After the atomic bombing at the end of World War II, anxieties about survival in the nuclear age led scientists to begin stockpiling and freezing hundreds of thousands of blood samples from indigenous communities around the world. These samples were believed to embody potentially invaluable biological information about genetic ancestry, evolution, microbes, and much more. Today, they persist in freezers as part of a global tissue-based infrastructure. In "Life on Ice", Joanna Radin examines how and why these frozen blood samples shaped the practice known as biobanking. The Cold War projects Radin tracks were meant to form an enduring total archive of indigenous blood before it was altered by the polluting forces of modernity. Freezing allowed that blood to act as a time-traveling resource. Radin explores the unique cultural and technical circumstances that created and gave momentum to the phenomenon of life on ice and shows how these preserved blood samples served as the building blocks for biomedicine at the dawn of the genomic age. In an era of vigorous ethical, legal, and cultural debates about genetic privacy and identity, "Life on Ice" reveals the larger picture – how we got here and the promises and problems involved with finding new uses for cold human blood samples.
About the Author
Joanna Radin is assistant professor of the history of medicine at Yale University, where she also holds appointments in history and anthropology.
Reviews
"In the era of global warming, modern science has entered its first ice age. With brilliant sangfroid and cool postcolonial discernment, Radin shows how the vast new ecosystems of frozen life that surround us give insight into our pasts and futures. A sanguine and utterly compelling story, 'Life on Ice' reveals that the appropriation and mobilization of millions of frozen specimens – bits of persons – have accompanied and even made possible the globalization of biomedical science" – Warwick Anderson, author of "The Collectors of Lost Souls"
"In this deeply humane, imaginative, and beautifully written book, Radin provides a poignant and practical account of the profound questions of knowledge, ethics, and justice that result from the seemingly mundane act of freezing. When our blood and tissue can be frozen, how does it alter experiences of life and death? What are the appropriate uses of our newly immortal bodies, and who gets to decide? 'Life on Ice' is essential reading for scientists, historians, and citizens who must grapple with the promise and perils of biomedical innovation, forensic investigations, and knowledge formation premised on access to life suspended and infinitely extended in frozen animation" – Jenny Reardon, author of "The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome"
"Radin does more in 'Life on Ice' than tell the lively history of twentieth century technologies of freezing, the implications for storage of blood, and the 'latent' life conserved within – she constructs sophisticated visual metaphors as her framework of analysis. Using language that correlates temperature with temporality, Radin reveals how scientific salvation narratives are co-constituted with settler nationalist narratives of progress. Both are predicated on hierarchies of social life in which indigenous peoples and other 'primitives' serve as raw materials for the production of Western nation states. Her tracing of bioscience genealogies will challenge attentive scientists to consider different narrative and ethical paths forward" – Kim TallBear, author of "Native American DNA"
