Lecture: Guiding public accounts of genetics
Master data
Title: | Guiding public accounts of genetics |
Description: | In the late 1990’s in Austria a significant science policy shift could be observed. Although initially in favour of agricultural applications the government radically changed its research policy and since then mainly focussed on the biomedical field. As a result of public protests not only a reorientation of the research agenda took place, but also a new approach was taken in dealing with public forces. Shaping and guiding public accounts of genetics has become a strategic enterprise. Biomedical imaginaries are disseminated by those who carry out genome research, but also ethicists and social scientists contribute to the economy of expectations in their own way. Hopes and fears are essential ingredients of the rhetoric around biomedical futures. Medical researchers promise that a deeper understanding of the human genome will allow us to prevent diseases, to cure them or at least treat them more efficiently. But also warnings about possible risks and threats have become a vital part of the public debate. One of the core functions of these biomedical imaginaries is to mobilize capital. Funding bodies are susceptible to such accounts, but they also contribute in their own way to the discourse of promises and warnings. From scientists they request that research should be socially and economically beneficial and social scientists and ethicists they ask to explore the limits of acceptability. Along these lines this paper problematises the rhetorical function of biomedical imaginaries striving to guide public accounts of genetics as a technological and social project. |
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Type: | Registered lecture |
Homepage: | - |
Event: | "Genetics, history and public understanding – 3rd International workshop “Hope, trust and troubled dreams of genetics (Satelite meeting of the European Human Genetics Conference 2008)" (Barcelona, Spain) |
Date: | 31.05.2008 |
lecture status: |
Assignment
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Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften
Institut für Technik- und Wissenschaftsforschung
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AT - 9020 Klagenfurt am Wörthersee |
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