Lost in translation? Beyond sex as a biological variable in animal research

ABSTRACT

In this article, I develop a feminist posthumanist account of biomedical policymaking as a material-discursive intervention that shapes the emergence of phenomena in the scientific laboratory. The setting is United States (U.S.) biomedicine, where a recent policy of the National Institutes of Health has mandated the consideration of sex in basic and preclinical research. Called Sex as a Biological Variable (SABV), the mandate configures cell lines and animal models as the next frontier in the project of advancing gender equity in biomedical research. Given sex and gender are increasingly recognised as having complex, entangled, and dynamic effects on human health and illness, how do laboratory animals respond to their attempted enrolment in this regulatory intervention? Through a qualitative analysis of this policy domain, I show how laboratory animals reveal the context-specific character of sex, its multiplicity and elusiveness as a so-called biological variable, and the considerable work needed to shore up human ideologies of sex as a pervasive cross-species form of binary difference. I suggest that while regulatory interventions constrain patterns of mattering, they also serve as agential openings in which laboratory animals can ‘kick back’ and reconfigure the pursuit of knowledge, particularly as it relates to difference and health.

KEYWORDS:

• Sex
• nonhuman
• regulation
• gender
• women’s health
• intra-action

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Steve Epstein, Myra Marx Ferree, and Joan Fujimura for their extensive guidance throughout this project. I also thank the reviewers and guest editors of this special issue for their constructive and supportive comments. This research was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation in the United States (Award Number 1849234). Correspondence concerning this manuscript should be addressed to Madeleine Pape, Quartier UNIL-Centre, Bâtiment Synathlon, University of Lausanne, Switzerland; E-mail: [email protected].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The very demarcation of ‘human' from ‘nonhuman' can be understood as actively produced rather than given (Barad, 2003; Birke, 2010).

2 The reliance on male models even occurs in research on conditions that are more prevalent in women, such as stroke, anxiety and depression. A small number of fields, such as reproduction and immunology, have a ‘female bias' (Zucker & Beery, 2010).

3 Note, too, the slippage from nonhuman to human in Colbert’s account.

4 The authors attribute male variance to dominance hierarchies, which can activate a physiological response in both dominant and subordinate cage mates.

5 The researchers found a similar ‘male observer' effect in laboratory rats.

6 As Becker herself acknowledged, extrapolating findings on addiction from laboratory mice to humans is complicated, given the significant role of trauma in human addiction habits (ACRWH, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Division of Social and Economic Sciences: [Grant Number 1849234].