Species Body: Xenotransplantation, Emerging Infectious Disease, and Imaginaries of the (Non-)Human

Abstract

Animal-to-human transplantation (xenotransplantation) opens up biological circulation across what are often understood as species barriers, mobilising non-human animal tissues, and, potentially, microbes. Xenotransplantation practices further trouble the alleged barriers between humans and other animals as some researchers augment pigs with human genes to make their tissues more immunologically acceptable. From a regulatory point of view, the possibility that infectious disease might be spread by the practice of xenotransplantation poses significant problems. Yet, in the field of xenotransplantation, contagion and cross-species exchanges have been dealt with in surprisingly different ways in various contexts. As I demonstrate, in four case studies, great apes have been treated very differently from pigs, and there are striking divergences between the forms of regulation and practice adopted in New Zealand, the United States, and Australia. Particular imaginaries inform each context of xenotransplantation practice and regulation, and are structured in terms of a certain regime of power. In this thesis, I contend that the field of xenotransplantation is shaped by the interplay of sovereign and security forms of power and that this interplay explains in part the different regulatory responses to xenotransplantation internationally. In each chapter, I analyse a different set of knowledges, imaginaries and narratives that cut across philosophy, epidemiology, tourism, conservation, and primatology, to illustrate how interconnections, borders or boundaries are treated in the xenotransplantation field. Drawing on interviews with experts in the field, and Foucault’s typology of power, I demonstrate that the apparatuses of sovereignty and security dynamically govern the exploitation of animal tissues for humans.