Ratifying frailty

Moreira, Tiago

Abstract

Taking as a point of departure the role that the category of frailty increasingly plays in the classification, sorting and management of ageing populations in contemporary societies, this paper focuses on the crafting and validation of mouse models of frailty. The paper suggests that such models embody therapeutic and techno-economic expectations of ageing research, particularly as these are re-invigorated by current attempts to manipulate or eradicate cell senescence. The paper brings together critical gerontology, social studies of science and more-than-human anthropology to contextualise and analyse ethnographic data collected during fieldwork in a biology of ageing laboratory. The paper proposes that to build a mouse model of frailty, researchers need to learn to ‘think like a mouse’, provisionally taking the animal's point of view, to then efface that link and reconfigure the scientific chain of reference that enables translation between humans and mouse models of frailty.

Citation

Moreira, T. (2022). Ratifying frailty. Journal of Aging Studies, 62, Article 101055. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101055

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 20, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jul 8, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Aug 1, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 1, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Aging Studies
• Print ISSN: 0890-4065
• Electronic ISSN: 1879-193X
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 62
• Article Number: 101055
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101055
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1199047