Send message to Author

Short abstract:

This paper investigates the new bioinformational paradigm in microbiomic precision medicine and examines how the push to globalize precision medicine corresponds to and is constitutive of international efforts to open science, a situation that might prove to increase rather than reduce inequality.

Long abstract:

In projecting innovations for global health, hope is gathered for research on the human microbiome to make a difference for people in the developing world. Presented as the next frontier in precision medicine, microbiomic science is mobilized as an ‘omic’ that can assist in major global health challenges, for instance child malnutrition, but also non-communicable diseases that have greatly affected people in industrialized urban centers. Furthermore, the link between human microbiomes and their ecological environments makes the science important for what has been termed planetary health.

Different to other global health innovations, however, therapeutics in the microbiomic translational space are dependent on computationable data from individuals and populations in situ (rather than from isolated pathogenic material). As Biagioli and Pottage argue, such postgenomic translational work depends on a cybernetic logic that understands nature as “diagnostic information that is used to fine-tune therapeutic procedures” (2021: 233). This logic presents novel understandings of the body and of medicine, namely as being processual (rather than mechanical), modelled by signals (rather than chemical compounds). Using the heuristic device of biomedical platforms, my paper investigates the new bioinformational paradigm in microbiomic precision medicine. It examines how the drive to globalize precision medicine—legitimated by humanitarian and democratic appeals—is correlated to an international effort to open science. How do such efforts impact the generative dimensions of bioinformational platforms? And in what ways do they assist or thwart the pursuits of global and planetary health?