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Paper short abstract

The paper explores how plasma donation as a method created care(ful) links between competing expert groups, donors and patients during the EU policy revision on plasma collection. The anthropologist’s body became a site of (contested) knowledge production and lent immediacy to bioethical debates.

Paper long abstract

Policymaking in the EU relies on channeling often competing sources of information. Lobbying can be understood as an agonistic, networked process of knowledge production mobilizing diverse forms of expertise (medical, experiential, affective, ethical, technological etc.): epistemic communities are (re)created and (re)organized. This paper explores the EU policy revision around blood plasma collection, an increasingly important activity contributing to the manufacturing of life-saving pharmaceuticals, and fulfills critical transfusion-related and clinical needs. The fieldwork involved following the debates, disruptions and (re)formulations of the epistemic community around plasma collection whose members engaged in the creation of a new piece of EU regulation. This diverse group included representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, public blood sector, patient advocates and medical experts whose different ethical, disciplinary and scientific positions prompted debates, competition and friction. The anthropologist entered this field as a plasma donor which proved to be a critical position. Her bodily expertise derived from donation was mobilized by different interest groups for varying purposes (e.g. to prompt debates about bodily exploitation/care work/creation and validity of medical knowledge(s)). It (re)created the simultaneously illusory and tangible link between recipients/patients (using plasma-derived medicines) and donors that often gets radically reformulated in the technologized and commercialized process of pharmaceutical manufacturing. Donation as a sustained practice and method during fieldwork aided fostering caring links with experts and patients alike, became a tool of knowledge production (gradually moving from bodily/sensory to theoretical) and lent bioethics – a contested field in the field – immediacy and corporeality (both for donor and patient).