Biographies of Objects and Narratives of Discovery in the Biomedical Sciences: The case of the Helicobacter pylori

Abstract

The story of Helicobacter pylori provides a fascinating case of what the science historian Lorraine Daston calls “ontologies in motion” and of how a living organism, in this case a bacterium, is constituted as a biomedical entity and thus endowed with a history and a biography through the mutual engagement of humans (researchers, clinicians, patients...) and microorganisms. Against conventional notions of scientific entities as the outcome of a process of discovery, of laying bare the hidden existence or attributes of once and for all, fully constituted, unchanging entities, the field of science studies has brought these entities back into life, as entities existing through the changing web of attachments to other living entities, including human organisms, and to the scientific and clinical practices which address and question them through the deployment of a range of apparatuses and of actions bringing together the human and the non-human, the biological and the technological, in order to generate novel creatures endowed with previously unknown or unsuspected capacities. This publication offers an account of a key episode in one such history. It does not tell the whole story of Helicobacter pylori (Hp) as a biomedical entity, nor does it venture into other stories featuring Hp which reach beyond the biomedical world. The text is based on the final report of a research project completed in 2008.