2 - Beyond nature and culture: modes of reasoning in the age of molecular biology and medicine

Summary

The argument

In this short chapter, I examine what I perceive as the historical relation between molecular biology, gene technology and medicine, and I touch on some aspects of its consequences in the context of the human genome project. I argue that the prevailing momentum of early molecular biology resided in creating the technical means of an extracellular representation of intracellular configurations. As such, its medical impact was not different from traditional biological chemistry. With the advent of recombinant DNA technologies, a radical change of perspective ensued. The momentum of gene technology is based on the prospects of an intracellular representation of extracellular projects – the potential of “rewriting” life. Its medical impact is virtually unlimited, although at present rather constrained. As a result, I question the very opposition between nature and culture. I argue that the “natural” and the “social” are no longer to be seen as ontologically different.

Introduction

Is there one culture, are there several different cultures of biomedicine? This conference seems to be based on the assumption of the latter. In the context of attempting an anthropology of knowledge, Yehuda Elkana stated almost two decades ago: “There is no general theory of culture or of a cultural system” (1981: 8). This is an apodictic statement, indeed; but it leaves room for crossing boundaries between scientific disciplines, systems of practices, and social contexts, just as molecular biology has overturned the boundaries of the traditional biological disciplines and their academic containment over the past decades. It allows me to follow the “molecularization” of biology with respect to some aspects of medicine, of medical care, and to the concept of health.