Preprint Also Includes the Original Introductory Remarks by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, As Well As the Program of the Conference
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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE POSTGENOMICS? HISTORICAL, TECHNO-EPISTEMIC AND CULTURAL ASPECTS OF GENOME PROJECTS JULY 8-11, 1998 BERLIN FOREWORD The present volume brings together several documents encapsulating the presentations and discussions made on the occasion of the international conference on "Postgenomics? Historical, Techno-Epistemic and Cultural Aspects of Genome Projects," held in July 1998 at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and funded by the German Human Genome Project. Two reports have been included covering the conference material in very different ways. Whereas the first report gives a day by day account of all contributions, including panel discussions, the second deals mainly with an overview of current scientific issues and related epistemological critiques. To complement these reports, this preprint also includes the original introductory remarks by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, as well as the program of the conference. - 2 - CONTENTS Hans-Jörg Rheinberger: Introduction.............................................. 5 Program................................................. 11 List of Participants..................................... 14 Lily Kay: Report to the Human Genome Project............... 17 Denis Thieffry and Sahotra Sarkar: Report for BioScience ................................ 27 - 3 - - 4 - INTRODUCTION Hans-Jörg Rheinberger Max Planck Institute for the History of Science There is an inevitable dilemma to interdisciplinary conferences such as this one. Professional identities and corresponding expectations range from molecular biologists and genome researchers to historians, philosophers, sociologists, from anthropologists of science to policy makers. For humanities scholars, certain papers will appear too technical to be fully appreciated. For scientists, other papers will appear to be too esoteric and to miss the point in terms of a strictly defined scientific agenda. There is no way of avoiding this dilemma for anybody trying to engage actively in such a communicative enterprise of bridging gaps - of discourse as well as of updating knowledge. The aim of this conference is not least to contribute to the development of a discursive atmosphere allowing closer interaction and understanding between those who do the science and those who, for many different - and vital - reasons, reflect on the dynamics of contemporary genome research and try to embed and view its incentives, its conduct, and its outcomes in a broader cultural, historical, and social perspective. As is appropriate for an institute for the history of science, many of the papers given during the conference will have a historical underpinning. I do hope that historical reflection will help to place in perspective some of the rather bold conjectures as to the genetic future of mankind that are in circulation, not only by patient interest-groups and companies, but also by scientists. I agree with Benno Müller-Hill, the molecular geneticist from Köln who said a few years ago: "Now scientists are promising a massive betterment in preventive medicine after the 'holy grail' of the human genome has been attained, and - quote - 'man will then be understood through his DNA.' I doubt all that. These promises cannot be kept. The public will become discontented when it realizes that all these expensive promises are not being fulfilled." And he adds: "Scientists should not sell hope." Looking back might give us a chance to realize how much there is to this advice. - 5 - By way of introduction, let me summarize the questions which we, the organizers, thought should be discussed as we go through the sessions. This can probably best be done by rehearsing the elements of the - very long - title of the conference: Postgenomics? Historical, Techno-Epistemic, and Cultural Aspects of Genome Projects. First, Postgenomics. We put a question mark after this term which might give a flavor of postmodernism. We did not invent it. Among others, it was Ernst Ludwig Winnacker, the acting president of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft who recently raised the question as to which direction research would take in a "postgenomic time." That's what he called it. Winnacker put the problem as follows: "Until now, the individual genes stood in the foreground. We will leave them behind us and ask how they contribute to the formation of individual cells, of cell communities, and of whole organisms. ... We will go for an understanding of the whole." Now, it is not for the first time in the history of biology that scientists have been proclaiming that the time has come to transcend reduction, genetic or otherwise, and to try to understand the formation of the organism as a whole. Such claims have accompanied modern biology from its inception in the 18th century. It is legitimate, then, to ask exactly what new possibilities of understanding the organism as a whole will arise once we have complete genome sequences at our disposal. What kind of questions can biologists start to ask once they have whole genome sequences to work with? Postgenomics promises to comprehend the body as a whole, in its function and development, with its epigenetic mechanisms and its outer living conditions. The problem is: Will this be a "logical" consequence of the present efforts? Or must we make a conscious effort to "rethink the organism"? So much for postgenomics. Now to the different key-words that shall guide us through the landscape of genome research. First, historical aspects of genome research. We gave the first part of the conference the title of 'genomic re-visions.' With it, we would like to emphasize that science, like history, is a revisionist enterprise. What counts as truth today will not, as a rule, be the truth of tomorrow. Although we have been living with the notion of 'gene' for about ninety years now, we should be aware of how much its content has changed over the decades. What a distance from Johannsen's abstract entity of 1910, to the protein gene of the 1930s, to the DNA and informational gene of the golden age of molecular biology, to the hypercomplex structure of the genetic material that contemporary molecular genetics confronts us with! While there was a time when the picture of the gene could appear to be simple, we no longer live, at least scientifically, in such a time. The more molecular details become available today, the less a consensus appears to be possible at the molecular, organismic, and evolutionary level about what a gene is. Genomic organization has turned out to be terribly complex. And yet it is - 6 - intriguing and even frightening how simplistically genes as public icons are often depicted by the media and by scientists sometimes as well. Why do even scientists talk the language of 'There is a gene for ...", although they know perfectly well that the scientific reality is infinitely more complicated? Visions, then, are subject to historical change. Is a "vision of the grail," as Walter Gilbert called it, the only way to look at DNA today? What genetic visions have we left behind us, which ones are we in the process of producing and disseminating? Is genomic research bound to intensify the present view of genetic determinism? Questions of identity and subjectivity -- are genes us? -- should be key issues to integrate into the discussions about postgenomics. Let me move on to the second issue, techno-epistemic aspects of genome research. It will be appropriate to make some remarks on the notion of the techno-epistemic. First and foremost, the connection between the technical and the epistemological reminds one of something that appears to be characteristic of molecular biology as a whole, and of genome research in particular. Instead of being theory-driven, it appears to be eminently technology-driven. In addition, statements by many leaders of human genome projects (as well as of historians of molecular biology) amount to the conviction that these projects are not only primarily technology-driven but also technology-generating enterprises. It would be important to think about the ways in which such a strong technical imperative has been changing and will continue to change the epistemic landscape of biology, its organizational features, its disciplinary structure, its industry-university relations, its publication practices, and finally, the questions that researchers consider worth investigating. If this diagnosis is valid, then the epistemological agendas that are pursued in molecular genetics are tightly interwoven, if not generated by the instruments and experimental arrangements that go into their construction. The point is that it is useful to keep in mind that it is the representations we can generate of an object or of a process that determine how we are able to think of these objects and processes. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a representation of gene replication. But does it help us to understand the intricacies of chromosome duplication? A sequence of letters is usually seen as the rendering of genomic information. What does it reveal to us, what does it prevent us from thinking? If genome research becomes more and more impossible without biocomputing, what modes of thinking does this computational transformation of biology impose on those who practice it? Classical biological representations have been, as we habitually call them, in vivo, in situ, and in vitro. What do modes of representation such as ex vivo and in silico add to our conception of the living? Finally, cultural aspects of genome research.