Molecular vignettes of the colombian nation: The place(s) of race and ethnicity in networks of biocapital

Abstract

As the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the publication of the first draft of the human genome approaches, the reflections on ethical, legal, and social implications in human genomic research have not decreased but, on the contrary, have become accentuated at the same rate that new breakthroughs in the field of biomedicine get disseminated, and new private and national efforts are mobilized and consolidated to study and account for parts or wholes of populations around the world. The ethical challenges posed by the production, consumption, and governance of immense sets of human genetic data circulating globally are profoundly affected by the emergence of biological capital (Sunder Rajan, 2006), and by the complex political oscillations stimulated by the "scientification" of biomedicine, its socialization, and the "biomedicalization" of society (Burri and Dumit, 2008). On one hand, science-studies scholar Sunder Rajan argues that life sciences are consolidating as one of the main epistemologies of our time, as symptom, a component, or a new phase of capitalism in which life itself has the potential to be valued and dispersed as data (Sunder Rajan, 2006). On the other hand, the con-temporary examination of the coupling of life sciences and medicine asculture allows Regula Valérie Burri and Joseph Dumit (2008) to identify the synchronicity of three major processes around health-care innovation and supply during the turn of the century.