Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Giant pouched rats are being trained in Tanzania to serve as second-line tuberculosis (TB) diagnostic tools. I ethnographically show how lab technicians and scientists invoke unequal political economies of scientific practice in global South to advocate or reject rats as medical diagnostic tools.

Paper long abstract

Giant pouched rats are being trained in Tanzania to serve as a second-line tuberculosis (TB) diagnostic tool in Tanzania and Ethiopia. Trained rats can sniff and detect traces of TB infection in sputum samples collected from people in a fraction of the time it takes through other methods. The suitability of trained rats as a diagnostic tool in the global fight against TB is often evaluated in comparison to two other technologies commonly used to diagnose TB: the microscope, which allows a lab technician to see and count the number of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) present in a sputum sample collected from a person who are suspected of carrying a TB infection; and GeneXpert MTB/RIF, a nucleic amplification technology used for detecting the presence of MTB DNA in the same sample. I present and ethnographically analyze how lab technicians and microbiologists in a Tanzanian laboratory evaluate TB-detecting rats alongside the microscope and the genetic sequencer. I show that these evaluations are not restricted to issues of diagnostic specificity and sensitivity but also invoke the unequal political economies of scientific practice in the global South. I also show findings from this multispecies study may contribute analytical frameworks to an anthropological approach to increasing human-computer interactions.