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Symposia |
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EMBL/EMBO/IBC-CNR
Mini-Symposium |
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| 9 December 2005,
EMBL Monterotondo [Rome] |
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| The new behavioural genetics and the sociology of susceptibility |
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Nikolas Rose, BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society, London School of Economics and Political Science
In the shift from behavioral genetics to behavioural
genomics, many of the simplistic assumptions made
by enthusiasts of an earlier age about the relation
between 'genes' and conduct have had to be abandoned
or revised. Those who are concerned with the possible
relations between DNA sequences and mental disorder,
addiction, impulsivity and other variations in human
conduct must now reframe their arguments in the
language of susceptibilities and predispositions,
in terms of the interaction between multiple allelic
and SNP variations – some protective and some
increasing vulnerability – at multiple sites,
and in terms of the regulation of gene expression
by environmental factors from thus at the cellular
level to those in early experience or environmental
insults. Nonetheless, the genomics of susceptibility,
which remains so alluring and yet elusive in relation
to common complex 'organic' disorders, is also generating
a programme of research and intervention in relation
to complex behavioural conditions from anxiety to
alcoholism, from aggression to depression. In this
discussion, I consider some of the social drivers
for, and implications of, such a programme of research
and intervention, especially in a context where
the idea of prediction and prevention, of asymptomatic
illness and presymptomatic patients, is gaining
such a hold, and where some already suggest the
need for widespread screening of children for susceptibilities
and early 'preventive' intervention using psychopharmaceuticals.
I compare the patterns emerging in relation to these
psychiatric and para-psychiatric conditions with
the forms of ‘biological citizenship’
emerging in relation to other conditions and consider
the implications. |
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