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This chapter focuses on genetic databases, specifically their use as a regulatory instrument. It begins by considering forensic collections, entertaining the thought that in a community of rights, it might be plausible to argue for a comprehensive population-wide DNA database. The chapter then turns to collections for public health purposes. If the state is justified in compelling the supply of DNA samples for forensic purposes, there might seem to be a case for compelling participation in public health biobanking projects. It argues that agents who aspire to moral community need to be particularly mindful of the corrosive impact of a (bio)technological approach to social control whether concerned with the prevention of crime or the promotion of public health. If such an approach simply reduces the risks to which agents are exposed, all well and good; but if the effect is to corrode the conditions that underlie the very project of moral community itself, then this is a risk which no community of rights can afford to ignore and which it surely will not wish to run.

This chapter reviews the ways in which racialized DNA samples operate as value-generating cultural artifacts, and also explores the diabetes enterprise through three phases: (1) production (2) circulation, and (3) consumption of knowledge generally and race and ethnicity in particular. Then, it investigates the consequences of a scientific enterprise that fits the pattern of Anglo-Mexican relations in the U.S. Southwest over the past century and a half. Moreover, the chapter evaluates the ways that blood samples taken from racially marked populations operate within a regime of value production and are transformed into commodities. The standardization of the biovalues of DNA samples as occurs in the exchanges for an array of professional wealth shows how exchange is the source of the value of a sample. It is believed that the context of DNA sampling does help explain the process of creating value.

This chapter examines findings from the newly developed technology of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) being applied to the investigation of Alzheimer disease (AD), primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, and France. These linked research projects make use of many thousands of DNA samples procured from individuals diagnosed with AD, which are then assessed using high-speed throughput technology and compared with control samples, in an attempt to find out what combinations of genes put individuals at increased risk. To date, these enormously expensive projects have provided few if any startling new insights, and many researchers are highly skeptical as to their value. However, others believe that GWAS is a first step toward a more sophisticated way of understanding the interrelated pathways of the numerous genes that appear to be implicated in AD.

This chapter describes Meselson's reaction to the outcome of the transfer experiment begun in Stahl's absence. The outcome, according to Meselson, was ludicrous—an artifact due to his having mixed up the DNA samples just as Stahl had teasingly said he might. However, the appearance of a “half-heavy band” must be real; there was no way he could have messed things up so as to make that happen. Immediately they made preparations for a second experiment, and Meselson agreed this time to simplify matters by running it only in one direction. They chose to grow the bacteria first on ¹⁵N and then switch them to ¹⁴N, rather than the other way around, because that strategy minimized the quantity of the expensive isotope required.

This chapter characterizes the complex data-gathering research practices in El Camino and the meaning systems which Carl and his field staff use to explain their work, arguing that the social relations of DNA sampling along the border discursively configure Mexican American bodies as biologically predisposed to diabetes. Moreover, it illustrates the ways Mexicana/o and Anglo alike are rendered hybrid subjects whose ethnicity is flexibly affixed to meet the scientific requirements of the enterprise and the sociopolitical patterns of identity in Sun County. The complexity of the work at the center—the blood work, retinography, echos, electrocardiograms, glucose, body-mass measurements, and more—are designed to capture biological data on Mexicana/o bodies along the border. It is noted that diabetes is strongly linked with the national political and economic transformations on the border, transformations which themselves reflect new regimes of labor control and the deployment of new technologies.

This chapter looks at the four key components of Article 8 of the European Convention—respect for private life, family life, home, and correspondence. In relation to each of them the UK top court has been unduly restrained. This is less so, however, in the specific contexts of homosexuality and transsexualism. There have been a notable reluctance to develop a common law of privacy and several embarrassing reversals in the European Court of Human Rights on issues such as searches aimed at preventing terrorism, strip-searching of visitors in prisons, and retention of DNA samples. No fewer than six cases before the European Court and seven before the House of Lords or Supreme Court have wrestled with the extent to which English law satisfactorily protects the right to respect for a home supposedly guaranteed to tenants of social landlords and to members of nomadic communities.

There are numerous sources of data relevant for studies of the effects of climate change. Here we provide a classification of such data and their advantages and drawbacks. Long-term data can be classified into data from long-term population studies, nest record schemes, bird surveys, breeding and winter atlases, bird ringing information, bird ringing stations, bird observation depositories, and museum collections. Such data differ enormously in quality, but also in their usefulness. They range from long-term population studies of individually banded birds that can be used for genetic, evolution, and ecology studies to studies of presence/absence data. There are relatively few individual-based population studies while databases of records of individuals are much more abundant, albeit still useful for many purposes. Different databases also vary consistently in data quality, and there is scope for methodological studies and comparative analyses of multiple data bases.