Biomedical research and the politics of the human

The pursuit of human health is at the heart of biomedical research. Humans are a primary reference point for the aims of biomedical research, along with its ethical and political groundings. We hold many assumptions about what and who is human, but no study has yet investigated just how such designations are made in biomedical research. Amid rapid technological change, I will ask what and who constitutes this human.

I will explore the development of human organoids and interspecies chimera. I will use a qualitative approach to examine how new technological advances are redrawing the limits and boundaries of the human. My project does not set out to prove what the human is or should be, but rather to learn what the researchers and diverse stakeholders of contemporary bioscience take it to mean in times of uncertainty and technological change.