*STS Circle at Harvard* *[image: line.gif] * * * *Duana Fullwiley* *Anthropology, Harvard* * * on
*When State Economy and Population Biology Meet: The Powers of Association and "Mild" Sickle Cell Anemia in Senegal, West Africa * ** Monday, April 11th 12:15-2:00 p.m. 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106 [image: line.gif] Lunch is provided if you RSVP. Please RSVP to sts <[email protected]>@hks.harvard.edu<[email protected]> by 5pm Thursday, April 7th. * * *Abstract:* In the 1980’s a research team led by Parisian scientists discovered several unique DNA sequences (called genetic “haplotypes”) that are consistently inherited with the sickle cell gene. After casual observations of how people managed this painful condition, they postulated that the “Senegalese” type was less severe. Importantly, however, these scientists never investigated the many modalities of self-care that people improvised in this context of biomedical scarcity. Local doctors often wittingly accepted the “Northern” genetic prognosis of better-than-expected health outcomes for their patients (as the optimistic findings coincided with dire cuts in Senegal’s heath sector during structural adjustment during these same years). Unlike many genetic determinisms that harden and highlight the absoluteness of disease, DNA haplotypes for sickle cell in Senegal did the opposite. They allowed the condition to remain officially so invisible as to never materialize as a health priority. *Biography*: Duana Fullwiley is an anthropologist of science and medicine whose research explores how personal identity, health status, and molecular genetic findings increasingly intersect. She has recently completed her first book, The *Enculturated Gene: Sickle Cell Health Politics and Biological Difference in West Africa* (Princeton, 2011), which draws on ethnographic fieldwork in the US, France and Senegal to assess locally varied versions of sickle cell science and disease embodiment in Dakar. Since 2003, she has also conducted multi-sited field research in the United States on emergent technologies that measure human genetic diversity among populations and between individuals for health, forensic and humanistic needs. She has a Ph.D from the joint program in Medical Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and UC San Francisco and has held postdocs from the National Science Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Currently she teaches in the departments of Anthropology and African And African American Studies at Harvard. A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/ Follow us on Facebook: STS@Harvard <http://www.facebook.com/HarvardSTS> --------------------------------- Samuel A. Evans, DPhil Postdoctoral Fellow & Chair, STS Circle Harvard University
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