Health Fetishism Among The Nacirema: A Fugue On Jenny Reardon’s The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge After The Genome (Chicago University Press, 2017) And Isabelle Stengers’ Another Science Is Possible: A Manifesto For Slow Science (Polity Press, 2018)

Personalized medicine has become a goal of genomics and of health policy makers. This article reviews two recent books that are highly critical of this approach, finding their arguments very thoughtful and important. According to Stengers, biology’s rush to become a science of genome sequences has made it part of the “speculative economy of promise.” Reardon claims that the postgenomic condition is the attempt to find meaning in all the troves of data that have been generated. The current paper attempts to extend these arguments by showing that scientific alternatives such as ecological developmental biology and the tissue organization field theory of cancer provide evidence demonstrating that genomic data alone is not sufficient to explain the origins of common disease. What does need to be explained is the intransience of medical scientists to recognize other explanatory models beside the “-omics” approaches based on computational algorithms. To this end, various notions of commodity and religious fetishism are used. This is not to say that there is no place for Big Data and genomics. Rather, these methodologies should have a definite place among others. These books suggest that Big Data genomics is like the cancer it is supposed to conquer. It has expanded unregulated and threatens to kill the body in which it arose

Genes Classical And Genes Developmental: The Different Uses Of The Gene In Evolutionary Synthesis

Dobzhansky (1964) stated that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” and the function of the gene is no exception. The use of genes in population genetics and developmental genetics differs significantly. This is reflected in the roles that genes are postulated to play in evolution. In the Modern Synthesis of population genetics and evolution, genes become manifest by differences in alleles that are active in conferring differential reproductive success in adult individuals. The gene is thought to act as a particulate, atomic unit. In current syntheses of evolution and developmental genetics, important genes are manifest by their similarities across distantly related phyla, and they are active in the construction of embryos. These developmental genes are thought to act in a contextdependent network. In the population genetics model of evolution, mutations in genes provide insights into the mechanisms for natural selection and microevolution. Different individuals will be selected and their genes will be represented in higher proportions in the next generation. For the developmental geneticist, mutations in the genes provide insights into the mechanisms of phylogeny and macroevolution. Different modes of regulation may enable the production of new types of structures or the modification of existing ones. The importance of developmental approaches to the role of genes is exemplified by the discovery and subsequent analysis of the developmental gene MyoD. The concept of the gene has had its own radiation once it entered into the territory of developmental biology

Paradigm Shifts In Neural Induction

The molecularization of developmental biology was originally seen as a challenge to the integrity of that discipline. However, important new insights from the analysis of gene expression soon transformed the field from one of experimental anatomy to one of developmental genetics. One of the main areas to be transformed from an anatomical to a molecular study was « primary embryonic induction ». The molecular analyses showed that some of the fundamental concepts concluded from the experimental embryological approach to primary embryonic induction were false. First, the neural fate of cells was not being induced. Rather, the epidermal fate was induced and the neural state was the default, uninduced, fate of ectodermal tissues. Second, primary embryonic induction was not something unique to vertebrates. Rather, the ventral neural cord of insects formed using the same mechanisms as the dorsal neural tube of vertebrates. Third, the brain formed in a matter distinctly different from that of the spinal cord. Despite these differences, there has been a clear and strong continuity between the experimental embryological tradition and the molecular genetic tradition, and these new results are seen by many contemporary developmental geneticists as strengthening, rather than destroying, the older science

The Morphogenesis Of Evolutionary Developmental Biology

The early studies of evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo) come from several sources. Tributaries flowing into Evo-Devo came from such disciplines as embryology, developmental genetics, evolutionary biology, ecology, paleontology, systematics, medical embryology and mathematical modeling. This essay will trace one of the major pathways, that from evolutionary embryology to Evo-Devo and it will show the interactions of this pathway with two other sources of Evo-Devo: ecological developmental biology and medical developmental biology. Together, these three fields are forming a more inclusive evolutionary developmental biology that is revitalizing and providing answers to old and important questions involving the formation of biodiversity on Earth. The phenotype of Evo-Devo is limited by internal constraints on what could be known given the methods and equipment of the time and it has been framed by external factors that include both academic and global politics

Ageing And Cancer As Diseases Of Epigenesis

Cancer and ageing are often said to be diseases of development. During the past fifty years, the genetic components of cancer and ageing have been intensely investigated since development, itself, was seen to be an epiphenomenon of the genome. However, as we have learned more about the expression of the genome, we find that differences in expression can be as important as differences in alleles. It is easier to inactivate a gene by methylation than by mutation, and given that appropriate methylation is essential for normal development, one can immediately see that diseases would result as a consequence of inappropriate epigenetic methylation. While first proposed by Boris Vanyushin in 1973, recent studies have confirmed that inappropriate methylation not only causes diseases, and it also may be the critical factor in ageing and cancers