Paper short abstract:

An analysis of the rise of a new mode of bio-social assemblage emerging from computational or in silico modeling, focusing on how cross-modality modeling reconfigures science infrastructures and interacts with current and emerging forms bio-social and digital non/patienthood.

Paper long abstract:

Computational biomedical researchers are making a bid to replace non-human animal models in biomedical science with 'in silico' models; they argue that these models make human-based methods more viable and could significantly reduce the dependence on animal models. While the socio-ethical concerns articulated in the 3Rs of animal experimentation are frequently invoked, the major drivers of this shift are the scientific limitations of non-human animal models, and the emerging new techniques for obtaining human-based data through in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro methods supplemented by computational methods for storing, aggregating, processing and modeling these data. Computational modeling introduces a radically new 'species' of modeling into the domain of biomedical science and translational research and development: that is, models of a different modality, with an entirely different hermeneutic than non-human animal models. The target of these models is the 'in silico' or 'digital patient', evoking a series of questions regarding the inter-relationship with other forms of patienthood (and non-patienthood): the non/patient as biological organism, social being, and as digitally active in many different ways. In this paper I discuss examples of the shift to the 'in silico' from two different areas of translational biomedical science: pre-clinical trials and translational pharmacology. I analyse the discursive rhetoric of the term 'in silico', and its juxtaposition with in vivo, in vitro and ex vivo methods, and show how this rhetoric is materially enacted in interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral infrastructures that institute new forms of bio-social assemblage, and its implications for bio-social non/patienthood.