Since the late 1980s, in France and in a number of other countries, cancer genetics testing has become a clinical reality, particularly for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. BRCA tests allowing for the assessment of an increased cancer risk among patients and their healthy relatives are now being routinely performed as part of clinical practice. Based on fieldwork on French clinical cancer genetics and on the French Cancer Genetics Collaborative Network, this paper examines the configuration of entities, actors and activities mobilized by the performance of BRCA testing, and argues that the development of clinical molecular genetic practices is predicated upon the development of new forms of collaborative work that lead to a transformation of the content and organization of medical activities and judgements. The paper analyses three major collective configurations - local multidisciplinary collectives, data collectives and new clinical collectives - and argues that they not only provide the material conditions needed to carry out the relevant activities, but also articulate a series of distinctive bio-clinical interventions. These interventions provide an interface with research activities, produce the epidemiological measurements and tools that are a sine qua non for clinical work in this field, and, most importantly, establish the conventions that underlie practices, which define the criteria that turn tools and novel entities into operational components of clinical settings. It thus appears that in the field of clinical cancer genetics, bioclinical collectives, as a locus of expertise, have replaced the individual judgement of the practicing clinician.
...More
Article
Mason, Julia M.;
(2013)
Surgical Intervention: Critiquing the Representation of Breast Cancer Surgery in US Women's Magazines
(/isis/citation/CBB001202124/)
Chapter
Toon, Elizabeth;
(2012)
Measured Responses: British Clinical Researchers and Therapies for Advanced Breast Cancer in the 1960s and 1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB001214250/)
Article
Cantor, David;
(2006)
The Frustrations of Families: Henry Lynch, Heredity, and Cancer Control, 1962--1975
(/isis/citation/CBB000773957/)
Article
Mayrhofer, Michaela Th.;
(2013)
About the New Significance and the Contingent Meaning of Biological Material and Data in Biobanks
(/isis/citation/CBB001420757/)
Article
Gaudillière, Jean-Paul;
(2006)
Globalization and Regulation in the Biotech World: The Transatlantic Debates over Cancer Genes and Genetically Modified Crops
(/isis/citation/CBB000670754/)
Article
Rigal, Christelle S.;
(2008)
Neo-clinicians, Clinical Trials, and the Reorganization of Medical Research in Paris Hospitals after the Second World War: The Trajectory of Jean Bernard
(/isis/citation/CBB000931179/)
Article
Antonio Fornaciari;
Valentina Giuffra;
Gino Fornaciari;
(2023)
Breast cancer in the 17th century: the cases of the wives of Luis Guillermo de Moncada (1614-1672)
(/isis/citation/CBB598498109/)
Article
Kohli-Laven, Nina;
Bourret, Pascale;
Keating, Peter;
Cambrosio, Alberto;
(2011)
Cancer Clinical Trials in the Era of Genomic Signatures: Biomedical Innovation, Clinical Utility, and Regulatory-Scientific Hybrids
(/isis/citation/CBB001034675/)
Book
Gardner, Kirsten E.;
(2006)
Early Detection: Women, Cancer and Awareness Campaigns in the Twentieth-Century United States
(/isis/citation/CBB000930543/)
Article
James R. Wright Jr;
(2018)
The Radicalization of Breast Cancer Surgery: Joseph Colt Bloodgood's Role in William Stewart Halsted's Legacy
(/isis/citation/CBB930367942/)
Book
Kaartinen, Marjo;
(2013)
Breast Cancer in the Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001202252/)
Book
Lerner, Barron H.;
(2001)
The Breast Cancer Wars: Hope, Fear, and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB000321001/)
Book
Olson, James S.;
(2002)
Bathsheba's Breast: Women, Cancer, and History
(/isis/citation/CBB000201506/)
Article
Stolberg, Michael;
(2014)
Metaphors and Images of Cancer in Early Modern Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB001420148/)
Book
Jarocki, Robert;
(2003)
Genetyk i historia: opowieść o Piotrze Słonimskim
(/isis/citation/CBB000540015/)
Thesis
Happe, Kelly Elizabeth;
(2003)
The Rhetoric of Geneticization: Science, Ideology, and the Case of Breast Cancer
(/isis/citation/CBB001562047/)
Book
Lejeune, Clara;
(2000)
Life Is a Blessing: A Biography of Jérôme Lejeune, Geneticist, Doctor, Father
(/isis/citation/CBB000301879/)
Article
Creager, Angela N. H.;
Santesmases, María Jesús;
(2006)
Introduction: Radiobiology in the Atomic Age: Changing Research Practices and Policies in Comparative Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB000671450/)
Article
Toon, Elizabeth A.;
(2014)
The Machinery of Authoritarian Care: Dramatising Breast Cancer Treatment in 1970s Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB001550932/)
Article
Zavestoski, Stephen;
McCormick, Sabrina;
Brown, Phil;
(2004)
Gender, Embodiment, and Disease: Environmental Breast Cancer Activists' Challenges to Science, the Biomedical Model, and Policy
(/isis/citation/CBB000640434/)
Be the first to comment!