Title |
Genomic Justice and Imagined Communities
|
---|---|
Published in |
The Hastings Center Report, July 2017
|
DOI | 10.1002/hast.737 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Ernesto Schwartz-Marin |
Abstract |
In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Maya Sabatello and Paul Appelbaum explore the assumptions about community embedded in the U.S. Precision Medicine Initiative, which aims to recruit donor-partners who reflect the United States' racial and ethnic diversity. As Sabatello and Appelbaum discuss, the initiative is like other national biobanking efforts in bringing to life an imagined genetic community in need of critical attention, and given the public-private forms of partnership at the heart of the PMI, such efforts could become avenues to deepen existing inequalities rather than to alleviate them. The notion of justice has underwritten debates about genomic medicine, informed consent, citizenship, benefit sharing, and profit making since the first national biobanking project emerged at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In a paradigmatic case, the creation, by an Icelandic company, of the deCODE genomic biobank opened up fierce debates about the proper relationship between public good and private gain and became the first global example of the economic and political implications that imagined genetic communities could have in our shared future. In Mexico, in 2001, the Icelandic case fueled a policy agenda to deal with global health justice and the prospects of a future market-based colonialism predicated on the intimate knowledge of DNA. |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Unknown | 18 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Master | 3 | 17% |
Student > Doctoral Student | 2 | 11% |
Student > Bachelor | 2 | 11% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 2 | 11% |
Researcher | 2 | 11% |
Other | 2 | 11% |
Unknown | 5 | 28% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 2 | 11% |
Social Sciences | 2 | 11% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 2 | 11% |
Economics, Econometrics and Finance | 2 | 11% |
Nursing and Health Professions | 1 | 6% |
Other | 5 | 28% |
Unknown | 4 | 22% |