ABSTRACT
The genomic reimagining of personalized medicine which emerged in the 1990s was predicated on the idea that genetic factors contribute to virtually every human disease. Beginning in the 1950s, this idea was established over several decades, during which, as Susan Lindee argues, human genetics was transformed from a sleepy medical backwater to an appealing medical frontier. Personal genomics firms rearticulated the expectations expressed by Francis Collins and colleagues at the NHGRI who saw that new genomic knowledge about future disease risk would encourage behavioural change in a way that other types of risk information might not do so. In making a case for their public legitimacy, company representatives sought to persuade others that their personal genome services were a valid part of the way that the vision for individualized preventive medicine would be realized. Navigenics presented itself as a personalized healthcare company engaged in a healthcare revolution that could be traced back to the Human Genome Project.
