Mediation in the development of a treatment for COVID-19: fishing for actants

Abstract

This article aims to analyze sociologically the actions of science
in search of treatment for COVID-19. To this end, this work relied both on knowledge and field reports prepared by a scientist directly involved in the research of a treatment, and on an analysis of mediations from the sociology of associations, a theoretical prism proposed by the sociologist,
anthropologist and philosopher Bruno Latour. The efforts made by science to seek treatments for the new coronavirus were taken, in this text, from a specific case: the research work being developed by the Molecular Immunology Laboratory (MIL) of Rockefeller University. From the description of the case, we were able to relate the scientists’ action with Bruno Latour’s concepts, such as the mediation that involves the artifices used to identify, capture and replicate the specific B cells that are capable of fighting the virus, the action of the non-humans needed for this, such as the use of a protein bait to “fish” the B cells, and the networking of these elements [RES] necessary for the development of the treatment. Thus we demonstrated not only how the Latourian literature has remained current in describing scientific work, providing tools that help us understand the heterogeneous dynamics of this activity, but also
how the continuity of our permanence depends on the creative articulation
or mediation of the discontinuities and actors that surround us.