The Banana Peel Project

On using “information processing” as a model for biological processes

Information and communication have long been used as models for talking about the way biology works.  Neurons as signal processors, hormones as messengers, DNA as code: are there no other ways to understand biology?  The Daily Transcript suggests that cybernetic or informational metaphors are just one way to understand the complex workings of the body.  Cognitive science may have another think coming.

Dr. Kush: How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry

According to David Samuels of The New Yorker, we are entering a brave new world in which cannabis is sold in high-end pharmaceutical boutiques, respectable physicians write prescriptions for a hundred bucks a pop, and legal prescription drugs are smuggled under the watchful eye of the courts.  It’s rare to find this kind of in-depth reporting on the marijuana economy, with real human beings and a powerful message: that there’s a lot of money to be made by governments and growers alike in “the leading cash crop in America.”  Never mind that it makes life livable for hundreds of thousands of sick people.

FDA psychiatry chief helped Pharma design trials for pediatric bipolar disorder

Philip Dawdy once again pulls no punches in his condemnation of Thomas Laughren, who it seems is caught up in a conflict-of-interest controversy between the FDA and the manufacturers of a couple of atypical antipsychotics now used to treat “childhood bipolar disorder” (Bristol-Myers Squibb/Abilify and Johnson & Johnson/Risperdal).  The story of biopower in the United States gets even more interesting when those who make drugs and those who approve them are the same people.  Of course, Laughren and the FDA are so far keeping their mouths shut, a behavior that doesn’t typically (in my experience, anyway) communicate honesty.

The Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory

This isn’t really a news item, but it’s a fascinating project started by Paul Rabinow, Stephen Collier, and Andy Lakoff that seeks “to create new forms of inquiry in the human sciences.”  Obtaining a deeper understanding of biopower—all the ways that the biological sciences (human and otherwise) weave through and tie together our experience of the modern—is a central concern of the ARC, and I’m excited to see what kinds of tools they come up with next.