Paper short abstract:

The clinical trial of a COVID vaccine is imbued with the polarization of unknowing/uncertainty/skepticism and knowing/promise/hope. In the participants’ embodiment of biotechnology, they materialize this tension in their bodies while mRNA-biotechnology makes their immune systems “response-able”.

Paper long abstract:

Following the panel’s invitation to inquire into the “multiplicity of what vaccines ‘do’”, I inquire ‘how culture gets under the skin’ (Niewöhner et al). That is: framed in cultural anthropological STS and an ethnographic/praxiographic framework, I seek to understand how an mRNA-based vaccine constitutes bodies, subjects, and socialities in the face of pending pandemic threat. In a placebo-controlled clinical trial that tested the safety, reactogenicity, and immunogenicity of a first-in-human mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, I have analyzed an emerging biotechnology, the efficacy and effects of which were, at the time, not known but furthermore a sociotechnical knowledge practice ‘in the making’. My inquiry unboxes the myriad practices that are employed to produce reliable data on the novel vaccine, engender and distribute immunities and ‘response-able’ bodies, and, eventually, aim to underscore the trustworthiness of mRNA vaccination against the background of high levels of uncertainty and skepticism (in regards the course of the pandemic and the efficacy of COVID vaccines) on the one hand, and of hope and promise (in regards the merits of mRNA technology from saving the world of raging pandemic to curing cancer) on the other. In this paper I argue that this polarization not only constitutes an active and relevant arena of (ethical) negotiation within the clinical practices and thus has significant influence on the trial, but is furthermore actively engaged in the participants’ embodiment of biotechnology as it materializes in their bodies, and in the ways mRNA-biotechnology makes their immune systems “response-able” (Haraway).