ResBod Resisting bodies: The politics and practices of the immune system

• Dam, Mie S. & Druglitrø, Tone (2025). Choreographies of nearness: self and other in personal cancer immune therapy research. BioSocieties. ISSN 1745-8552. doi: 10.1057/s41292-025-00373-2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article explores the practical and material configurations of the ‘person(al)’ in experimental cancer immune therapy, where immune cells from the patient’s cancer tissue are used to eliminate incurable cancers. Drawing on ethnography from Denmark, we examine personal cancer immune therapy as a carefully steered practice—a choreography—through which tissues and cells originating from the same person are reconfigured in unpredictable ways. Cancer tissue, conventionally perceived as a dangerous ‘other’, holds the potential to act as a lifesaving ‘self’ in the form of a personal cure. Conversely, T-cells, conventionally perceived as protectors of the embodied ‘self’, can act as life-threatening ‘others’, endangering the person from whom they originated. We develop the notion of ‘choreographies of nearness’ to analyse how immunological and ontological relations are enacted in the clinical and experimental practices of personal cancer immune therapies. Tracing the execution of clinical protocols in ethnographic detail, we show that this emerging medical practice involves choreographies through which tissues and cells are enacted as neither strictly self nor other, but as ‘ near ’ the embodied person from whom they derive. Unpacking the potential of the ‘near self’, we expose the laborious and high-stakes ways of doing the ‘person(al)’ in this therapy.

• Druglitrø, Tone; Morsman, Silje Rebecca & Asdal, Kristin (2025). Choreographies of co-modification: instrumentizing cod for immunology and the economy. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. ISSN 0391-9714. 47. doi: 10.1007/s40656-025-00677-3. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  How to make sense of the struggle of scientists in their efforts to answer demands to contribute simultaneously to the advancement of science and the economy? The life sciences are understood to be particularly affected by the increased institutional and political expectations to engender scientific innovations and value creation Fochler et al., (Minerva, 54:175–200, 2016). The expectations are often closely linked to the tools that life scientists work with, such as new sequencing technologies or model organisms that are invested with hopes of novelty. The experimental life of the Atlantic cod, which is our object of study, serves here as an entry point for understanding this significant feature of contemporary life sciences. The paper shows how equipping a species to do experimental work is not necessarily about having it perform only one type of job Clarke & Fujimura (1992) or performing in one, and exclusively one, site. On the contrary, an experimental organism may be promising and interesting due to how it can be put to work to perform both in and for science, and in and for the economy, simultaneously. In analyzing the double entendre of experimental work, this paper draws upon the analytical concepts co-modification and choreography that have been carefully crafted in close empirical studies. The notion co-modification is put to work together with the notion of choreography to delineate both the material and semiotic work that go into the drawing together of the inside and outside of the lab and the material arrangements that shape the rhythm of a disciplined and controlled lab site. Together we refer to this as choreographies of co-modification.

• Tresselt, Hanne Castberg Thee (2025). Constructing precision through a network of alignments: exploring modelling work in mice for precision vaccinology. BioSocieties. ISSN 1745-8552. 20, s. 604–621. doi: 10.1057/s41292-025-00356-3. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Recently, the population-level public health principle of one vaccine fits all has been challenged by immunologists developing improved vaccines tailored to subgroups of the population based on certain shared characteristics. Rather than approaching populations in terms of a generic immune system, the researchers approach bodies as being shaped in relation with their environments and lived experiences. Based on interviews and fieldwork in a laboratory in Norway, the article explores how immunologists developing improved vaccines for obese humans work to bring human complexity into the laboratory and the mouse model. Developing a model for obesity in the context of precision vaccinology entailed aligning three models in one: the obesity model, the challenge model and the animal model. Following the processes and network of alignments as the immunologists work through the challenges of bringing the different models together, the article shows how established knowledge, practices and models in the laboratory are destabilized. The article argues that understanding how the immunologists manage these challenges is important since the model they construct will shape the science and technology they produce, but also potentially how we come to understand obesity.

• Druglitrø, Tone & Asdal, Kristin (2024). Experimenting with care and cod: On document-practices, versions of care and fish as the new experimental animal. Social Studies of Science. ISSN 0306-3127. doi: 10.1177/03063127231223904. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  A key ambition in care studies has been to study care in practice and as practice. By turning towards practices, care studies has rendered visible and acknowledged important work that is not captured through looking at formal procedures or official and written materials, such as policy documents and medical protocols. In this literature, document materials and the written have often been seen as unable to demonstrate and address the ‘specificities of care’ (Mol et al., 2010, p. 9). We challenge this view by showing how pragmatically-oriented approaches can be extended to the procedural and formalized aspects of care practices. We draw upon fieldwork in the life sciences—comparative immunology—investigated through experiments on Atlantic cod ( Gadus Morhua). How to care for fish is a contested domain; many uncertainties exist around how to care for fish so that legal requirements are met. We ask: How are existing legal and ethical principles and procedures put to work in cod immunology and animal research? By what document-practices and document-tools is care for cod in research negotiated and settled? How does the cod stand out as an object of care in the life sciences? Our article answers these questions by empirically teasing out how scientists navigate the terrain and arguing for the importance of bringing the document-based realities of animal research into analysis. We do this by delineating three different versions of care: procedural care, skilled care, and dispassionate care.

• Druglitrø, Tone; Paul, Katharina & Pichelstorfer, Anna (2024). Tracing Data Flows in Norway and Austria: A Comparative Study of Vaccination Data Governance. Science & Technology Studies. 37(4), s. 1–20. doi: 10.23987/sts.120252. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The increased importance of datafication in different domains of society, and health in particular, has generated much attention in STS, specifically in the Nordic context. While much of this literature tackles newly emerging forms of data governance, we focus on a historically established and mundane data practice: that of recording vaccinations in vaccine registries. We mobilise the concept of data flows to compare the link between registry practices and governance in two countries: Norway – a data intensive welfare state - and Austria, which we label ‘data hesitant’. We ask: What is the role of registries in vaccination governance? How do data practices shape and reflect relations between citizens, health providers and the state? We show that the governance of immunity is interlocked with the material and political circumstances that make data flow. The paper makes visible the benefits of doing situated comparisons for better understandings of data practices across countries.

• Druglitrø, Tone (2023). Nonhuman Primates in Public Health: Between Biological Standardization, Conservation and Care. Journal of the History of Biology. ISSN 0022-5010. 56, s. 455–477. doi: 10.1007/s10739-023-09721-z. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Abstract By the mid-1960s, nonhuman primates had become key experimental organisms for vaccine development and testing, and was seen by many scientists as important for the future success of this field as well as other biomedical undertakings. A major hindrance to expanding the use of nonhuman primates was the dependency on wild-captured animals. In addition to unreliable access and poor animal health, procurement of wild primates involved the circulation of infectious diseases and thus also public health hazards. This paper traces how the World Health Organization (WHO) became involved in the issue of primate supply, and shows how by the late 1960s concerns for vaccine development and the conservation of wildlife began to converge. How did the WHO navigate public health and animal health? What characterized the response and with what implications for humans and animals? The paper explores how technical standards of care were central to managing the conflicting concerns of animal and human health, biological standardization, and conservation. While the WHO’s main aim was to prevent public health risks, I argue that imposing new standards of care implied establishing new hierarchies of humans and animals, and cultures of care.

• Druglitrø, Tone (2022). Procedural care: Licensing practices in animal research. Science as Culture. ISSN 0950-5431. doi: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2025215. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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• Druglitrø, Tone (2023). "Where is memory, that's the question". Choreographies of memory and cod in comparative immunology. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This paper explores the new role of fish in immunology and the possible implications it has for how biological life is compared and valued in the life sciences. To do this, I share empirical insights from recent ethnographic fieldwork among immunologists in Norway working to map the immune system of the Atlantic cod. I focus on a specific part of this fieldwork, where we followed scientists doing challenge experiments to identify specificity in the cod’s immune responses. The cod is of interest to the scientists because it is known to have a “poor antibody response” yet still being able to reproduce and live sustainable lives. Where immunological memory is located in cod, is described as the “cod immune puzzle”, and if solved promises to meet challenges of innovation in cod aqua culture as well as the treatment of autoimmune disease in humans. This paper is a first effort to unfold the multiple and intersecting temporalities at play in doing challenge experiments. In doing this, I hope to tease out the choreographies of time and temporalities required for doing experimental work on cod – a non-model organism - that aims to understand immunological memory, and to say something about how the cod immune system mapping represents new trajectories in immunology that is oriented towards sustainable life through diversity and involves new ways of valuing fish and fish-human relations.

• Druglitrø, Tone (2023). Challenge experiments and choreographies of cod immunology. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Druglitrø, Tone (2021). Procedural Care: Licensing Practices in Animal Research. doi: https:/www.dasts.dk/wp-content/uploads/Programme-NOSTS-2021.pdf. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Druglitrø, Tone & Gyllenklev, Karin (2021). Försöksdjuren - om liven som används i jakten på kunskap. Podme. doi: https:/podme.com/no/episode/419635/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Jakobsen, Kjetill Sigurd; Johansen, Finn-Eirik; Qiao, Shuo-Wang; Asdal, Kristin; Druglitrø, Tone & Morsman, Silje Rebecca (2021). Torsken skrotet deler av immunforsvaret. Hva kan vi lære av det? doi: https:/www.aftenposten.no/viten/i/jBR2ko/torsken-skrotet-deler-av-immunforsvaret-hva-kan-vi-laere-av-det. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Det er ikke tilfeldig vi går til torsken for å forstå mer av immunsystemet.

• Druglitrø, Tone (2021). Vaksiner i historien. [Internet]. Nasjonalbiblioteket. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Druglitrø, Tone (2020). Om mennesker og virus. [TV]. NRK. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Druglitrø, Tone (2020). Vaksinemotstandens fall | Forskningsetikk. Forskningsetikk. ISSN 2387-3094. 3. doi: https:/www.forskningsetikk.no/ressurser/magasinet/2020-3/vaksinemotstandens-fall/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Mens alle venter på en covid-19-vaksine, er det tøffe tider for vaksinemotstandere. Omtale av boken The Doctor Who Fooled The World.

• Druglitrø, Tone (2020). Virusutbrudd er et økologisk problem. doi: https:/www.vl.no/meninger/virusutbrudd-er-et-okologisk-problem/794804. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Druglitrø, Tone (2020). Utfordrer samspillet mellom dyr og menneske. [Internet]. forskning.no. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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