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Rodríguez, Maria Amelia. 2019. "Biobanks interrupted: the ethnographic reconfiguration of biobanks images." In "Methodological Interruptions Across the Field and Archive: Doing STS in Mexico" created by Arturo Vallejo. In Innovating STS Digital Exhibit, curated by Aalok Khandekar and Kim Fortun. Society for Social Studies of Science. August.
When I was planning my research project, before I did field work, I pictured biobanks as modern structures using sophisticated technology: a collection of samples stored in modern freezers with robots sorting out perfectly labeled tubes in racks and shelves. This image was interrupted by my daily ethnographic observations.
The intention of this collection of objects is to show how our ethnographic observations can act as interruptions that reconfigure the image of our object of study. The modern, sophisticated and neat image of biobanks was reconfigured into one that included, among other things, the human organs that serve as the source of supply for biobanks. In the case of INCan, those organs come from patients that attend the hospital every day. The context and reality of daily life in a big city such as Mexico City also challenge the conception of a patient. Who is a patient for such a hospital? A person beaten and left bleeding in the street across the hospital is a patient? Not according to my observations.
My aim was to gain a deep understanding of how biobanks work. I wanted to know about the daily routines of the people who work in the Incan tumor bank. The method I used was a participant observation ethnography. For almost two years, I followed each of the members of the staff of the tumor bank through their daily work routines. Some days I had to wake up at 4 am to get to the tumor bank at the same time as the nurses who worked there. Other days I had stay in the bank until 11 pm, when the afternoon shift ended.
This type of approach had a huge impact on me. It reconfigured the previous image I had of biobanks. The daily observations and the interaction with the staff of the tumor bank materialized the specific forms and configuration of the work being carried out in the Incan tumor bank. Almost every day there were experiences that interrupted and reconfigured my daily observations. These interruptions included the members of a family who cried and hugged each other by the front door of the hospital; a dying man in a stretcher waiting to be admitted to the hospital, a patient-prisoner in cuffs, a giant tumor ovary on a clean fume hood and the penetrating smell of burning flesh in the operating room. All of these scenes and experiences are part of working in the tumor bank of INcan.
My ethnographic approach allowed me to work together with the tumor bank staff. We had group discussions about STS, about my PHD work and even about some or the findings of my observations. Since then, they invite every year to give a talk about STS in their annual course about biobanks.
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All Innovating STS exhibits are oriented by nine shared questions in order to generate comparative insight. These are:
ARTICULATION: What STS innovations (of theory, methodology, pedagogy...Read more
Furthering its theme, Innovations, Interruptions, Regenerations , the 2019 annual 4S meeting in New Orleans will include a special exhibit, Innovating STS , that showcases innovations ...Read more
The National Institute of Cancelorogy (INCan is the Spanish acronym) is one of the most important institutions of the Mexican national health system. Its objective is to treat cancer patients from all over the country, especially those without health insurance. Two towers connected by a bridge house one of the largest and best equipped research hospitals in Mexico, focused on researching and treating cancer. The towers stand out in the urban landscape south of the city, in the so-called “hospital zone”, on San Fernando Avenue # 22. Close to 1640 people (between patients and patient relatives) arrive at INcan daily.
Three important road axes, Insurgentes, Anillo periférico and Viaducto Tlalpan, surround the hospital zone. Despite the proximity to these roads, none of the city's mass transportation systems, such as the Metro (subway) or the recently established Metrobus (exclusive-lane bus service) have a station close Av. San Fernando # 22. The lack of mass transportation leads to constant traffic jams in the area, forcing patients using mouth covers and/or even wheelchairs to move between running cars to get to the hospital.
The large amount of people that circulate daily in the hospital zone creates a kind of micro city with its own micro-economic system. The narrow sidewalks around INCan host a large number of food carts, peddlers and flower sellers. A few meters from the front door of the new INCAN tower, in front of a small construction that serves as short-term garbage dump for nearby food street sellers, a man sells scarves to cover the bald heads of the women who lost their hair during chemotherapy. These scenes contrast with the clean and neat laboratory rooms of the tumor bank on the third floor of the new INCan hospitalization tower, where the staff watches a pathologist trying to identify a tumor in a uterus, ovary, intestine or kidney.
The work carried out by the tumor bank is crucial for accomplishing the promise made by the Incan’s director and displayed on posters throughout the building: “El cancer, hoy un reto, mañana una historia de éxito” (Cancer, today a challenge, tomorrow a success story).
The tumor bank, which stores almost 5000 samples taken from cancer patients, is located on the third floor of the new hospitalization tower. Two white, clean and neat rooms contain several refrigerators, a thermocycler, a nitrogen tank and a perfectly clean fume hood. A constant noise from the air ventilation system and the refrigerators seem to isolate the place and the staff from the noisy street, where recordings of evangelical pastors blaring out salvation messages mix with the suggestive calls from taco sellers inviting the people to sit and taste their products.
Going down from the third floor to the ground floor, people in white coats get lost among people without coats. In the central hall to the left there are two waiting rooms, one for emergencies and the other for people waiting to see their sick relatives. In the morning, this room is usually filled by sitting people who look extremely tired, some of them lying down and others dozing; they probably spend the night sitting and covered with blankets due to the cold temperatures.
The second vignette speaks of a wounded man who spent around 7 hours lying on the sidewalk a few meters from the entrance to the hospital, without medical attention, while a large number of doctors passed around him to buy food from street vendors.Read more
This ethnographic vignette illustrates a moment that I experienced as an interruption during my ethnographic work. It depicts a common scene observed in the reception hall of the hospital. A family is crying; they hug and comfort each other. It’s not clear if a relative died or if they were told...Read more