The innovation journey of genomics and asthma research

Have we seen the geneticisation of society? Expectations and evidence

Abby Lippman's geneticisation thesis, of the early 1990s, argued and anticipated that with the rise of genetics, increasing areas of social and health related activities would come to be understood and defined in genetic terms leading to major changes in society, medicine and health care. We review the considerable literature on geneticisation and consider how the concept stands both theoretically and empirically across scientific, clinical, popular and lay discourse and practice. Social science scholarship indicates that relatively little of the original claim of the geneticisation thesis has been realised, highlighting the development of more complex and dynamic accounts of disease in scientific discourse and the complexity of relationships between bioscientific, clinical and lay understandings. This scholarship represents a shift in social science understandings of the processes of sociotechnical change, which have moved from rather simplistic linear models to an appreciation of disease categories as multiply understood. Despite these shifts, we argue that a genetic imaginary persists, which plays a performative role in driving investments in new gene-based developments. Understanding the enduring power of this genetic imaginary and its consequences remains a key task for the social sciences, one which treats ongoing genetic expectations and predictions in a sceptical yet open way.

Exploring the post-genomic world: differing explanatory and manipulatory functions of post-genomic sciences

Richard Lewontin proposed that the ability of a scientific field to create a narrative for public understanding garners it social relevance. This article applies Lewontin's conceptual framework of the functions of science (manipulatory and explanatory) to compare and explain the current differences in perceived societal relevance of genetics/genomics and proteomics. We provide three examples to illustrate the social relevance and strong cultural narrative of genetics/genomics for which no counterpart exists for proteomics. We argue that the major difference between genetics/genomics and proteomics is that genomics has a strong explanatory function, due to the strong cultural narrative of heredity. Based on qualitative interviews and observations of proteomics conferences, we suggest that the nature of proteins, lack of public understanding, and theoretical complexity exacerbates this difference for proteomics. Lewontin's framework suggests that social scientists may find that omics sciences affect social relations in different ways than past analyses of genetics.

Where is the child? A discursive exploration of the positioning of children in research on mental-health-promoting interventions

The present study explores the discursive positioning of children in research articles on mental-health-promoting interventions. The questions under investigation are: are children positioned as active or passive agents, are children's health and wellbeing contextualised, and if so how? How is the child perceived; that is, how are age, gender, socioeconomic status, family structure, dis/ability, and so on accounted for? We found that the positioning of the child as passive and formed by adults prevails; health is largely individualised and decontextualised in that it is depicted as being contingent on the person's own capabilities. However, there are instances in which children are positioned as active subjects, their opinions are in focus, and their health and wellbeing are connected to social relations and context. We propose a more active discussion about how children and wellbeing are conceptualised in the outlining, implementation and research of public health interventions. Moreover, children--just like adults--should be increasingly regarded as service users who are entitled to have a say in matters that concern them.