IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB258919491

Human genetics after the bomb: Archives, clinics, proving grounds and board rooms (2016)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 55
Pages: 45-53
Publication date: 2016
Language: English

URI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136984861500117X

DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.09.001

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Commercialization Genetic diseases and disorders Forecasting; prediction Clinical medicine DNA; RNA Health risk assessment Radiation sickness; radiation toxicology; Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) Human genetics 21st century 20th century, late United States

In this paper I track the history of post-1945 human genetics and genomics emphasizing the importance of ideas about risk to the scientific study and medical management of human heredity. Drawing on my own scholarship as it is refracted through important new work by other scholars both junior and senior, I explore how radiation risk and then later disease risk mattered to the development of genetics and genomics, particularly in the United States. In this context I excavate one of the central ironies of post-war human genetics: while studies of DNA as the origin and cause of diseases have been lavishly supported by public institutions and private investment around the world, the day-to-day labor of intensive clinical innovation has played a far more important role in the actual human experience of genetic disease and genetic risk for affected families. This has implications for the archival record, where clinical interactions are less readily accessible to historians. This paper then suggests that modern genomics grew out of radiation risk; that it was and remains a risk assessment science; that it is temporally embedded as a form of both prediction and historical reconstruction; and that it has become a big business focused more on risk and prediction (which can be readily marketed) than on effective clinical intervention.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB258919491

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Goldstein, Donna M.; Stawkowski, Magdalena E.; (2015)
James V. Neel and Yuri E. Dubrova: Cold War Debates and the Genetic Effects of Low-Dose Radiation (/p/isis/citation/CBB001422100/)

Article Jonathan Fuller; Luis J. Flores; (2015)
The Risk GP Model: The standard model of prediction in medicine (/p/isis/citation/CBB574976012/)

Article Guo, Sun-Wei; (2013)
China's “Gene War of the Century” and Its Aftermath: The Contest Goes On (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420872/)

Book Daniel Navon; (2019)
Mobilizing Mutations: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy (/p/isis/citation/CBB983271980/)

Article Hogan, Andrew J.; (2014)
The “Morbid Anatomy” of the Human Genome: Tracing the Observational and Representational Approaches of Postwar Genetics and Biomedicine The William Bynum Prize Essay (/p/isis/citation/CBB001422150/)

Article M'charek, Amade; Schramm, Katharina; Skinner, David; (2014)
Topologies of Race: Doing Territory, Population and Identity in Europe (/p/isis/citation/CBB001421200/)

Book Noah Tamarkin; (2020)
Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa (/p/isis/citation/CBB546086463/)

Chapter Nelson, Alondra; (2012)
Reconciliation Projects: From Kinship to Justice (/p/isis/citation/CBB001251782/)

Book McElheny, Victor K.; (2010)
Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project (/p/isis/citation/CBB001023276/)

Book Wailoo, Keith; Nelson, Alondra; Lee, Catherine Y.; (2012)
Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History (/p/isis/citation/CBB001251696/)

Thesis Singh, Jennifer S.; (2010)
Autism Spectrum Disorders: Parents, Scientists, and the Interpretations of Genetic Knowledge (/p/isis/citation/CBB001567192/)

Thesis Horton, Dawn Marie; (2011)
Genetic Epistemology of Science and Scientist in the Human Genome Field (/p/isis/citation/CBB001567277/)

Article Guido Barbujani; (2017)
What Genetics Has to Say about Racial Categorization of Humans (/p/isis/citation/CBB088477154/)

Chapter Sankar, Pamela; (2012)
Forensic DNA Phenotyping: Continuity and Change in the History of Race, Genetics, and Policing (/p/isis/citation/CBB001251787/)

Article Joan H. Fujimura; Ramya M. Rajagopalan; (2020)
Race, Ethnicity, Ancestry, and Genomics in Hawai‘i: Discourses and Practices (/p/isis/citation/CBB252611287/)

Article Andrew J. Hogan; (2016)
Making the most of uncertainty: Treasuring exceptions in prenatal diagnosis (/p/isis/citation/CBB448850456/)

Article Hogan, Andrew J.; (2012)
Visualizing Carrier Status: Fragile X Syndrome and Genetic Diagnosis since the 1940s (/p/isis/citation/CBB001210168/)

Thesis Hogan, Andrew Joseph; (2013)
Chromosomes in the Clinic: The Visual Localization and Analysis of Genetic Disease in the Human Genome (/p/isis/citation/CBB001567499/)

Article Yi, Doogab; (2007)
The Coming of Reversibility: The Discovery of DNA Repair between the Atomic Age and the Information Age (/p/isis/citation/CBB000850131/)

Chapter Lindee, Susan; (2013)
Performing Anger: H. J. Muller, James V. Neel and Radiation Risk (/p/isis/citation/CBB001500063/)