Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology after the Genome, by Sarah Richardson, Hallam Stevens

Abstract

n the decade following the controversy surrounding the completion of the Human Genome Project, genomics realized neither the promises of personalized genetic medicine nor the fears of a genetic brave new world. Instead, as Sarah Richardson and Hallam Stevens suggest in their introduction to this fine collection of essays, we have arrived at the beginning of a “postgenomic” era in biology and medicine. An ironic consequence of the intense study of genes has been the revelation that most of the human genome (99 percent by some estimates) does not “code” for any identifiable human traits. John Dupré reflects in his contribution that the relationship between genotype and phenotype has become even more fragmented the further it has been studied by genomics researchers. How are we to make sense, for example, of the substantial genomic variation among different kinds of tissues in the same body? The state of the art in genomics seems to have arrived where many science scholars started in the 1990s—profoundly skeptical of just what the study of genes can tell us. The rich contributions to this volume suggest the topography of this new postgenomic era for historians, social scientists, and philosophers.