Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the ongoing effort to create mice capable of being infected with human malaria parasites, and explores immunomodulation, the process of deliberately altering an organism’s immune responses, as a practice for the reconfiguration of economic value in biomedicine.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores immunomodulation, the process of deliberately altering an organism's immune responses, as a practice for the reconfiguration of economic value in biomedicine. By creating new forms of compatibility between organisms, immunomodulation enables novel kinds of biological exchange across species barriers, thus creating new circuits of biological and economic circulation. The paper examines these questions in relation to the ongoing project to create mice capable of being infected with human malaria parasites. This involves strains of immunosuppressed transgenic mice, engrafted with human red blood or liver cells capable of hosting the parasites that cause malaria in humans. The paper describes this effort to turn the mouse into a willing receptor of foreign tissues and bodies, and how economic and immunitary dimensions overlay in the new patterns of circulation that this new, less-discriminating animal allows.