an iron deficiency. This is still the dominant focus of nutrition today, and it interestingly parallels heavy investment and belief in neo-liberal public/private partnerships that seek to combat malnutrition through fortification, biofortification, or supplementation.

With some exceptions, such as iodized salt or bi-annual vitamin A supplementation (the body stores vitamin A very effectively), much of these programs or interventions have mild effects at best. In some cases, they’ve caused major harm, as in the case of iron supplementation increasing risk of malariaand subsequently death in Tanzania.

I have a suspicion that self-quantification is going to go the same route. So far, the data on activity monitors seems to indicate precisely the opposite effect as intended.

And what about finding an online community for rare conditions, as in the case of fibromyalgia? Banner is critical: lifelogging functions as a technology for self-optimization within a capitalist economy, allowing a person to engage more deeply in capitalist practices of producing and consuming. Engagement in the online community, cyberbioscoiality, draws them further into biomedical discourse. The etiology of fibromyalgia remains hotly debated, but most studies indicate a strong psychological component. This does not by any means make the condition any less real, however one question that should be posed is how better to harness the potential of biosociality so that it can create coalitions that address the broader structural determinants of health, rather than seek cures through more data.