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Global Genomics

Global Genomics Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life by Kaushik Sunder Rajan, 343 pp, $84.95, ISBN 0-8223-3708-8, paper, $23.95, ISBN 0-8223-3720-7, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2006. How does an anthropologist, trained to study the local and the particular, attempt to grasp something as complex and far-reaching as genomics and the globalization and “corporatization” of the life sciences? This is what Kaushik Sunder Rajan tries to do in Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life. Sunder Rajan's aim is to demonstrate how changes in the life sciences, the creation of “biotechnology,” and the development of genomic science can be fully understood only in relation to the global marketplace in which these developments occur. The author accomplishes this convincingly through a “multi-sited ethnography,” which takes the anthropologist to scientific conferences, the laboratories and cubicles of biotech start-ups in Silicon Valley and Cambridge, Mass, and the research parks and government offices of Hyderabad, India (dubbed “Genome Valley” by officials eager to present their state as a hub of biotechnology research and development). As a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sunder Rajan was in a good position to observe the genomic revolution from 1999 to 2004. The book's scope can be frustratingly broad, but an important focus is on drug development, especially as it is being transformed by genomics. An important insight of science and technology studies (STS) is that science is not outside society and that it is too simple to say that society shapes science or science shapes society, as if these were two separable categories. This is what others have labeled the “citadel problem,”1 ie, the notion that science is like a fortified city, a specialized technical community untouched by cultural forces. For STS, the social and the scientific are mutually constituting through a process of “coproduction.” The author endeavors to demonstrate how this coproduction has transformed both global capitalism (or at least a facet of it that he calls “biocapital”) and the life sciences. The author does a good job of explaining and exploring the complex process of drug development and how it is evolving with changes in the life sciences. Much current research is aimed at the promise of “personalized medicine,” specifically the effort to use new genetic information to better predict drug response in individuals and populations. This research effort, in turn, has been facilitated by a number of simultaneous developments, including venture capitalists willing to invest in an unproven technology; massive federal spending on basic biomedical research; landmark legal decisions, such as the 1980 Diamond vs Chakrabarty US Supreme Court decision; key legislation, including the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act; and the development of recombinant DNA technology, high-throughput machines, and other technological advances. Sunder Rajan describes the “biotech industry” as a particular form of capitalism—speculative capitalism—that relies not so much on the production of a marketable commodity as on vision, hype, and expectations of future returns. In fascinating comparisons of the United States and India, the author shows how the visionary promises of many US biotech companies are driven by a salvationary rhetoric, such as the Incyte Genomics slogan “genomics for life,” whereas biotech development in India plays on nationalist rhetoric and is “animated by a range of individual and collective desires, specifically the desire to be a global free market player” (p 20). And while this new phase of capitalism and science is certainly global, these developments continue familiar patterns of corporate logic and postcolonial inequalities. This is perhaps most powerfully demonstrated when Sunder Rajan visits a research hospital in Mumbai where a private company conducts pharmacogenomic drug-response trials for Western pharmaceutical companies. India is an attractive place for companies to conduct such trials because of lower costs and a diverse study population. It doesn't hurt that the hospital is located in a section of Mumbai where a collapsing textile industry has left scores of unemployed and indebted workers who are in no position to turn down the financial enticements of medical researchers. These research participants, however, are unlikely to see the benefits of any new therapies resulting from such research. Colonial legacies and local histories still matter in the global economy. The chapter that the author describes as the most ethnographic and that is the most clearly focused on a single place describes the evolution of a startup company in the Bay Area. GeneEd isn't really a biotech company at all but rather produces educational and marketing materials for biotech and pharmaceutical companies. While the author argues convincingly that GeneEd's startup company life cycle resembles that of a biotechnology company, the account feels like somewhat of a detour in a book that is already ambitious and eclectic in scope. Both a strength and weakness of the book is that the author comes to no easy or decisive conclusions about the consequences of this new phase of venture science capitalism. He does argue that the genomics revolution is a powerful force reshaping “life itself,” reducing it to information, shaping it into commodities, and turning it into a business plan. Genomics allows us to perceive life in certain ways, specifically in terms of risks and probabilities, and this goes for calculations of both individual health and corporate profits. For example, Sunder Rajan looks at the visionary statements biotechnology start-ups use to attract investors. What happens when the outcomes do not match the hype?—“A forward-looking venture scientific statement cannot be a failure to calculate correctly, because the futures it promises are precisely incalculable (and therefore it becomes even more important to calculate them)” (p 133). He leaves the question of how to reckon with this incalculable future for others to ponder. Back to top Article Information Financial Disclosures: None reported. References 1. Downey G, , Dumit J, . Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press; 1997 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png JAMA American Medical Association

Global Genomics

Everett, Margaret
JAMA , Volume 296 (18) – Nov 8, 2006
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References (1)

Publisher
American Medical Association
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved.
ISSN
0098-7484
eISSN
1538-3598
DOI
10.1001/jama.296.18.2263
Publisher site
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Abstract

Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life by Kaushik Sunder Rajan, 343 pp, $84.95, ISBN 0-8223-3708-8, paper, $23.95, ISBN 0-8223-3720-7, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2006. How does an anthropologist, trained to study the local and the particular, attempt to grasp something as complex and far-reaching as genomics and the globalization and “corporatization” of the life sciences? This is what Kaushik Sunder Rajan tries to do in Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life. Sunder Rajan's aim is to demonstrate how changes in the life sciences, the creation of “biotechnology,” and the development of genomic science can be fully understood only in relation to the global marketplace in which these developments occur. The author accomplishes this convincingly through a “multi-sited ethnography,” which takes the anthropologist to scientific conferences, the laboratories and cubicles of biotech start-ups in Silicon Valley and Cambridge, Mass, and the research parks and government offices of Hyderabad, India (dubbed “Genome Valley” by officials eager to present their state as a hub of biotechnology research and development). As a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sunder Rajan was in a good position to observe the genomic revolution from 1999 to 2004. The book's scope can be frustratingly broad, but an important focus is on drug development, especially as it is being transformed by genomics. An important insight of science and technology studies (STS) is that science is not outside society and that it is too simple to say that society shapes science or science shapes society, as if these were two separable categories. This is what others have labeled the “citadel problem,”1 ie, the notion that science is like a fortified city, a specialized technical community untouched by cultural forces. For STS, the social and the scientific are mutually constituting through a process of “coproduction.” The author endeavors to demonstrate how this coproduction has transformed both global capitalism (or at least a facet of it that he calls “biocapital”) and the life sciences. The author does a good job of explaining and exploring the complex process of drug development and how it is evolving with changes in the life sciences. Much current research is aimed at the promise of “personalized medicine,” specifically the effort to use new genetic information to better predict drug response in individuals and populations. This research effort, in turn, has been facilitated by a number of simultaneous developments, including venture capitalists willing to invest in an unproven technology; massive federal spending on basic biomedical research; landmark legal decisions, such as the 1980 Diamond vs Chakrabarty US Supreme Court decision; key legislation, including the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act; and the development of recombinant DNA technology, high-throughput machines, and other technological advances. Sunder Rajan describes the “biotech industry” as a particular form of capitalism—speculative capitalism—that relies not so much on the production of a marketable commodity as on vision, hype, and expectations of future returns. In fascinating comparisons of the United States and India, the author shows how the visionary promises of many US biotech companies are driven by a salvationary rhetoric, such as the Incyte Genomics slogan “genomics for life,” whereas biotech development in India plays on nationalist rhetoric and is “animated by a range of individual and collective desires, specifically the desire to be a global free market player” (p 20). And while this new phase of capitalism and science is certainly global, these developments continue familiar patterns of corporate logic and postcolonial inequalities. This is perhaps most powerfully demonstrated when Sunder Rajan visits a research hospital in Mumbai where a private company conducts pharmacogenomic drug-response trials for Western pharmaceutical companies. India is an attractive place for companies to conduct such trials because of lower costs and a diverse study population. It doesn't hurt that the hospital is located in a section of Mumbai where a collapsing textile industry has left scores of unemployed and indebted workers who are in no position to turn down the financial enticements of medical researchers. These research participants, however, are unlikely to see the benefits of any new therapies resulting from such research. Colonial legacies and local histories still matter in the global economy. The chapter that the author describes as the most ethnographic and that is the most clearly focused on a single place describes the evolution of a startup company in the Bay Area. GeneEd isn't really a biotech company at all but rather produces educational and marketing materials for biotech and pharmaceutical companies. While the author argues convincingly that GeneEd's startup company life cycle resembles that of a biotechnology company, the account feels like somewhat of a detour in a book that is already ambitious and eclectic in scope. Both a strength and weakness of the book is that the author comes to no easy or decisive conclusions about the consequences of this new phase of venture science capitalism. He does argue that the genomics revolution is a powerful force reshaping “life itself,” reducing it to information, shaping it into commodities, and turning it into a business plan. Genomics allows us to perceive life in certain ways, specifically in terms of risks and probabilities, and this goes for calculations of both individual health and corporate profits. For example, Sunder Rajan looks at the visionary statements biotechnology start-ups use to attract investors. What happens when the outcomes do not match the hype?—“A forward-looking venture scientific statement cannot be a failure to calculate correctly, because the futures it promises are precisely incalculable (and therefore it becomes even more important to calculate them)” (p 133). He leaves the question of how to reckon with this incalculable future for others to ponder. Back to top Article Information Financial Disclosures: None reported. References 1. Downey G, , Dumit J, . Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press; 1997

Journal

JAMA – American Medical Association

Published: Nov 8, 2006

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