The Postgenomic Condition. Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome
Présentation de l'ouvrage par Jenny Reardon et discussion par Jean-Gaudillière
14 décembre 2017, de 15h à 17h
Salle des thèses, Université Paris Descartes, 45 rue des Saints Pères, 75006 Paris
Le Cermes3 (UMR 8211, CNRS / Inserm / UPD / EHESS) et les membres de l'équipe du projet ERC Globhealth organisent, le jeudi 14 décembre 2017 de 15h00 à 17h00, une rencontre autour de l'ouvrage à paraître ce mois-ci “The Postgenomic Condition. Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome” (Jenny Reardon, The University of Chicago Press, déc. 2017).
L'auteure, Jenny Reardon, professeure de sociologie à l'Université de Californie Santa Cruz (USA), présentera son ouvrage. Puis la discussion sera introduite par Jean-Paul Gaudillière, historien, Directeur de Recherche à l'Inserm et directeur du Cermes3.
Synopsis de l'éditeur | Now that we have sequenced the human genome, what does it mean? In The Postgenomic Condition, Jenny Reardon critically examines the decade after the Human Genome Project, and the fundamental questions about meaning, value and justice this landmark achievement left in its wake.
Drawing on more than a decade of research — in molecular biology labs, commercial startups, governmental agencies, and civic spaces —Reardon demonstrates how the extensive efforts to transform genomics from high tech informatics practiced by a few to meaningful knowledge beneficial to all exposed the limits of long-cherished liberal modes of knowing and governing life. Those in the American South challenged the value of being included in genomics when no hospital served their community. Ethicists and lawyers charged with overseeing Scottish DNA and data questioned how to develop a system of ownership for these resources when their capacity to create things of value — new personalized treatments — remained largely unrealized. Molecular biologists who pioneered genomics asked whether their practices of thinking could survive the deluge of data produced by the growing power of sequencing machines. While the media is filled with grand visions of precision medicine, The Postgenomic Condition shares these actual challenges of the scientists, entrepreneurs, policy makers, bioethicists, lawyers, and patient advocates who sought to leverage liberal democratic practices to render genomic data a new source of meaning and value for interpreting and caring for life. It brings into rich empirical focus the resulting hard on-the-ground questions about how to know and live on a depleted but data-rich, interconnected yet fractured planet, where technoscience garners significant resources, but deeper questions of knowledge and justice urgently demand attention.
