recent biomed

Some bioart leaves me quite indifferent, especially that which is perhaps better called ‘biocraftwork’. Take the exhibition ‘Crystal Structures: Viruses in Glass’ which opened last Thursday at the University of Idaho Commons Reflections Gallery. It contains a number of beaded ‘models’ of viruses — including this ‘Purple Haze’ that is said to represent the Microviridae family — skilfully made by Holly Wichman, a professor of […]

The Department of the History of Science at Harvard University is looking for a historian of 20th-century (and especially post-WWII) molecular biology, biotechnology, and/or the biomedical sciences. They are especially interested in candidates at earlier stages of their careers. Application deadline is December 1, 2007. More details here.

Mark Jackson, Director of the Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter, is giving a lecture in London on Wednesday 21 November on “The Stress of Life: Hans Selye and the Search for Stability”. This is an exciting project because Selye (there is an unfinished short Wikipedia article about him) is one of the most interesting medical researchers in the 20th century, […]

Tuesday, 9 October 2007, 14:00-16:00 Christina Brandt (Max Planck Institute of the History of Science, Berlin) will discuss  fictional imaginations and literary representations of the figure of the clone (late 1960s to early 1980s) from a history of science perspective.  Location: Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, Fredericiagade 18, 1310 København. Everyone is welcome. For more information, please contact […]

Apropos biomedicine and aesthetics — this week’s (28 September) issue of Science presents the winners of the 5th annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge which the magazine organises in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Here’s one of the two winners in the photography category: — which is a rendering of a CT-scan from a 33-year-old Chinese woman being examined […]

Centre for Studies in Practical Knowledge, Södertörn University College, Sweden, invites you to the symposium “Medical technologies and the life world: cultural and ethical perspectives” At Södertörn University College, Room MB505, 15-16 of November 2007.

Before I got my recent job I used to teach history of science to biology, chemistry and philosophy students in a small regional university outside Copenhagen (forget the name, you have probably never heard of it anyway). After graduation many of them (not the philosophers, though) were recruited to the burgeoning Danish pharmaceutical industry, including Lundbeck — […]

In an earlier post I mentioned Annebeth Meldal’s still life of surgical remains in the new hospital exhibiton at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology (NTM), Oslo. Another interesting way of displaying hospital remains is this trolley with used hospital instruments thrown out by the medicotechnical department at the Norwegian National Hospital in week 45, 2006:     But […]

At Medical Museion we have started collecting conference posters to study visual and cultural practices in biomedical research.  A conference poster is used to present new results that haven’t been published in articles or even completely verified. The poster resembles an academic article in the way it is constructed. It consists of a title, introduction, method, […]

Webcasts can do things that medical museum exhibitions cannot. For example, tonight at 19:00 Eastern Time (i.e., Thursday morning at 1 am Copenhagen time) the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Montefiore-Einstein Heart Center in New York will present a live webcast of a panel discussion on a heart transplant performed earlier this year. The webcast will feature […]

Philosopher Byron Kaldis at the The Hellenic Open University is asking for contributions to a special theme issue on “Religion and Biotechnology: The Challenge” for the journal The European Legacy (the journal of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas). The issue (planned for vol. 15, 2010) … will seek to delineate, analyze and discuss the current […]

The organisers of the European Conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin (ZfL) have announced the conference streams – some might be of interest for a potential Biomedicine on Display Session. Deadline for abstracts and session proposals is Oct 15th.