ABSTRACT
Much social science attention has been paid to the notion of ‘genomic futures’ and the implications of medical genetics for health, identity and how we conceptualize risk and prevention of disease for self and family (Finkler 2000; Gibbon 2007; Hallowell 1999; Mozersky 2013). More recently, others are directing us to the ways in which population genetics can reconfigure the past (El Haj 2007; Nelson 2008; Palmié 2007). Moreover, there is an increasingly complex intertwining of medical and population genetic research, with the former exploring what genetic variation may reveal about health, disease and drug response and the latter focusing on ancestral and migratory histories. It has also been suggested that genomic knowledge acts as a ‘telescope’ to the past (and future) in the ways that narratives of migration, colonization and origin have become part of the temporal logic of the medical, scientific and social discourse surrounding BRCA mutations (cf. Adams et al. 2009; El-Haj 2007; Gibbon 2013; M’Charek 2013; Schlünder, this volume). This is particularly evident, as new technologies such as high-throughput sequencing are impacting the scope and reach of genomic interventions and as the marketing of direct-to-consumer (DTC) testing (particularly in the US) is combining a so-called ‘recreational’ interest in genetic genealogy with medical genetic testing and the promise of preventative health (Koenig et al. 2008; Lee 2013).
