Abstract
Based on complementary ethnographies of a biomedical laboratory and a clinic – both working on Huntington Disease (HD) – we discuss the circuits of translation evident in biomedical and clinical research. By examining a recent epistemological shift from understanding the disease as genetic to understanding the disease as a problem for neuroscience, as well as documenting the multiple framings of the disease that migrate between the laboratory and the clinic, we emphasise the complexity involved in the movement of biomedical science into clinical work. We stress that this is not a one-way flow from the colloquially known bench to bedside, but is dependent on a cluster of contextual activities and local actors. We also stress the extent to which global collaborations, standardisation and regulatory frameworks can facilitate such framing and migration by aligning local practices and different disciplinary outlooks. We take a sociological perspective on translational processes – or rather to an expanded understanding of translation – to capture the material flows and conceptual transformations that are involved in the complex relationships between fundamental and clinical research.
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Notes
On a broader front, of course, this historical relationship finds its modern counterpart in the more explicit form of contract enshrined in the processes of informed consent and enrolment into clinical trials.
Of course there may be additional economic and social rewards for collaborating as well as any moral responsibility.
Of course, there may be aspects of interpretive flexibility (see Stephens et al, 2011) in terms of the ways in which different sites understand the data.
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Lewis, J., Hughes, J. & Atkinson, P. Relocation, realignment and standardisation: Circuits of translation in Huntington’s disease. Soc Theory Health 12, 396–415 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2014.13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2014.13