Abstract
This paper analyzes the Environmental Genome Project (EGP), a new public health research initiative of the US National Institutes of Health that focuses on the role that gene-environment interactions play in disease causation. The public health goal of the EGP is to identify populations that may be genetically predisposed to contracting environmental illnesses such as cancer, asthma, and heart disease. This information about potential genetic susceptibility to disease is intended to be used to design public health policies to protect ‘vulnerable’ populations, i.e., lowincome and poor communities of color who display disproportionately high rates of environmental illnesses. In this paper, I use a feminist-environmental justice lens to analyze the extent to which the EGP signifies the practice of biotechnology in ‘the public interest’ and whether it supports its stated goals of developing a progressive genetics/genomics tool to serve the aims of environmental justice. Based on interviews with scientists and activists, I discuss what many critics have identified as the genetic reductionism underlying the project. This critique by public interest scientists and women environmental justice activists argues that the EGP focuses more attention on discovering ‘susceptibility genes’ in ‘vulnerable subpopulations’ and less attention on the social, political, economic, and environmental factors that are productive of environmental health and illness.
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Di Chiro, G. (2008). Seeking the New Biotechnological Fix? Public Health Genetics and Environmental Justice Policy in the United States. In: Molfino, F., Zucco, F. (eds) Women in Biotechnology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8611-3_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8611-3_12
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