Subject 01: exemplary Indigenous masculinity in Cold War genetics

In 1962 a team of scientists conducted their first joint fieldwork in a Xavante village in Central Brazil. Recycling long-standing notions that living Indigenous people represented human prehistory, the scientists saw Indigenous people as useful subjects of study not only due to their closeness to nature, but also due to their sociocultural and political realities. The geneticists' vision crystalized around one subject - the famous chief Apöwẽ. Through Apöwẽ, the geneticists fixated on what they perceived as the political prowess, impressive physique, and masculine reproductive aptitude of Xavante men. These constructions of charismatic masculinity came at the expense of recognizing how profoundly colonial expansion into Mato Grosso had destabilized Xavante communities, stripping them of their land and introducing epidemic disease. The geneticists' theorizing prefigured debates to come in sociobiology, and set up an enduring research programme that Apöwẽ continues to animate even four decades after his death.

Fostering Responsible Research on Ancient DNA

Anticipating and addressing the social implications of scientific work is a fundamental responsibility of all scientists. However, expectations for ethically sound practices can evolve over time as the implications of science come to be better understood. Contemporary researchers who work with ancient human remains, including those who conduct ancient DNA research, face precisely this challenge as it becomes clear that practices such as community engagement are needed to address the important social implications of this work. To foster and promote ethical engagement between researchers and communities, we offer five practical recommendations for ancient DNA researchers: (1) formally consult with communities; (2) address cultural and ethical considerations; (3) engage communities and support capacity building; (4) develop plans to report results and manage data; and (5) develop plans for long-term responsibility and stewardship. Ultimately, every member of a research team has an important role in fostering ethical research on ancient DNA.

Whose Turn? Chromosome Research and the Study of the Human Genome

A common account sees the human genome sequencing project of the 1990s as a "natural outgrowth" of the deciphering of the double helical structure of DNA in the 1950s. The essay aims to complicate this neat narrative by putting the spotlight on the field of human chromosome research that flourished at the same time as molecular biology. It suggests that we need to consider both endeavors - the human cytogeneticists who collected samples and looked down the microscope and the molecular biologists who probed the molecular mechanisms of gene function - to understand the rise of the human genome sequencing project and the current genomic practices. In particular, it proposes that what has often been described as the "molecularization" of cytogenetics could equally well be viewed as the turn of molecular biologists to human and medical genetics - a field long occupied by cytogeneticists. These considerations also have implications for the archives that are constructed for future historians and policy makers.

Ethics in Human Biology: A Historical Perspective on Present Challenges

The practice of human biology requires the negotiation of a range of ethical issues, including the politics of race and indigeneity, the appropriate use of research materials, and the relationship between researchers and those people from whose bodies they seek to gain knowledge. Grounding my discussion in a history of the field, I discuss key ethical turning points that have shaped the present. These include the field's complex historical relationship to race and colonialism and the implications this relationship has for research, including the needs and desires of Indigenous peoples. This review demonstrates that human biology has been a crucible for many of the most complex ethical issues facing anthropology and allied practices of biomedicine and life science. Its future success as a field is inextricable from its practitioners’ ability to adapt in ways that foster the trust and engagement of those humans whose bodies constitute the basis for their knowledge making.

"An Unusual and Fast Disappearing Opportunity": Infectious Disease, Indigenous Populations, and New Biomedical Knowledge in Amazonia, 1960-1970

In the twentieth century, biomedical researchers believed the study of Indigenous Amazonians could inform global histories of human biological diversity. This paper examines the similarities and differences of two approaches to this mid-century biomedical research, comparing the work of virologist and epidemiologist Francis Black with human geneticists James V. Neel and Francisco Salzano. While both groups were interested in Indigenous populations as representatives of the past, their perspectives on epidemics diverged. For Black, outbreaks of infectious diseases were central to his methodological and theoretical interests; for Neel and Salzano, epidemics could potentially compromise the epistemological value of their data.

Flattening and Unpacking Human Genetic Variation in Mexico, Postwar to Present

Argument This paper analyzes the research strategies of three different cases in the study of human genetics in Mexico - the work of Rubén Lisker in the 1960s, INMEGEN's mapping of Mexican genomic diversity between 2004 and 2009, and the analysis of Native American variation by Andrés Moreno and his colleagues in contemporary research. We make a distinction between an approach that incorporates multiple disciplinary resources into sampling design and interpretation (unpacking), from one that privileges pragmatic considerations over more robust multidisciplinary analysis (flattening). These choices have consequences for social, demographic, and biomedical practices, and also for accounts of genetic variation in human populations. While the former strategy unpacks fine-grained genetic variation - favoring precision and realism, the latter tends to flatten individual differences and historical depth in lieu of generalization.

Responsible Expertise

Viewing biotechnology as a lens through which to analyse new ways of governing populations, in this article we consider how the United Nations has globally communicated biotechnology’s risks, uncertainties and opportunities to develop and expand what we refer to as ‘responsible expertise’. We specifically examine the activities of UNESCO and the FAO to show how these organizations operate as agencies of rule by, on the one hand, marshalling expertise about biotechnology to identify populations ‘at risk’ and, on the other, capturing the imagination of people as responsible subjects with appropriate expertise to manage their own uncertain futures. As an orientation that engages both expert knowledge and moral judgement, the promotion of responsible expertise around the world signals a strategic shift in the UN’s efforts to tame bio-technology for the everyday decision-maker.

Race, Genomics, Identities and Politics in Contemporary Brazil

The ‘new genetics’ (or genomics) has penetrated overwhelmingly into a broad range of domains in the contemporary world, spawning a technocultural revolution in relation to genes that has transformed technologies, institutions, practices and ideologies. The ‘new genetics’ has not only reshaped the biological, cultural and social loci in the immediate surroundings of individuals, but also reconfigures wide-ranging macro-social, historical and political relations. In this article we approach the technocultural revolution surrounding the ‘new genetics’ by means of a case study on the overlapping of race, genomics, identities and politics in Brazil. We analyze how the ‘new genetics’ extends far beyond the biological dimension to become an arena for dispute in which historical, social and political elements are present. Specifically, we will analyze the debate over the results of a survey that aimed to shed light on the ‘genetic origins of Brazilians’ based on the sequencing of parts of mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome. By focusing on how this survey was received, we will explore some of the new, intense and abundant forms of relations between ‘nature/genetics’ and ‘culture/society’, in which DNA appears as an outstanding player in the dispute between modalities for interpreting and transforming social and political realities.

Situando os comitês de ética em pesquisa: o sistema CEP (Brasil) em perspectiva

ResumoNeste artigo, apoiando-me num conjunto de obras recentes, pretendo fornecer subsídios para “situar” os comitês universitários de ética (CEPs) no Brasil dentro dum contexto político e acadêmico mais amplo. Primeiro, ao rever a narrativa de origem dos CEPs, situando o surgimento deles nos EUA dos anos 1950 e 1960, sugiro que esse modelo seja mais adequado à resolução de riscos legais da pesquisa científica do que à garantia mais abrangente do proceder ético. Em segundo lugar, evoco estilos e espaços “alternativos” de participação popular no debate ético que permitem estranhar a ênfase dos CEPs em mecanismos de participação pontual e individualizada. Em terceiro lugar, considero a dimensão transnacional dos esforços para regular pesquisas científicas envolvendo sujeitos humanos, especialmente na indústria farmacêutica. Finalmente, trato dos debates que circundam a aplicação do modelo dos CEPs à pesquisa em ciências humanas, sublinhando algumas provocações políticas que, especialmente na área de antropologia, têm levado a novas e desafiadoras perspectivas sobre a ética em pesquisa. Meu objetivo é contribuir para um arsenal de abordagens que combata receitas fáceis, garantindo que o debate sobre os modos de regulação da ética na pesquisa científica se mantenha aberto a uma diversidade de possibilidades criativas.

Pharmacogenomics, human genetic diversity and the incorporation and rejection of color/race in Brazil

Public funding for research on the action of drugs in countries like the United States requires that racial classification of research subjects should be considered when defining the composition of the samples as well as in data analysis, sometimes resulting in interpretations that Whites and Blacks differ in their pharmacogenetic profiles. In Brazil, pharmacogenomic results have led to very different interpretations when compared with those obtained in the United States. This is explained as deriving from the genomic heterogeneity of the Brazilian population. This article argues that in the evolving field of pharmacogenomics research in Brazil there is simultaneously both an incorporation and rejection of the US informed race-genes paradigm. We suggest that this must be understood in relation to continuities with national and transnational history of genetic research in Brazil, a differently situated politics of Brazilian public health and the ongoing valorization of miscegenation or race mixture by Brazilian geneticists as a resource for transnational genetic research. Our data derive from anthropological investigation conducted in INCA (Brazilian National Cancer Institute), in Rio de Janeiro, with a focus on the drug warfarin. The criticism of Brazilian scientists regarding the uses of racial categorization includes a revision of mathematical algorithms for drug dosage widely used in clinical procedures around the world. Our analysis reveals how the incorporation of ideas of racial purity and admixture, as it relates to the efficacy of drugs, touches on issues related to the possibility of application of pharmaceutical technologies on a global scale.

The emergence of human population genetics and narratives about the formation of the Brazilian nation (1950-1960)

This paper discusses the emergence of human population genetics in Brazil in the decades following World War II, and pays particular attention to narratives about the formation of the Brazilian nation. We analyze the institutionalization of this branch of genetics in the 1950s and 1960s, and look at research on the characteristics of the population of Brazil, which made use of new explanatory models of evolutionary dynamics. These developments were greatly influenced by the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation and by the presence of North American geneticists in Brazil, especially Theodosius Dobzhansky. One of the main points of this paper is to show that explanations of Brazilian human genetic diversity constructed in the mid-twentieth century closely followed interpretations that had been produced since the end of the nineteenth century, in which notions of 'racial mixing' played a central role. Even as population genetics was conditioned by nationalist concerns that had long marked Brazilian history, we argue that its emergence and institutionalization was closely associated with global, post-World War II socio-political contexts, especially with regards to modernization projects and growing scientific internationalization.

Indigenous populations in Mexico: medical anthropology in the work of Ruben Lisker in the 1960s

Ruben Lisker's research on the genetic hematological traits of Mexican indigenous populations illustrates the intersection of international health policies and the local modernizing nationalism of the Mexican post-revolution period. Lisker's surveys of blood group types, and of G6PD (glucose-6-phosphodehydrogenase) and hemoglobin variants in indigenous populations, incorporated linguistic criteria in the sampling methods, and historical and cultural anthropological accounts in the interpretation of results. In doing so, Lisker heavily relied on the discourse and the infrastructure created by the indigenista program and its institutions. Simultaneously, Lisker's research was thoroughly supported by international and bilateral agencies and programs, including the malaria eradication campaign of the 1950s and 1960s. As a member of the scientific elite he was able to make original contributions to the postwar field of human population genetics. His systematic research illustrates the complex entanglement of local and international contexts that explains the co-construction of global knowledge on human variation after WWII.(1.)

[History of genetics in Brazil: a view from the Museu da Genética at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul]

This work addresses the context of the creation, as well as the structure and contents, of the Museum of Genetics (Museu da Genética), created in 2011 and located in the Department of Genetics of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul), in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The materials available at the Museum of Genetics are a rich resource for research on the history of genetics in Brazil (and especially the genetics of human populations) beginning with the second half of the twentieth century. Despite the prominence of the field of genetics in Brazil, little research has been done on this topic.

"Os charruas vivem" nos Gaúchos: a vida social de uma pesquisa de "resgate" genético de uma etnia indígena extinta no Sul do Brasil

Este artigo explora a articulação entre uma pesquisa de ancestralidade genética e a construção social de identidades étnicas no Rio Grande do Sul. Isso é feito através da análise da vida social de um projeto de pesquisa conduzido por pesquisadores da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Tal investigação estabeleceu a continuidade genética entre a população Gaúcha contemporânea e os presumidamente extintos Charrua, uma etnia indígena que vivia na região do Pampa do estado. Ao longo do desenvolvimento do projeto de pesquisa, a ideia de continuidade genética passou por diferentes configurações, a depender de contextos específicos, sendo afirmada com diferentes níveis de certeza. A presente análise enfoca as condições sociais e genéticas que possibilitaram o estabelecimento de tal continuidade, assim como a afirmação da especificidade genética dos Gaúchos. Finalmente, são explorados os impactos sociais dessa pesquisa, em particular as suas articulações com construções de uma identidade regional diferenciada.

Qual "retrato do Brasil"? Raça, biologia, identidades e política na era da genômica

Ao longo das últimas décadas, novas tecnologias, instituições, práticas e ideologias consolidaram-se em torno dos genes, o que veio a se constituir em uma revolução tecnocultural de amplo espectro. Neste trabalho, analisamos um debate recente ocorrido no Brasil em torno da pesquisa Retrato Molecular do Brasil, que teve por objetivo elucidar as origens genéticas dos brasileiros", a partir do seqüenciamento de porções do DNA mitocondrial e do cromossomo Y. Esse estudo, que lançou mão de enfoque genômico, toca em aspectos nevrálgicos da história e da constituição da identidade biossocial/racial da sociedade brasileira. Ao focalizar a recepção dessa pesquisa, exploraremos algumas das novas, intensas e abundantes formas de relação entre "natureza/genética" e "cultura/sociedade", nas quais o DNA aparece como ator saliente em uma disputa entre modalidades de interpretar e transformar realidades sociais e políticas no Brasil.