Human Genome Epidemiology: Reviewing the Stakes

Abstract

Social science analysis of developments associated with the “new genetics,” as the science moves from the laboratory into the policy arena, has focused primarily on the implications of numerous potential interventions and the introduction of data banks. The field continues to burgeon. This article interrogates the key assumptions of a newly emerging field, that of human genome epidemiology—a field that is yet to receive sustained attention from critical social theorists. Genome epidemiology, however, is the field of knowledge that is considered to be centrally important to mapping out the new directions for policy initiatives. The concern of this article is to “review the stakes.” This involves pointing to and exploring the gap that has opened up between the advocates of an unproblematized rendition of a geneticized future and those critical of the basic problems accompanying its foundational concepts and dynamics. The work of Oyama is used to interrogate how this chasm is manifest when considering the domain of human genome epidemiology. The article explores the implications of such a critique at the level of the onto-epistemological assumptions of the accepted science of genetics, and the sociological concerns that emerge when these assumptions are extrapolated into the social research arena of epidemiology.