ABSTRACT
It is widely assumed by both policy makers and social scientists that the development of biotechnology and the commodification of genes, cells, tissue and whole organisms will stimulate a new field of economic activity through the creation of high technology firms and jobs, and the sale of novel biological products. These assumptions have played a major role in shaping UK science and technology policy (Hopkins et al. 2007a), as well as the research agenda for social scientists in this field. For example, Waldby and Mitchell (2006) have developed the idea of the tissue economy to explore the ways in which blood, organs and cell lines are becoming part of a system of economic exchange. Others, such as Sunder Rajan (2006) and Rose (2007), have explored the more general idea of the bioeconomy both empirically and conceptually. Genomics has been seen as lying at the heart of this new bioeconomy. At the time of
the launch of the Human Genome Project in 1991 and subsequently, following its completion in 2003, a series of major expectations have been linked to the economic potential and impact of genomics. For example, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (1995) noted in its landmark report on human genetics that ‘even the most cautious commentators expect genetic science to transform medicine’ (paragraph 65). In particular, these hopes have included the promise of a new wave of innovation within the pharmaceutical industry stimulated by the discovery of the genetic defects associated with common diseases, a large number of new drug targets, novel biological therapies and a better understanding of human pathology. This is well summarised by a major corporate investor in early genomics:
Before new technologies made genomics possible at the beginning of this decade [the 1990s] geneticists found genes by stalking rare mutations … the hunt for a
single gene could take decades. Now sophisticated high-speed sequencing strategies pioneered by SB’s collaborators [Human Genome Sciences] generate sequences from more than twenty thousand genes per year … each new gene is potentially the key to a treatment – and a new product.
