Biomedical devices and biological markers: Judiciary, political and ethical challenges

Abstract

In recent decades, human biology at the molecular level has become an emerging field of regulation. In this process, new biomedical procedures that articulate sociopolitical, legal and ethical knowledge, technologies and practices, are playing an important role. The biomedical devices and biological markers that the former use condense a know-how that, based on determined biological information, derives frameworks of behavioral intervention. These procedures are having more and more areas of application, ranging from genetic tests for reproductive and preventive medicine, to the use of neuroimaging to establish individual responsibilities in juridical trials. However, there is still little conceptual advance accounting for these processes and their impacts. This article suggests the use of the Foucaultian concept of device (dispositif) in order to better capture the legal, political and ethical impacts of the biomedical procedures used around biological markers.