Biology and blood

‘Genomic discourse’ has been described as taking shape in the closing decades of the twentieth century. ¹ Life is imagined as a digital code written on the molecular structure of the chromosome. Rose calls this the ‘language of life’ that contains ‘the digital instructions’ to make us what we are. ² However, as Rose observes ‘[t]he brute reductionism of much of the genomics of the closing decades of the 20th century already seems old-fashioned…’ ³ Genetic ‘identity’ as a notion in and of itself is controversial. Consciousness, the sense of self-perception that only you can subjectively experience, remains a mystery in terms of scientific explanation. Epigenetics, the study of how our genes can be and are manipulated and affected by our environments, how the genes can be turned on and off, seems to show the interrelation between the traditional nurture and nature debate. In our ‘post-genomics’ world, ⁴ Rose argues that the politics of the life sciences, what he calls the politics of life itself, have been shaped by those who controlled the human, technical and financial resources necessary to fund this work. Therefore disputes over biopiracy, the patenting of genes and trade in human tissue all show how molecular commodification is itself confounding our ideas of human life and the protections to be afforded to it. ⁵ All of these developments have led to arguments that human rights now have a biological dimension. ⁶ This takes the form of a universal human right to the protection of each person’s bare life and the dignity of their living vital body. Such arguments suggest that biological ethics ascribes each human life equal worth. As Rose observes however, our practices show this is not the case. We have become: ‘… the kinds of people who think of our present and our future in terms of the quality of our individual biological lives and those with whom we identify’. ⁷