The routinization of lay expertise: A diachronic account of the invention and stabilization of an open-source artificial pancreas

The routinization of lay expertise: A diachronic account of the invention and stabilization of an open-source artificial pancreas

…I follow the OpenAPS community—a group of people with type one diabetes who engineered an open-source ‘artificial pancreas’—from their inception in the transient #WeAreNotWaiting movement to their research collaborations with endocrinologists and detente with the FDA. I argue that OpenAPS user-contributors formalized their expertise in three steps: First, they broke the OpenAPS algorithm into modules so that prospective users must become experts to assemble it. Second, they lowered this barrier to entry by facilitating the socialization of new user-contributors with a training ritual. And third, they intervened in the strained endocrinologist-patient relationship…

December 2023 · Clay Davis
Good Law to Fight Bad Bugs: Legal Responses to Epidemics

Good Law to Fight Bad Bugs: Legal Responses to Epidemics

Although epidemics are generally understood as lying within the domain of biomedicine, legal and social arrangements play crucial roles in determining whether or not infectious disease outbreaks grow into epidemics and even pandemics. Yet epidemics are challenging terrain for legal regulation. …

June 2022 · Carol Heimer and Clay Davis
Homo adhaerens: Risk and adherence in biomedical HIV prevention research

Homo adhaerens: Risk and adherence in biomedical HIV prevention research

Abstract: …In this article, I critically analyze HIV PrEP clinical trials, dissecting the novel techniques researchers use to demonstrate efficacy. I argue that in making sense of the interplay between adherence to a prophylactic regimen and risk for HIV, biomedical HIV prevention research has revealed a new subject of biopolitics, Homo adhaerens. …

June 2020 · Clay Davis