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ISBN: PB: 9780226510453

University of Chicago Press

February 2018

304 pp.

22.8x15.2 cm

19 halftones

PB:
£26,50
QTY:

Categories:

Postgenomic Condition

Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome

While the sequencing of the human genome was a landmark achievement, the availability and manipulation of such a vast amount of data about our species has inevitably led to questions that are increasingly fundamental and urgent: now that information about human bodies can be transformed into a natural resource, how will – and should – we interpret and use it?

With "The Postgenomic Condition", Jenny Reardon draws on more than a decade of research – in molecular biology labs, commercial startups, governmental agencies and civic spaces – to examine the extensive efforts after the completion of the Human Genome Project to transform genomics from high tech informatics practiced by a few well-financed scientists and engineers to meaningful knowledge beneficial to all people. Through her in-depth profiles of genomic initiatives around the world, we see hopes to forge public knowledge and goods from blood and DNA meet the reality of limited resources and conflicting values. Building the argument around the limits of liberal concepts of openness, information, inclusion, privacy, property and the public – concepts that proved salient at different points in the unfolding story of efforts to make sense of human genomes – Reardon shows how genomics challenges us to move beyond existing liberal frameworks to ask deeper questions of knowledge and justice. While the news media is filled with grand visions of future designer drugs and babies, "The Postgenomic Condition" brings richly into view these hard on-the-ground questions about what can be known and who and how we will live on a depleted but data-rich, interconnected yet fractured planet, where technoscience garners disproportionate resources.

About the Author

Jenny Reardon is professor of sociology and the founding director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Humboldt Foundation, the London School of Economics, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and the United States Congressional Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Reviews

"'The Postgenomic Condition' is a beautifully tendered plea for a revived approach to ethics in genomics – one that invites wide open discussion that includes the experiences and interests of traditionally marginalized groups" – Sarah S. Richardson, Harvard University