South Asia Group Lecture: “In the Midst of Geopolitics and Bioethics: Stem Cell Research and Therapy in India” with Amit Prasad

A middle-aged man with glasses, wearing a dark suit jacket over a light blue collared shirt, standing indoors with a neutral background.

Abstract

In 2005, India’s then union minister for health and family welfare had confidently declared that “India’s objective was to emerge as a global ‘hub’ for stem cell research.” During this time, while there were several claims of important stem cell innovations, stem cell research and therapy in India was also criticized for “tall claims and questionable ethics.” In fact, soon there was a cascade of criticisms of proliferating stem cell clinics and India was characterized as reflecting a “governance vacuum.” These criticisms were often laced with Orientalist and colonial tropes and the debate over stem cell ethics slipped into how to save the “gullible dupes” (patients) from “guileless mavericks” (Indian doctors at these clinics). In my presentation I focus on stem cell research and therapy at a particular hospital in India to excavate how bioethical concerns in relation to stem cells got entwined with geopolitical hierarchies and their impact on stem cell research and therapy. Specifically, I show how biomedical, juridical, and ethical concerns were contested and navigated at this particular hospital as it went about not only developing new stem cell therapy techniques but also receiving international recognition for their work.

Biography

Amit Prasad is an associate professor in the School of History & Sociology at Georgia Institute of Technology. He specializes in global, transnational, and postcolonial sociology and history of science, technology, and medicine. His research focuses on the history of the present – in particular, how history of colonialism continues to impact present day norms, values, and practices. His goal has been to excavate the complex and often contradictory entanglements of colonial tropes, ideologies, etc. with emergent knowledges and practices of science, technology, and medicine.

Prasad also explores the visual culture of medicine, in particular its shift with the emergence of technologies such as MRI, issues of priority and invention, and scientific misinformation . He has also published on biopolitics of overseas drug trials and medical transcription and engaged with the role of history of science in films. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, American Institute of Indian Studies, among others and he has published in a number of journals, including Social Studies of Science, Science, Technology & Human Values, Theory, Culture, and Society, Cultural Geographies, Technology & Culture.

His first book, Imperial Technoscience: Entangled Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT Press, 2014), through a study of connected histories of MRI in the US, the UK, and India, investigated how the invention, industrial production, as well as cultures of MRI were entangled within colonial, West-centric, and Orientalist discourses. His second book, Science Studies Meets Colonialism (Polity, 2022), investigates how colonial tropes, norms, ideologies, etc. continue to animate the present, including in the fields of history of science and science and technology studies (STS). Drawing on an ethnographic study of a stem cell clinic, he is writing his third book that is tentatively titled Miracle or Science: Scientific Uncertainty, Contested Ethics, and Global Melange in a Stem Cell Laboratory.

He is an editor of the journal Science, Technology and Society (Sage).

He is also an avid collector of Indian art - medieval miniatures and modern and contemporary paintings and etchings. He is particularly interested in postcolonial cosmopolitanism of Indian art/artists.

Prasad's lecture is sponsored by the Liu Institute's South Asia Group and Health, Humanities and Society, Reilly Center for Science Technology and Values.

Lunch Provided - Please Bring Beverages

In support of the Liu Institute’s growing commitment to sustainability, we will no longer be offering drinks at our public lectures and panels. We encourage audience members to bring their water bottles or to drink from nearby water fountains.