Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper unfolds the past and present uses of pigs that structured the emergence of a pig model of gut-hormone based appetite control, leading to the current scientific breakthrough in treatment of obesity. While the hyping of next generation medications for obesity and type 2 diabetes centers on the efficacy and profits attached to these drugs, I unfold how science embedded in this development had the in-vivo and in-vitro travels of Bettie—an obese Göttingen Minipig pig—at its heart. Tracing how she became embedded in a circuit of vitality connecting industrial agriculture and science on human health, I show how both are governed by a shared valuation of pigs’ fat. Bettie’s fat, however, was not to be eaten. Instead, Bettie was consumed in knowledge production. For pigs to enter this new trajectory, Bettie emerged as a promissory site for extraction of molecular information made possible by new visualization technologies and representational strategies that allowed for the coupling of human-pig physiology at the cellular level. While her travels were spurred by the hope of discovery of small molecules, Bettie allows us to grasp an important shift in science, as the insights derived from her work emphasized the importance of physiology and the environment for human obesity. In doing so, she served as a visceral model. On a larger scale, Bettie’s entering science on human health reflects a recursive structure of knowledge in which the present problems with obesity and type 2 diabetes derive from the solutions to previous problems associated with alleviating hunger.

中文翻译：

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贝蒂的旅行：猪如何在人类健康创新与丹麦工业化农业猪肉生产之间建立新的联系


本文利用人种学实地调查，揭示了猪过去和现在的用途，构建了基于肠道激素的食欲控制猪模型的出现，导致了当前肥胖治疗的科学突破。虽然针对肥胖和 2 型糖尿病的下一代药物的宣传集中在这些药物的功效和利润上，但我将展示这一发展中嵌入的科学如何让贝蒂（一头肥胖的哥廷根小型猪）进行体内和体外旅行——在它的核心。追溯她如何融入连接工业农业和人类健康科学的活力循环，我展示了两者如何受到对猪脂肪的共同评估的控制。然而，贝蒂的脂肪是不能吃的。相反，贝蒂全神贯注于知识生产。为了让猪进入这一新的轨迹，贝蒂成为了提取分子信息的承诺站点，通过新的可视化技术和代表性策略，允许在细胞水平上耦合人猪生理学。虽然贝蒂的旅行是受到发现小分子的希望的推动，但贝蒂让我们掌握了科学的重要转变，因为从她的工作中得出的见解强调了生理学和环境对人类肥胖的重要性。在这样做的过程中，她充当了内心的榜样。从更大的范围来看，贝蒂涉足人类健康科学领域反映了一种递归的知识结构，其中当前的肥胖和 2 型糖尿病问题源于先前与减轻饥饿相关的问题的解决方案。