Tuesday
25
JUN

05:15 PM

Biotricksters: On Biomedical (Re)Legitimizations of Liminal Substances in Brazil and Europe

Dr. Márcio da Cunha Vilar (Freie Universität Berlin)

In this lecture, I explore connections between bioprospecting for immunotherapies, pharmaceutical regulation and human- environmental relations in Latin America (particularly Brazil) and Europe. My aim is to analyze, from a transnational and relational perspective, aspects of the mobility, re-hierarchization and use of substances with potential antigenic power that were once forbidden in the context of disputes between immunosuppression and immunostimulation as competing therapeutic models to treat immunopathologies and depression. My guiding question is: How has the use of palliative immunosuppressants as a matter of course been questioned by multiple actors over decades not only at central sites of legitimate knowledge production in the Global North but also in the Global South, while substances that were previously tabooed (such as Deltorphine, Melittin, Beta-Glucana, and cannabinoids) seem now to reappear as potential therapeutic agents that can be gradually rehabilitated as biotechnological innovations? One of my points of reflection consist in paying attention to the relatedness of such liminal substances to medical colloidal perspectives that co-shaped the development of so-called biotherapies in the interwar period.
Márcio Vilar actually works as a contract teacher at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin. His postdoctoral comparative research focuses on the combined and mutual impacts between innovative biotechnologies to treat immunopathologies, new communication technologies, and co-regulation in different biomedical settings.

Address

4010

010.01.05 (Hörsaal)

Voßstr. 2

69115 Heidelberg

Organizer

SAI, Abt. Ethnologie

Contact

Lin Nagels

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Biotricksters: On Biomedical (Re)Legitimizations of Liminal Substances in Brazil and Europe

Dr. Márcio da Cunha Vilar (Freie Universität Berlin)