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Project led by Cavalli-Sforza stalled, other projects focussed on group-level genetic
differences proceeded. Among them was the work of the International HapMap
Consortium and also of a US National Institutes of Health-sponsored project (inaugu-
rated in the new millennium) looking into patterns of disease among different groups
in the American population. Also based in the United States was the Genographic
Project (2005-10) led by the National Geographic Society. Relatedly, a project at the
predominantly black Howard University in the United States also sought to assem-
ble genetic data on black Americans for health-related research and applications. It's
sometimes thought that these initiatives marked a break in the analytical focus on
post-1945 human biology and medicine; however, as STS scholar Jenny Reardon
(2004) shows, scientists in both fields held on to the idea of group-level biological
differences through the decades when it was thought that science had no truck with
the 'race' idea. This challenges the belief - articulated by, among others, anti-racist
theorist Paul Gilroy - that the science of human genetics provides an objective basis
on which to
oppose
racism because it has long treated
homo sapiens
as one indivisible
species.
16
For instance, are there identifiable and remediable causes for such things as large ears,
small stature and baldness, and should such visible forms of human difference be con-
sidered more or less 'undesirable'? All humans are born biologically unique, except
for identical twins. But our genetic commonality is not synonymous with genetic
uni-
formity
: the estimated 0.1 per cent of variation in the human genome is associated,
in poorly understood ways, with a range of phenotypical differences between people.
Most readers will no doubt be familiar with the idea that there are, or at least might
be, 'genes for' a number of perceptible differences between individuals. Certainly,
the Western news media has been happy to report on the latest findings in the fields
of behavioural, medical and population genetics. While (one hopes) some of these
seem rather absurd to most people (like the idea of 'criminal genes', which we might
dismiss as the product of fanciful journalism), others appear to be less controversial.
Perhaps the classic case is PKU (phenylketonuria), one of the first 'genetic diseases' to
be identified and, as one scientist puts it, a seemingly 'uncomplicated example of an
inborn error of metabolism in which a single gene carries a mutation conferring dys-
functionality
manifested by a fairly uniform phenotype' (Rosoff, 2010: 215). The
phenotype is mental retardation, learning disabilities and seizures. PKU and other
ailments that appear to have a link to genetic 'abnormalities' (like haemophilia) have
encouraged geneticists, using the latest technologies, to search for a wider family of
possible links between genotypical and phenotypical signatures. Perhaps, some specu-
late, there are genes that (alone or together) dispose certain people towards things like
aggressive behaviour, fearfulness and timidity, homosexuality, psychopathy or high
intelligence (to name but a few).
17
The worry is that the new genetics of 'race' may underpin a new form of 'soft scientific
racism', based on the idea of the monogenesis of humans, as opposed to the 'hard
scientific racism' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when many scientists
argued that there was more than one 'race of man' (the idea of polygenesis). In other
words, this would be a racism predicated on the idea of biological
degrees
of difference
not
kinds
of difference.
18
I should say here that these scientists and science writers are not insistent that 'race' be
the
only
word that should be used to describe group-level genetic differences. 'Popula-
tion' has been used by human geneticists for years to characterise macro-level genetic
variation among large numbers of people. Where contemporary scientists do use the
term 'race', they are typically very careful to ensure it is seen as a
descriptive
term, not
an
evaluative
one.
19
This is the burden of Bill McKibben's bestseller
The age of missing information
(1992/2006). The topic details McKibben's immersion in a full day of modern tele-
vision as compared with a day atop a mountain in the Adirondacks. He subjects his
mass-mediated experience of the real on television to sharp criticism and sings the
praises of direct contact with the non-human world.
...
