L'aide médicale japonaise, le sang iranien et la diplomatie du racisme génétique

Japanese Medical Aid, Iranian Blood, and the Diplomacy of Genetic Racialism
 

Elise Burton (University of Toronto)

21 October at 2:30pm 

Room 101, 3647 Peel 

In 1966, Japan’s Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency (OTCA) established an office for “medical cooperation,” which recruited Japanese medical schools to participate in international aid projects to strengthen scientific, as well as political, ties with countries across Asia and Africa. Gifu University Medical School was selected to work in Iran, launching a flow of Japanese personnel and scientific equipment to the laboratories of Tehran University. While Iranian scientists were primarily interested in receiving technical aid, Japanese scientists were eager to conduct joint fieldwork projects. The organization of a joint expedition to northern Iran in 1972 exposed a series of tensions in the Japanese-Iranian collaboration. The team eventually collected blood samples from thousands of Iranian villagers to screen them for pathologies. Then, most of these blood samples were shipped to Japan, where they had a surprising afterlife. Circulating through laboratories in Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Osaka, the Iranian blood was incorporated into a research project to analyze genetic variation within Japan’s own population, and data from the samples featured in Japanese publications hypothesizing about the origins of the Japanese race. Meanwhile, in publications with Iranian co-authors, the meaning of the genetic data had to be re-negotiated according to Iranian understandings of racial identity.