Notes
Notes Preface 1. Finkler 1974. 2. Finkler 1994a, b; 1991. 3. In an extensive study of biomedical practice, patient response, and management of illness, I explored in depth the sickness attributions of all patients. Folk etiological explanations included sudden fright, anger, environmental assaults, nerves, witchcraft, and heredity. See Finkler 1991. 4. Finkler 1991. 5. I regard myself as a social critic who uses my moral imagination to, in Rosaldo's words, "move from the world as it actually is to a locally persuasive vision of how it ought to be" (Rosaldo 1994: 183). 6. Finkler 1994a. 7. I carried out a two-vear study of medical practice in one of these hospitals (Finkler 1991, 1996). 8. This hospital is part of the Mexican Social Security System, IMSS. 9. In these hospitals cancer is not managed as a genetic disease, even though I hasten to add that all the genetic specialists I interviewed adhere to McKusick's (1998) classification of genetic diseases. One genetic counselor indicated that their unit could not deal with breast cancer as a genetic disease because they would have too many patients to attend to. They attend and treat congenital malformations, mental retardation, Turner's syndrome, Klinefelter's syndrome (boys with XXY chromosomes instead of the normal XY), muscular dystrophy, neurofibromatosis Type I and II, oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy, spinal muscular atrophy, and other classical genetic conditions. They do not attend to diabetes, cancer, or rheumatic disorder, for example. 10. Finkler 1991. 11. Finkler 1994a. 12. Finkler 1994a. 13. My notion of structuration builds on the work of Giddens 1984. 14. Hood 1992; Xelkin and I.indee 1995. 15. Allen 1996; Ilubbard 1997; Lewontin 1984. Chapter 1. Introduction 1. Science 267 (March 17, 1995) and in the new biology curricula; Spanier 1995: 150. 2. Angell 1997: 44. 3. Turner 1997. 4. Bodmer and McKie 1994; Hood 1992; Jonsen 1996; Richards 1996. In a recent keynote address Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, hailed the Genome Project as the "Book of Life" that will be opened by the year 2002 and that will explain, cure, and predict most all human disease (Collins 1999a). For a popular portrayal of Collins and his goals for the GNP see Nash (1994). 5. Hubbard and Wald 1997;Jonsen 1996; Nelkin and Lindee 1995. 6. There were numerous television programs such as Turning Point (ABC) and Dateline (NBC) featuring issuesrelated to genetic inheritance. Radio programs on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, Morning Edition (1997a) and Talk of the Nation Science Friday (1997b) have presented recent developments in genetic inheritance . National Public Radio's All Things Considered (1998a) discussed the usefulness of mastectomies to save livesfor women "who've seen their mothers or sisters die an early death from breast cancer" (National Public Radio 1997). A program presented on CNN, Your Money, instructed its viewers to track down their family history to "provide useful hereditary information" (Brooke and Metaxas 1997). Films such as Gattaca have dealt with the dangerous consequences of genetic engineering. I collected articles appearing in the popular press from 1996 to 1998 that deal with genetic inheritance and related topics. I also consulted the Periodical Literature Data Base and the World Wide Web, and I have identified several categories of articles according to whether they are questioning and critical or what I call "gaga" about the achievements of contemporary genetics. My sample suggests that those critical of genetic inheritance are in a minority (e.g., Begley 1996, 1997; Economist 1995; Marty 1996; Turning Point 1996), although some present the issues from both a positive and a negative perspective (Herbert 1997; Turner 1997). The majority of the articles report on the extraordinary achievements of genetics, genetic testing, and genetic engineering (e.g., Blakeslee 1997; Brownlee and Silberner 1991; Brownlee et al. 1994; Carey 1997; Carey and Flynn 1997; Elmer Dewit 1994; Freundlich 1997; Glausiusz 1995a, b, 1996; Grady 1994; Higgins 1997; Jaroff 1989, 1994, 1996; Nash 1997; Rubin 1996; Seligman 1994; Sack 1997; Wr ade 1997). These articles speak about the "wisdom of genes." Some may show, for example, that the priestly line inJudaism can be traced genetically to 3,330 years in the past. Others may demarcate ethnic groups, including AshkenaziJewish women for their high risk of breast cancer and, for the Ashkenazis in general, colon cancer (Bluman 1998), although some writers are concerned that delineating ethnic groups may lead to discrimination against that group (Wade 1997:5; Feldman 1998). In a broadcast on NationalPublic Radio on...
OR
