Determinist rethorics in the human genome

Abstract

The popularity obtained by the Human Genome Project is closely related to the political and rhetorical uses of genetic determinism, a notion which increasingly cannot be reconciled with the empirical results of on-going genomic research. The complexity that has been uncovered in the human genome and in its interactions with the environment implies that a simple and unidirectional notion of causality cannot be maintained, contrary to a presupposition of the idea of the gene as the sole carrier of information, an idea that contributes to sustain the doctrine of genetic determinism. However, a complex of informational and/or linguistic metaphors lives on in the texts published by molecular biologists in the scientific press, most notably in the issues published February 15th and 16th of 2001 by the high impact journals Nature and Science, respectively. These metaphors generate an ambiguous type of discourse that modulates various nuances of deterministic rhetoric, depending on whether it addresses peers or the lay public. Critics of technoscience should challenge the field of genomics to drastically reshape the metaphors which have supported its hegemonic research agenda.