Miscellaneous Care: Bridging the In-between of Translational Medicine

Abstract

Based on fieldwork in China on oncology clinical trials for immunotherapy which involve foreign patients as trial subjects, in this paper, I illustrate how the source material needed for the trial (the patient’s T cells) is a scarce biological substance that needs to be generated and crafted though the efforts of patients, doctors, nurses, or lab technicians, as well as other staff: chauffeurs, translators, and foreign patient coordinators. Among the varied tasks done by these support staff, I focus on the intersubjective practices they perform to respond to the needs at the bench and the bedside, what I call “miscellaneous care.” I argue that although invisible and neglected, these practices are constitutive of the techno-scientific assemblage of translational medicine. Miscellaneous care suggests that the capitalization of life itself does not only refer to the capitalization of biological substances and biological processes, it in fact includes capitalization of intersubjective processes, such as responding to the presence of others.