Genetics in Society

The three readings for this class took a look at some of the uses for genetics outside the laboratory, and our popular understanding of it. The first reading, “The Science and Business of Genetic Testing” interrogated our understanding of genetic testing. It critiqued how many personal genome tests advertise themselves as decisive ways to assign racial identity, search for ancestry, or trace one’s roots back to specific locations on the globe. A lot of the problems with this kind of genetic testing derive from our inherent trust of something that seems so cut-and-dry as well as scientific. There seems to be little wiggle room in identity and ancestry when it is reduced down to something as uncomplicated as a long sequence of four letters, but that is clearly not the case.

This “reductionist” view which is a common feature of science is also criticized in the next reading, “The Meanings of 'Race' in the New Genomics: Implications for Health Disparities Research”. The authors describe the theory of reductionism as E. O. Wilson puts it, and then move on to highlight alternatives to such a limited means of understanding. Particularly as it relates to race, the authors write, scientific reductionism and clinical reasoning are seen to fail. The effort to pinpoint a feature that came about from social and political understandings within the realm of science seems fraught with inaccuracy. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate how racialized health care and genetics’ intrusion into social policy have caused harm, mentioning specifically the cases of Ashkenazi Jews and breast cancer, Native Americans and genetic testing, and black smokers and certain smoking-related illnesses.

Finally, in the book, “To know where he lies”, we get one more, very different perspective, on the uses of genetics in society and culture. Here we see the potential of genetic testing to help heal a traumatized population by supplying identity and recognition to the remains found in mass graves from the genocide in Srebrenica.

So do we conclude that genetic testing is harmful or helpful when taken out from under the microscope and into society and culture? Perhaps we have to look at the assumptions we carry when we use it to make sure we do not abuse this newfound form of knowledge and means of discovery.