Governing the genome

doi:10.1126/science.abj5409

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.abj5409
	Governing the genome
	Jessica Blatt
	2021-08-06
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	In the decades since the Human Genome Project was launched in 1990, genomic science has opened a dizzying array of scientific, medical, and commercial possibilities. Some of its applications have generated visible public controversy. Perhaps the most salient now is the furor over COVID-19 vaccinations, with vocal activists feeding vaccine hesitancy by insisting (mistakenly) that groundbreaking mRNA vaccines can change recipients' DNA. Other controversies are more substantive, if often less well publicized. For example, abortion opponents and some disability rights activists have raised alarms that prenatal genetic testing could have eugenic effects, while critics of popular ancestry testing products and “racially specific medicine,” such as BiDil, a heart medication marketed to African Americans, argue that these products commodify misleading ideas about the biological reality of race, with pernicious social effects and, in the case of pharmaceuticals, potentially dangerous consequences for patient health. As Harvard University political scientist Jennifer Hochschild points out in her new book, Genomic Politics: How the Revolution in Genomic Science Is Shaping American Society , these controversies, and others like them, often make for strange bedfellows. Just as some conservative Trump supporters and liberal wellness devotees may come together over their opposition to vaccines, religious conservatives and queer theorists may both oppose the idea that homosexuality is inborn, for example. The book's greatest strength is its series of concise, elegantly written overviews of a range of positions on these and other issues, including the use of DNA databases by law enforcement and various medical and research applications of gene editing technologies. The questions raised by these debates are fascinating, and Hochschild is adept at using participants' own words to bring out the complexity and nuances involved. Beyond simply exploring the range of issues and attitudes raised by various applications of genomic science, Hochschild seeks to make sense of this welter of attitudes by sorting experts and survey respondents into four categories according to their attitudes about genomics: “enthusiasts,” for whom genomics has both great explanatory power and technological promise; “skeptics,” who see it as powerful but potentially dangerous; the “hopeful,” who may see some enthusiasts' claims as overblown but still believe that genomics research can be beneficial; and “rejectors,” who, for religious, ethical, or other reasons, disavow genomics research entirely. The idea is that this exercise will lend clarity to questions about whether, how much, and by whom genomic science ought to be regulated. In the end, however, the framework has limited explanatory power, and readers are left without a clear sense of how it might relate to ongoing governance debates. Early in the book and again at the end, Hochschild poses the question “Is genomics a thing?” That is, does genomics present a coherent set of issues that are likely to invoke a more or less coherent set of responses? Her answer is yes, on the evidence that people's responses to questions about various aspects of genomics can be sorted into her proposed framework. But it seems more plausible that this is an artifact of the framework's generality and most people's unfamiliarity with the range of issues involved rather than some underlying consistency in attitudes toward genomics research. After all, one could legitimately hold privacy or racial justice concerns about law enforcement use of DNA databases yet wholeheartedly support certain medical applications of genomic research. Likewise, one might have deep religious objections to cloning or gene editing yet happily spring for a commercial ancestry testing kit without necessarily seeing those issues as connected in any way. Hochschild's framework, moreover, reduces genomic politics to people's attitudes about genomics. But this is a rather thin conception of politics that sidesteps what, to many readers, will be the far more interesting political issues that the book vividly evokes, such as the political economy of health care or the power imbalances between research subjects and scientists. In the book's last chapter, Hochschild comes out as a genomic “enthusiast.” This will have been apparent all along to the careful reader, who will have noted her uncritical repetition of errors by fellow enthusiasts—assertions by geneticists who conflate the empirically valid concept of “population” with the dubious one of biological “race,” for example—and her dismissive attitude toward some skeptics' concerns. By her own account, however, Hochschild's enthusiasm waxes and wanes depending on the domain. This, too, would seem to suggest that the avenues of research and technological, cultural, and policy changes made possible by advances in genomic science are only becoming more complex and resistant to tidy organization, despite Hochschild's interesting and learned, but ultimately limited, attempt to do so.
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/335562
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Jessica Blatt. Governing the genome[J]. Science,2021.
APA	Jessica Blatt.(2021).Governing the genome.Science.
MLA	Jessica Blatt."Governing the genome".Science (2021).