The Difference of Black ALS Anti‐Bodies for Survival

ABSTRACT This essay responds to anthropologist Dána‐Ain Davis's “Black anti‐bodies” call through an examination of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) anti‐bodies. I describe how paradoxical perceptions of immunity and susceptibility extend beyond reproduction and into the rare disease ecosystem—a scientific environment ripe with biomedical speculations about etiology, cure, and risk. A brief ethnographic interlude with a physician‐scientist reveals a belief that Black ALS patients must be immune to ALS because of Black people's pathological susceptibility to chronic diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes. Through a former caregiver, I demonstrate how, in the face of these perceptions of ALS immunity, Black anti‐bodies actively resist erasure. Drawing on Audre Lorde's meditations on survival, readers are invited to reimagine survival outside of the paradigm of life and death and instead witness survival as a form of care, resistance, and remembrance.