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SUMMARY:Enacting Scales of Difference: Dermatology and Melanin Sciences as
  Liberationist Tools in the 21st Century - J. Cecilia Cárdenas-Navia 
DTSTART:20160519T121000Z
DTEND:20160519T130000Z
UID:TALK65172@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Evros Loukaides
DESCRIPTION:Dermatology\, a subsidiary medical discipline whose attentions
  had mainly focused on skin rashes\, eruptions\, and syphilis\, transforme
 d its scope and part of its mission in the latter half of the century.  Be
 ginning in the 1960s\, environmental apprehensions of the thinning of the 
 ozone layer and associated concerns with rising incidences of skin cancer 
 contributed to diverse investigations into melanin as both a natural sunsc
 reen and a metaphorical radioisotope for human evolution.  Although assign
 ations of “Negro” and “Caucasian” skin had long diffused the medic
 al literature\, some dermatologists searched for constructive categories t
 hat acknowledged the wide spectrum of skin tones within these assignations
 .  \n\nThe Fitzpatrick scale\, posited in 1975 and amended in 1988 and 200
 2 by Harvard dermatologist Thomas Fitzpatrick\, presented a phototyping cl
 assification schema that ordered light and dark-skinned patients into six 
 groupings\, privileging photosensitivity/erythema and tanning reactions ov
 er ethnoracial attachment.  This promotion of a scale of difference that n
 eatly sidestepped previous biomedical constructions of “race” built up
 on previous efforts to construct tools and metrics that did not rely on th
 e subjectivity of the human eye.  The co-development of colorimetry\, spec
 trophotometry\, and UV-radiation treatments to assess human skin color var
 iation for treatment (rather than taxonomy) also offered new methods to in
 vestigate pigmentation disorders\, including vitiligo\, albinism\, and Add
 ison’s disease.  The emergent intersections among photobiology and basic
  sciences lent much-needed authority to dermatology\, helping to usher in 
 its heightened status as a biomedical discipline that could weigh in on su
 n protection\, melanoma\, and human variety on both cellular and practical
  levels.\n
LOCATION:The Richard King Room\, Darwin College
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