The Material Gene: Gender, Race, and Heredity after the Human Genome Project (Biopolitics: Medicine, Technoscience, and Health in the 21st Century)
"Kelly Happe’sThe Material Geneis the most comprehensive look at the implications in both theory and practice of the new genomics. What happens when you have a fragmentary understanding of mechanisms such as DNA (and more recently RNA) but need to intervene now to prevent diseases that present a risk to the patient? What happens to our understanding of our bodies when we are told that we or our off-spring are potentially ill? Computing risk is at the core of the new science of applied genetics, but it is a science still discovering new sets of meanings, implications, and even a new language. It is also part of the new movement of translation medicine: linking the laboratory to the clinic, with wider implications for both. Happe’s work demands to be read by physician and academic alike."-Sander L. Gilman,Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and Psychiatry, Emory University"The Material Genedemonstrates that the rhetoric of science does its best work when it moves science out of the laboratory and into the political and social world. Happe isolates how the biomedical discourses of genomic research strips the body of its social history in order to perpetuate a political unconscious that heredity is the primary locus for the risk of disease. By putting the genomic body back into its social context, Happe reveals the perilous history between genomics and eugenics, while at the same time, she offers insight into how the promise of genomic research might escape its political unconscious." -Ronald Walter Greene,Chair, Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota"The Material Geneis a provocative, clearly written, and well-informed account of how genetic science reinforces harmful assumptions about race and gender under the banner of "progress." Exploring the discourses surrounding the genetic basis for breast cancer, Happe argues that the rhetoric of genomic medicine hyperindividualizes and privatizes risk and disease. Thus she reminds us of the urgency of critical framing of scientific research. This book is necessary reading for scholars of rhetoric, scientists, and citizens who are building alternative frameworks for understanding disease and heredity." -Dana Cloud,Associate Professor, Communications Studies, University of Texas"Ever since the Human Genome Project started to take shape in the late 1980s, social inquiry has been concerned with the consequences of the renewed vigor and depth with which biological knowledge has been shaping life itself.  Kelly Happe's book,The Material Gene, carries forward this important set of concerns."-Jorg Niewohner,New Genetics and Society