EUGENE THACKER

Global
THE
Genome
BIOTECHNOLOGY,
POLITICS, AND CULTURE
The Global Genome
 LEONARDO

Roger F. Malina, series editor

The Visual Mind, edited by Michele Emmer, 1993
Leonardo Almanac, edited by Craig Harris, 1994
Designing Information Technology, Richard Coyne, 1995
Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, edited by Mary Anne Moser with
Douglas MacLeod, 1996
Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real, Richard Coyne,
1999
Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program, edited by Craig Harris,
1999
The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, edited by Peter Lunenfeld, 1999
The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, edited
by Ken Goldberg, 2000
The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich, 2000
Metal and Flesh: The Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over, Ollivier Dyens, 2001
Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia, Geert Lovink, 2002
Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, Stephen Wilson, 2002
Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Oliver Grau, 2003
Women, Art, and Technology, edited by Judy Malloy, 2003
Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization, Alexander R. Galloway, 2004
At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet, edited by Annmarie
Chandler and Norie Neumark, 2005
The Visual Mind II, edited by Michele Emmer, 2005
CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy, edited by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh,
2005
The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, Eugene Thacker, 2005
Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture, Matthew Fuller, 2005
From Technological to Virtual Art, Frank Popper, 2005
 The Global Genome

Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture

Eugene Thacker

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any elec-
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thacker, Eugene.
The global genome : biotechnology, politics, and culture / Eugene Thacker.
p. cm. – (Leonardo)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-20155-0 (alk. paper)
1. Biotechnology industries. 2. Bioinformatics. 3. Globalization. I. Title.
II. Leonardo (Series) (Cambridge, Mass.)

HD9999.B442T453 2005
338.4¢76606–dc22
2004061148
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

series foreword vii

foreword by joel slayton ix
preface xi
acknowledgments xiii
introduction xv

I Encoding / Production 1

1 the global genome 3

2 bioinformatic bodies and the problem of “life itself” 51

3 a political economy of the genomic body 91

II Recoding / Distribution 131

4 biocolonialism, genomics, and the databasing of the

population 133

5 the incorporate bodies of recombinant capital 173

6 bioinfowar: biologically enhancing national security 209

III Decoding / Consumption 249

7 the thickness of tissue engineering 251

8 regenerative medicine: we can grow it for you

wholesale 275

9 conclusion: tactical media and bioart 305

appendix a: biotechnology fields and areas of application 321

appendix b: techniques and technologies in biotechnology
research 327
appendix c: a brief chronology of bioinformatics 333
appendix d: biotechnology and popular culture; or, mutants,
replicants, and zombies 339
notes 347
index 413

Contents

vi
 Series Foreword

The cultural convergence of art, science, and technology provides ample

opportunity for artists to challenge the very notion of how art is produced and
to call into question its subject matter and its function in society. The mission
of the Leonardo book series, published by The MIT Press, is to publish texts
by artists, scientists, researchers, and scholars that present innovative discourse
on the convergence of art, science, and technology.
Envisioned as a catalyst for enterprise, research, and creative and scholarly
experimentation, the book series enables diverse intellectual communities to
explore common grounds of expertise. It provides a context for the discussion
of contemporary practice, ideas, and frameworks in this rapidly evolving arena
where art and science connect.
To find more information about Leonardo/ISAST and to order our publica-
tions, go to Leonardo Online at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/
isast/leobooks.html> or send e-mail to <leonardobooks.mitpress.mit.edu>.
Joel Slayton
Chair, Leonardo Book Series

Book Series Advisory Committee: Annick Bureaud, Pamela Grant Ryan, Craig
Harris, Margaret Morse, Michael Punt, Douglas Sery, Allen Strange.
 Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and
Technology (ISAST)

Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, and
the affiliated French organization Association Leonardo have two very simple
goals:

1. to document and make known the work of artists, researchers, and schol-
ars interested in the ways that the contemporary arts interact with science and
technology, and
2. to create a forum and meeting places where artists, scientists, and engi-
neers can meet, exchange ideas, and, if appropriate, collaborate.

When the journal Leonardo was started some 35 years ago, these creative
disciplines existed in segregated institutional and social networks, a situation
dramatized at that time by the “Two Cultures” debates initiated by C. P. Snow.
Today we live in a different time of cross-disciplinary ferment, collaboration,
and intellectual confrontation enabled by new hybrid organizations, new
funding sponsors, and the shared tools of computers and the Internet. Above
all, new generations of artist-researchers and researcher-artists are now at work
individually and in collaborative teams bridging the art, science, and tech-
nology disciplines. Perhaps in our lifetime we will see the emergence of “new
Leonardos,” creative individuals or teams who will not only develop a mean-
ingful art for our times but also drive new agendas in science and stimulate
technological innovation that addresses today’s human needs.
For more information on the activities of the Leonardo organizations and
networks, please visit our Web site at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/Leonardo>.
Roger F. Malina
Chair, Leonardo/ISAST

ISAST Board of Directors: Martin Anderson, Mark Resch, Ed Payne, Sonya

Rapoport, Stephen Wilson, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Joel Slayton, Penelope
Finnie, Curtis Karnow, Mina Bissell, Beverly Reiser, Piero Scaruffi.

Series Foreword

viii
 Foreword

April 2003 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the structure
of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Discovery of the double-helical structure by
James Dewey Watson and Francis Crick along with Maurice Wilkins and
Rosalind Elsie Franklin at the University of Cambridge in 1953 redefined our
fundamental understanding of the biological structure and function of life.
Passing decades of research have continued in a rapid evolution of science and
engineering resulting in many new disciplines ranging from pharmacoge-
nomics to the neural correlates of consciousness. This dramatic transformation
of biology is represented by a trajectory of codification and informatics. Francis
Crick died, July 29, 2004. His proclaimed announcement, “We have discov-
ered the secret of life,” rings in our ears.
The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture by Eugene Thacker
explores the intersection of biology and informatics. It is a book about the
mutability of biology and the fluidity of values, signs and power that exist
across scientific disciplines and political-economic culture. Analysis informed
by Foucault’s biopolitics; Marx’s economica (species being and inorganic
body); Shannon’s theory of information; von Neumann’s cybernetic reasoning;
Canquilhem’s study on the ontology of organization; and the reality of infor-
mational excess represented by Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Allan Wilson’s Human
Genome Diversity Project establish a context for consideration. It is a context
Eugene Thacker builds upon and expands within a central theme: clarifi-
cation of the ontological struggle with simplistic notions of biology as
information.
 Eugene Thacker speaks directly to the tension of convergence involving
biology and informatics. His is a concern with the implication of new modes
of regulation management and control determined by a social system that
values increasingly more effective forms of biological prediction, analysis,
accuracy, efficiency, probability, and optimization. It is a description of a cul-
tural system that is politically driven toward opportunities and discovery of
economic benefit. It is a view of genomics as a political economy of the genetic
body, a view that understands life as reprogrammable, instrumentalized, and
networked. For Thacker, the network is the dominant paradigm of globaliza-
tion and the terms of globalization and mobility are complimentary.
The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture is also an address on
the mobility of biology across media in which production, distribution,
and consumption define the contemporary model of biology and life itself.
According to Eugene Thacker, encoding, recoding, and decoding represent
the primary activities of biotechnology today. Interlaced production, distri-
bution, and consumption shape the essentiality of biological being as mate-
rial and immaterial, property and information. Genes, cell lines, plants, and
animals exist as semiotic deployments of life that dynamically shift from body
to body, body to code and code to body.
The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture examines the nature
of a biological mobility that is deeply embedded in a biologicalness that nec-
essarily integrates the goo of life with code and network.
Reconciliation of the artificial with the natural continues to be a central
issue of our times. In a world where the DNA of an organism can be reshuf-
fled and engineered, the struggle to formulate coherent theoretical constructs
for the structure and function of life is both a technical and ethical question.
Eugene Thacker provides a glimpse at the implications of a biological body
that is both wet and dry, presence and pattern. The Leonardo Book Series is
very pleased to include The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture
by Eugene Thacker.

Joel Slayton
Chair, Leonardo Book Series

Foreword

x
 Preface

For some reason, I have always felt that a preface should really be called a
“confession.” So here is mine: this is not only a book about genes, proteins,
and codes, but a book of philosophy. In itself, this is not much of a confes-
sion (unless “doing philosophy” is something to hide). Perhaps what I
should really say is that this is a book about how, in biotechnology, ontolog-
ical questions immediately fold onto questions that are social, economic, and
cultural.
For example, take three “objects.” The first is your DNA in a test tube.
Actually it is very easy—using supplies from your local grocery, you can
extract your own DNA; all you need is a toothpick, detergent, salt, and
alcohol. Your DNA does not look particularly “high tech” or sexy; it is more
like stringy, semitransparent goo. So that is our first object. The second object
is a computer file of a DNA sequence from a database. Anyone with an Inter-
net connection can access GenBank, the main public repository for genome
data. You can search for a particular sequence you are after, and the file will
display all sorts of information, from research publications to the actual
sequence of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs. Now take a third object, a computer file of
the patent for the DNA sequence file I just mentioned. Again, this is easily
accessible via the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Web site. This file is a
bit different, containing not only scientific information, but technical, eco-
nomic, and legal information as well. So we have three kinds of DNA: “wet”
DNA in a test tube, “dry” DNA from a computer database, and valuable DNA
as part of a patent.
 This book is about the relationship between these three entities. Between
the test tube DNA, the GenBank file, and the patent record, there are a
number of relationships that have to do with how the concept of “life itself”
is being fundamentally transformed in the era of biotechnology. The argu-
ment I make is that these changes are not merely additive changes to already-
existing notions of life, labor, and property, but that, in their very existence,
these unique entities—genome databases, DNA synthesizers, regenerative
tissues—are ontologically redefining the notion of biological “life itself,” a
notion that has always been at the center of biological thought.
But, for all this talk about ontology, there is little talk of the niceties of
ontological categories or philosophical logic. Instead, many of the pages are
filled with discussions on genome databases, drug discovery informatics, lab-
grown tissues, and plasmid libraries. Not only that, but there is also talk of
international genome sequencing organizations, national biobank initiatives,
and, of course, the private sector emphasis on fields such as bioinformatics and
pharmacogenomics.
So, if this is a book of philosophy, then it is a strange one, one that talks
as much about reprogrammed stem cells as it does about Aristotelian biology
or Marxian “species being.” My hope is that between this triangulated rela-
tionship of “real” biology (test tube DNA), computer codes (the GenBank
file), and biological property (the patent record), we can develop a more
complex awareness of the ways in which “life itself” is deployed in a range of
areas, from the creation of new medicines to the transformations in food pro-
duction, national security, and the cultural understanding of biological life.

Preface

xii
 Acknowledgments

This book has had a long gestation period. A number of the concepts have
previously appeared in publication, either in different essays or as earlier ver-
sions of the chapters presented here. Chapter 3 is an expanded and modified
version of an essay commissioned by the Walker Arts Center’s Gallery 9. The
sections of chapter 4 on recombinant capital are derived from an essay pub-
lished in Dialectical Anthropology. Chapter 5 grew out of an essay commissioned
by Locus+ for a catalog. It also incorporates arguments from a short piece enti-
tled “The Anxieties of Biopolitics,” commissioned in 2001 by the Informa-
tion, War, and Peace Project at Brown University. Chapter 6 is a modified
version of an essay published in Theory & Event and republished later in the
Ars Electronica ‘99 catalog. Chapter 7 grew out of two talks I gave, one at the
Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF) and another at the Society for Litera-
ture and Science (SLS) conference, both in 2000. Portions of these talks were
subsequently published in the Journal of Medical Humanities.
There are many to thank. In the earliest stages of this book, Ed Cohen,
Samira Kawash, and especially Josephine Diamond provided a supportive
environment for me to explore some of its themes.
Over the years, many colleagues provided helpful comments and conver-
sation, both in person and via email, including Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr,
Joe Davis, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Michael Fortun, Alex Galloway, Diane
Gromala, Natalie Jeremijenko, Ken Knoespel, Eduardo Kac, Steve Kurtz, Lisa
Lynch, Wendy Newstetter, Kavita Philip, Steve Potter, Birgit Richard, Steve
Shaviro, and Cathy Waldby. The editorial team at MIT Press, especially Doug
Sery and Joel Slayton, have been instrumental in seeing this book through to
publication. Online communities such as Nettime, Rhizome, and the Thing
have also provided a forum in which to experiment with new ideas.
Certain things go without saying, but should be said nevertheless. Without
Edgar Thacker, Moonsoon Thacker, Marie Thacker, and Prema Murthy, under-
taking a project such as this would have been difficult. Finally, I would like
to dedicate this book to my grandfather, Dr. E. A. Thacker (1905–99).

Acknowledgments

xiv
 Introduction

“Templates broken, membranes burst”

Bioscience research and the biotech industry are increasingly organized on a

global level, bringing together novel, hybrid artifacts (such as genome data-
bases and DNA chips), with new means of distribution and exchange (most
notably, the use of the Internet in exchanging biological data).1 Indeed, a
glance at contemporary biotech-related events reveals novel artifacts and prac-
tices that are in their very constitution networked and global: international
genome sequencing efforts such as the International Human Genome
Sequencing Consortium (IHGSC), the proliferation of genomic databases
(GenBank in the United States, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory
in Europe, the DNA Data Bank of Japan in Japan), continued developments
in national and international property laws (World Intellectual Property poli-
cies [WIPs]), the “borderless” business of biotech start-ups, spin-offs, and sub-
sidiaries, and the various efforts to integrate health care and medicine with
the concerns of national security (the World Health Organization [WHO]
Global Outbreak and Response Network, the U.S. government’s Project
BioShield). Biotechnology, it seems, takes place on a global level, be it in
terms of exchanging biological information, controlling epidemics, deterring
biological attacks, or standardizing intellectual property laws.
Yet, in another sense, none of this is new, for modern biotechnologies
have always been global, whether they involve the development of worldwide
markets for pharmaceuticals or the collection of biological materials from
various cultures around the globe. In a sense, the degree to which the biotech
industry is globalized is proportional to the degree to which the business of
health care is seen as financially independent of particular governmental reg-
ulations. Although the division between the private and public sectors in bio-
science research and health care is today more complex that it has ever been,
there is also a sense in which the very notion of a semiautonomous, biotech
“industry” implies the active development of new alliances between govern-
ment regulation, federally funded research, biotech start-ups, information
technology companies, and “Big Pharma.”
What is new, however, is the extent to which information technologies—
and an informatic worldview—are increasingly becoming part and parcel of
our understanding of biological “life itself.” Certainly, the discursive inter-
sections between genetics and cybernetics, biology and information theory, are
in themselves not new. Yet in an era in which it is commonplace to move from
DNA in a test tube to DNA in an online database—and back again—the
metaphorical relationship between biology and information is raised to a new
level. The various efforts to map the genomes of a range of organisms, from
the roundworm to human beings, is only the most recent sign of this inter-
section of biology and informatics, of genetic “codes” and computer “codes.”
The combination of biology and informatics is arguably affecting nearly every
field within the biotech and health care industries, from the quotidian use of
bioinformatics software, to the ongoing transition to “infomedicine.”
Yet this integration of biology and informatics brings with it a host of dif-
ficult questions, questions that are at once philosophical, economic, and polit-
ical. If the emphasis on informatics is indeed a constituent part of biotech
today, how does this ease of mobility between the material and the immate-
rial, the “wet” and the “dry,” affect the biological and medical understanding
of the body (and should biotech become “moist”)? If biology is really just
pattern, code, or sequence, then how does this fact change the conventional
property relations surrounding biological materiality? How has our under-
standing of the relationship between organism and environment changed in
light of recent network forms of organization (e.g., disease surveillance net-
works, bioinformatics and genomics databases)? How might the economic,
political, and cultural dimensions of globalization affect the current informatic
paradigm of molecular biology?
Thus, not only do we see biology being networked and distributed across
the globe, but we are also seeing a hegemonic understanding of biological

Introduction

xvi
“life itself” that ceases to make a hard distinction between the natural and
the artificial, the biological and the informatic. This is the twofold aspect of
biotechnology that this book intends to explore. On the one hand, we witness
a range of current events that readily display features of a globalizing indus-
try. On the other hand, we also witness an ongoing integration of biology and
informatics, genetics and computers, DNA chips and gene-finding software.
The aim of The Global Genome is, then, to comprehend these two develop-
ments: to situate changes in the biotech industry within the larger context of
globalization and political economy, and, conversely, to understand global-
ization as a core part of the practices and concepts of the biotech industry.
“Globalization” is a phenomenon that has been widely discussed in a
number of contexts: economic (e.g., international organizations such as the
World Trade Organization [WTO], the International Monetary Fund [IMF],
and the World Bank), political (e.g., the so-called withering of the nation-
state and the limits of geopolitical borders), and cultural (e.g., the hegemony
of American culture or what some call “cultural imperialism”). But little
attention has been given to the consideration of globalization as a biological
phenomenon—that is, globalization in the context of biotechnology. The
emergence of a biotech “industry” in the 1970s and the continued expansion
of the pharmaceutical industry have arguably been global endeavors from the
beginning. In this sense, biotechnology is coextensive with globalization. Sim-
ilarly, “big science” projects such as the mapping of the human genome and
events such as the emergence of new infectious diseases (the 2003 Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome [SARS] outbreak) take place on a global level that
includes networks of all kinds. Biological networks of infection (a novel virus
strain) are contextualized by networks of transportation (the air-travel indus-
try), which are then affected by governmental modes of regulation (travel
restrictions, quarantine), which are countered by medical response efforts
(disease surveillance networks), which are linked to medical-economic inter-
ventions (new vaccines, “fast-track” U.S. Food and Drug Administration
[FDA] drug approval), all of which have a palpable effect in terms of the mass
media and a larger cultural impact (science fiction films or television programs
featuring bioterrorist attacks or dirty bombs).
Thus, the primary aim of this book is to understand how the processes of
globalization form a core component of biological knowledge and practice,
without, however, simply determining it. In our contemporary context,
biotechnology and globalization will be seen as indissociable, while not simply

Introduction

xvii
being identical. Indeed, it can even be stated that biotechnology and, by
extension, a biotech “industry” are unthinkable without a globalizing context.
The intersection of biology and informatics in this case is instructive. A large-
scale scientific endeavor such as the mapping of the human genome integrates
genetic and computer codes at many different levels, from the agglomeration
of information in databases, to the use of diagnostic technologies, to the devel-
opment of novel genetic pharmaceuticals. In this increasing globalization of
biotechnology, we witness the exchange of not only information, but, specif-
ically, many types of genetic information. The “global genome” is the result
of what happens when biotechnology is globalized, when economic exchanges,
political exchanges, and semiotic exchanges are coupled with biological
exchanges.
But the biological exchanges that characterize the global genome are not
simply just another type of information. Modern biological thought always
makes two demands of “life itself”: that it be essentially information (or
pattern) and that it also be essentially matter (or presence). The tensions in
this dual demand often lead to apparently contradictory positions within the
biotech industry. For example, in the ongoing debates over the patenting of
biological life (genes, cell lines, plants, animals), biotech and pharmaceutical
corporations have often put forth an awkward position. They make the claim
that a given gene or genetically modified organism (GMO) is fully artificial
and not something already found in nature. This claim is the foundation for
fulfilling the patentability criteria in the United States and the European
Union: that patents be “new, useful, and nonobvious.” Those against genetic
patents argue that by definition “life itself” cannot be subject to patent laws
because “life itself” is synonymous with “nature,” or something that already
preexists human intervention. The claim that a genetic sequence or GMO is
artificial underscores the “tech” part of the biotech: it is in some minimal way
the result of human intervention, industry, and technology.
But we also see another, contradictory claim from many of the very same
companies that are ostensibly in the business of patenting and licensing. This
claim is the exact opposite of the first: that these new, useful, and nonobvi-
ous inventions are “natural” and thus safe for the environment, for the human
body, for agriculture, and for medical application. In other words, when dis-
cussing a GMO or genetically modified (GM) foods or a new drug, the claim
often made is that the GMO, GM food, or drug does nothing that “nature

Introduction

xviii
itself” does not already do. This argument has especially been put forth in
debates over the safety of GM foods, but the same rhetoric is in the research,
advertising, and promotion of new pharmaceuticals. The logic here is that
biotechnology is not the opposite of nature, but rather that which compli-
ments how the environment, nutrition or human health normally operates. In
fact, much biotechnology research takes its cue from nature or from the normal
functioning of the body. This is the basic approach of fields such as regener-
ative medicine or gene-based therapies. The “technology” in these practices is
seen as nothing more than biology itself, or “life itself.”
The very concept of a biotechnology is thus fraught with internal tensions.
On the one hand, the products and techniques of biotech are more “tech” than
“bio”; biology is harnessed from its “natural” state and utilized in a range of
industrial and medical applications. On the other hand, there is no “tech”,
only “bio”; the unique character of the technology is that it is fully biologi-
cal, composed of the workings of genes, proteins, cells, and tissues. On the
one hand, biotechnology appears not to be a technology at all, but only “life
itself” rearranged or recontextualized, but nevertheless performing the same
functions it always has. On the other hand, biotechnology appears to be the
new nature, the promise of a healthy and optimized body without cyborglike
accoutrements of artificial organs, pacemakers, prosthetics, or invasive surgery.
The advantage claimed for biotechnology is that it is more natural, a direct
working with “life itself.” In its ideal guise, biotechnology promises to bypass
technology altogether, a biology working upon itself.
On the surface, it appears that the tensions inherent in the concept of
biotechnology have to do with the relation between biology and technology,
between nature and artifice, and so on. But I suggest something further: the
core tension in the concept of biotechnology is not that between biology and
technology or that between the natural and the artificial, but rather a tension
between biology and political economy. The aim of this book is to present a
set of concepts for understanding this twofold tendency within biotechnol-
ogy—its globalizing tendency and its tendency to integrate biology and infor-
matics. Another aim is to develop a better understanding of the contradictory
logic of the biotech industry, its claims to be at once natural and artificial,
biological and technological. With regard to the global genome, the central
issues are those of biological exchanges, genetic and computer “codes,” and
the network effects of health and medicine.

Introduction

xix
 A Brief Overview of the Chapters

Again, a point repeated frequently throughout the book: the mere existence
of economic models in relation to biotechnology research and application is
not necessarily problematic in itself. However, when different value systems
conflict—conflicts between medical and economic value—the ethical quan-
daries and scientific controversies emerge. The Global Genome can be consid-
ered an attempt to trace and outline some of these points of tension. As
previously stated, one of the general goals of the book is to comprehend the
twofold tendency that currently characterizes the biotech industry: its glob-
alization and its integration of biology and informatics. Thus, each chapter
can be seen as a more focused exploration of some of the ontological, politi-
cal, and economic facets of biotechnology. In fact, a better, more method-
ological description of this book might be a “political economy of molecular
biology.” Today, the term political economy has largely been replaced by the
more familiar term economics, but this change in a way provides the occasion
to revitalize the philosophical and political dimensions of the former term.
A glance at the table of contents reveals a larger organizing principle of
this book as well. The three sections—encoding, recoding, and decoding—
are meant to cover the three primary activities of biotechnology today: the
encoding of biological materials into digital form, the recoding of that digital
form in various ways, and the decoding of that digital form (back) into
biological materiality. Together, these three activities form an incomplete
circle—or, rather, a spiral. The biology produced is not necessarily the biology
with which one begins. Whereas in more straightforward techniques such
as DNA synthesis, the input and output do tend to be identical, in other
instances, such as the lab-based regeneration of skin or the engineering of a
patient’s stem cells, the result may not be entirely identical, though it may
be identical enough to ensure biocompatibility. In still other instances, such
as genetic drugs or gene therapies, the output can radically diverge from the
input, and compounds taken in can often have drastic side effects. Thus, the
overall tripartite organization of encoding, recoding, and decoding is meant
to underscore the different ways in which biotechnology mediates between
the biological and the informatic.
This same tripartite division is also a political-economic one as well. In a
sense, encoding is synonymous with production, for it is in the process of encod-
ing the biological that the biotech industry is able to accrue profits (as intel-

Introduction

xx
lectual property, as a proprietary database or software). Recoding is then syn-
onymous with distribution (and its related term circulation), for the practices of
bioinformatics, database management, and computer networking are predi-
cated on the ability of biological information to be widely distributed and cir-
culated. Finally, decoding is synonymous with consumption in that, in a medical
sense at least, it is in the final output or rematerialization of biology that bio-
logical information is used, consumed, or incorporated into the body.
However, this separation of production, distribution, and consumption is
only heuristic. As Marx notes in the Grundrisse, “production, then, is also
immediately consumption, consumption is also immediately production,” and
furthermore, “distribution is not structured and determined by production,
but rather the opposite, production by distribution.”2 There are many ways
in which production is consumption (in the use of raw materials), in which
consumption is production (in the creation of need), and in which distribu-
tion conditions both production and consumption (exchange dictates what is
made and used). This confusion of categories is further illustrated in the way
in which the practices of biotechnology incorporate information technologies
at the same time that they insist on the referent of biological materiality.
Given this political-economic organization, each of the chapters within
these three sections takes up a particular field or set of practices within the
biotech industry. Chapters 2 and 3 consider the fields of bioinformatics and
genomics, respectively. In particular, chapter 2 focuses on the way that bioin-
formatics—as a practice and as an industry—redefines the problem of “life
itself” that has been at the heart of biological thinking for some time. Georges
Canguilhem’s work in the history of biology is useful in this regard, for it
connects the modern, genetic view of the body with a rich tradition that
extends from Aristotle through molecular biology. This problem of “life itself”
is also understood as inseparable from the question of economic value, and it
is in chapter 3 that the notion of “intellectual property” is explored in greater
depth. This topic links chapter 2 to chapter 3 by considering genomics from
a political-economic perspective, but one based on “excess” as elaborated by
Georges Bataille. Placing the economic critique of Marx next to Bataille allows
us to see the way in which a field such as genomics manages all that “junk
DNA” with databases and Gene Expression Markup Language (GEML).
The section on recoding contains three chapters, each of which takes up
a field that depends on or makes use of the results of bioinformatics and
genomics (chapters 2 and 3). Chapter 4 considers the recent efforts to map

Introduction

xxi
the genomes of genetically isolated ethnic populations, what some have crit-
ically referred to as biocolonialism. Michel Foucault’s work on the historical
emergence of biopolitics is helpful here in talking about how biocolonialism
makes the transition from “territory” to the “population.” Chapter 5 consid-
ers the financial strata of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries—not from
a purely economic standpoint, but rather as a layer connected to scientific and
technical advance. The concept of biomaterial labor makes a reappearance
here, in dialogue with the work of Marx as well as with the Italian autono-
mist tradition. Chapter 6 takes a look at the areas of biological warfare and
bioterrorism, areas that are at once medical and nonmedical in their applica-
tion. Foucault’s Collège de France lectures, which position biopolitics in
relation to the “war between races,” and Paul Virilio’s notion of the “genome
bomb” (which I argue against) help to situate biowarfare within the current
concerns over the weaponizing of biology. At the core of these topics is a per-
vasive concern over what I call “biological security.”
The final section, on decoding, contains two chapters that deal with the
overlapping fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Chapter 7
revisits Canguilhem’s theories of normativity as a way of elaborating the philo-
sophical and ethical challenges brought about by tissue engineering. The con-
fusion of the boundaries between biology and technology in tissue engineering
leads to a strange type of body that is at once restored and “natural,” yet
augmented, improved, and technically “optimized.” Similarly, regenerative
medicine research (including telomere research and stem cell research), dis-
cussed in chapter 8, promises a great deal, but is ultimately compromised by
the question of normativity and the Aristotelian theories of morphogenesis.
Here Virilio’s philosophy of speed helps to highlight the aporias in the
“biotechnical time” of the regenerative body, a particular kind of time that is,
as Antonio Negri points out, also a value time.
Finally, the book closes with a chapter on possible models through which
critical questions can be raised and sustained. A consideration of the discourse
of “tactical media” and “post-media” is juxtaposed to selected groups and indi-
viduals who practice what some have called “bioart,” or art projects that make
use of biological techniques, knowledges, and practices. Whether such bioart
practices can offer a viable, alternative venue for questioning biotechnology is
left an open issue for the reader.
A closing note concerning what is not in this book. For various reasons, I
have not included a number of equally important fields here, either because

Introduction

xxii
they are outside the scope of this book or because they have been dealt with
thoroughly elsewhere. For instance, I do not consider agricultural biotech-
nology or the industrial use of GMOs, largely because the focus of The Global
Genome is exclusively biomedical and genetic research in the biotech industry.
More popular topics, such as human cloning or gene patents, have been dealt
with elsewhere in more detail. The relationship between biotechnology and
popular culture is also a fascinating one that deserves more attention in a polit-
ical context, and appendix D briefly offers some informal thoughts on this
issue and several references.

Introduction

xxiii
 I

Encoding / Production

If there is no production in general, then there is also no general

production . . . production is also not only a particular produc-
tion. Rather, it is always a certain social body.
—karl marx, GRUNDRISSE
 1

The Global Genome

Biotechnology and Globalization

To speak of “biological exchanges” raises all sorts of odd images. In an era

where AIDS and bioterrorism dominate the headlines, most of us may tend
to avoid biological exchanges in favor of various defensive or prophylactic
practices. Yet biological exchanges take place all the time within the health-
care and biotechnology sectors. Various “banks” that house biological mate-
rials (blood, sperm, ova) regularly participate in the circulation of bodily
fluids. Likewise, tissues and organs are regularly distributed (legally or ille-
gally) for the purposes of transplantation. On a more quotidian level, a visit
to the doctor often involves any number of biological exchanges, from blood
or urine samples to the biological data extracted and abstracted in X rays or
blood pressure readings, all of which make their way into medical files on a
computer.
The dual biological and economic meanings of the term biological exchange
reflect the dual nature of such practices. Biological materials literally move
from one body to another via a set of techniques and technologies (transfu-
sion, insemination, transplantation). In this sense, they form a kind of network
wherein biological materials flow between nodes that may be individual
bodies or containment systems (“banks”). But such a network is not purely
biological, for it is aided by technical, medical, and legal systems that mediate
the bodies and the biological materials. Hospitals, medical technologies, and
the particular laws surrounding the acquisition and donation of materials
participate in this biological network. This means, among other things, that
a set of protocols governs this network, protocols that ensure that the
exchanges benefit both individual nodes (patients, hospitals, insurance com-
panies) and the network as a whole.
The protocols governing these biological networks are often economic and
juridical in nature, and, indeed, they are often in conflict when it comes to
the controversial issues of property and consent. The controversies surround-
ing the patenting of cell lines and genes, genetic screening in health insur-
ance, preimplantation diagnostics in in vitro fertilization, the marketing of
bioartificial tissues and organs, and a host of other topics raise fundamental
questions: Does an individual “own” his or her own body, and if so, does this
ownership constitute his or her biology as “property”? Under what conditions
are individuals authorized to sell their organs, cells, or DNA? Under what
conditions are companies or government agencies authorized to collect bio-
logical materials? Is the collected biological “information,” such as a DNA
sequence, different from “the thing itself”? Can such information be circu-
lated within an economy, totally separate from the thing itself? Such ques-
tions lie at the heart of our contemporary debates over the circulation and
exchange of biological materials.
However, these questions still only begin to address the complexities of
biological exchange. Certainly, at some level, biological exchanges have
existed for some time, from the circulation of cadavers in Renaissance anatomy
theaters to the collection of exotic artifacts in natural history museums, to the
trade in slaves during the long history of European colonial expansion. Indeed,
in this more general sense, the very development of agriculture, animal breed-
ing, and fermentation can be seen as a kind of biological exchange. If this is
the case, then biotechnology is as old as civilization itself. To gain an under-
standing of our current condition we need a way of specifying this term bio-
logical exchange beyond its more general connotations.
One way of doing this is to consider biological exchange within the context
of globalization. Although this is not the place to summarize recent theories
of globalization, we can take a few definitions of the term as a kind of short-
hand to help us situate biotechnology in relation to globalization. For
instance, consider Anthony Giddens’s definition: “Globalisation can . . . be
defined as the intensification of world-wide social relations which link distant
localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring
many miles away and vice versa.”1 This definition can be contrasted to the

Chapter 1

4
description given by Saskia Sassien, who in her analysis of “global cities,”
immigration, and labor emphasizes the relevance of place in globalization:
“The global economy materializes in a worldwide grid of strategic places, from
export-processing zones to major international business and financial centers.
We can think of this global grid as constituting a new economic geography
of centrality, one that cuts across national boundaries and across the old North-
South divide.”2 The emphasis on the local-global relationship is further
extended by Malcolm Waters, for whom globalization is “a social process in
which the constraints of geography on economic, political, social and cultural
arrangements recede, in which people become increasingly aware that they are
receding, and in which people act accordingly.”3
We should also note that theories of globalization often tend to emphasize
one or more factors in the globalizing process, be it economics, technology,
culture, or politics. For instance, Immanuel Wallerstein’s multivolume study
of “world systems” places an emphasis on the historical development of cap-
italism and its subsequent modifications. For Wallerstein, one of the defining
characteristics of modern world systems is not their exhaustiveness, but rather
the extent to which they supercede traditional nation-states. What he calls
the “European world-economy” of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is “a
‘world’ system, not because it encompasses the whole world, but because it is
larger than any juridically defined political unit. And it is a ‘world-economy’
because the basic linkage between the parts of the system is economic.”4
By contrast, sociologist Manuel Castells emphasizes the ways in which
information technologies have transformed economics, culture, and political
relations. Castells’s model is the “network,” a structure of interconnections
that stands in direct contrast to the monadic, semiautonomous subject. At the
root of any network—be it financial, political, or consumer based—is an
infrastructure for the “production of information.” As Castells notes, “[t]he
emergence of a new technological paradigm organized around new, more
powerful, and more flexible information technologies makes it possible for
information itself to become the product of the production process.”5
Such observations are also echoed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, who
define “immaterial labor” as the labor of informational problem solving
(calculation), symbol analysis (communications), and the production of affects
(entertainment).6
Theorists such as Giddens, although not ignoring the economic and tech-
nological aspects of globalization, also raise a set of issues that are primarily

The Global Genome

5
social and cultural. For Giddens, there is an equal focus on the experiential
dimensions of the economic and technological aspects of globalization. In par-
ticular, he identifies three main affects that are part of the globalizing or mod-
ernizing process. The first is a “universalizing tendency,” which is really the
simultaneous fragmentation and coordination of world cultures. The second
is time-space distanciation, the process of coordinating human activities across
temporal and spatial locales, across time zones and national boundaries. The
third is the process of “disembedding,” which is “the ‘lifting out’ of social
relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across time
and space.”7
Waters gives what is perhaps the most helpful overview of the various the-
ories of globalization and their commonalities. He suggests a tripartite analy-
sis of globalization based on the nature of the exchanges that take place. He
identifies three main types of exchanges that are constitutive of globalization:
economic exchanges, political exchanges, and cultural exchanges. Economics, politics,
and culture can indeed be found in many theories of globalization, though
their precise relations differ from one theory to the next. Each type of exchange
involves a certain unit: economic value, political power, and cultural signs.
Furthermore, Waters notes, each type of exchange has a different effect on the
globalizing process as a whole: economic exchanges “localize” (purchasing-
selling activities), political exchanges “internationalize” (international organ-
izations such as the United Nations), and cultural exchanges “globalize”
(circulation of mass media images).8
Although definitions of what is or is not an instance of globalization vary,
one trend worth pointing to is the increasing emphasis on information tech-
nologies and information networks as the paradigm for globalizing tenden-
cies.9 Nearly all accounts of globalization do attest to the advantages of
information technologies within a globalizing context. As the logic goes,
when everything, including production and services, can be accounted for by
information or reconstituted as information, the resulting fluidity and mobil-
ity leads to a condition in which the obstacles of place, nation, and geopolit-
ical distance are in effect transcended.10
Theories of globalization are helpful in understanding our contemporary
context, but they often leave out an additional type of exchange: biological
exchanges, or the exchange, circulation, and distribution of biological infor-
mation and materials. Can we add biological exchange to the theories pre-
sented by Waters, Castells, Giddens, and others? Within Waters’s model,

Chapter 1

6
biological exchange would, at first, seem to fit quite well. If economic
exchanges have to do with value, political exchanges with power, and cultural
exchanges with signs, then biological exchanges would be the exchanges,
simply, of biological “life itself.” If economic exchanges localize, political
exchanges internationalize, and cultural exchanges globalize, then biological
exchanges would rematerialize, via the concept of a genetic “code.” However,
the matter is more complicated than that, for there are a number of apparent
contradictions in biotechnology and the notion of biological exchange. For
instance, even though biotech is dominated by the concept of a genetic code,
biotech by definition deals with the realm of biology—the material, the “wet,”
messy stuff of biological science.
What, then, can we make of biological exchanges in the context of glob-
alization? It would seem that biological exchanges have very little to do with
the three types of global exchanges outlined earlier (economic exchanges, cul-
tural exchanges, political exchanges). The fluidity, mutability, and mobility
of values, signs, and power seem to be in stark contrast with the inert, messy
“stuff” of biology. It would seem that immateriality is in some way a prereq-
uisite for the mobility of globalizing exchanges. Indeed, it is difficult to talk
about networks at all without immediately bringing up information networks,
be they LANs, PANs, or WANs. And when we further consider the emer-
gence of the network as the dominant paradigm of globalization, biology
seems to be at odds with the light-speed activity of the Internet or wireless
networks. Biology seems all but left behind in the race toward digital, wire-
less, mobile networks.

What Is Biological Exchange?

However, it is precisely in the network—the structure that would seem to

exclude biology categorically—that we discover several important character-
istics of biological exchange as it stands today. Within the context of global-
ization, biological exchange can be defined as the circulation and distribution of
biological information, be it in a material or immaterial instantiation, that is medi-
ated by one or more value systems. Biological exchange is the ability to render the
biological not only as information, but as mobile, distributive, networked
information. The criteria that dictate which kinds of information are
exchanged, how they are exchanged, and between which parties have tradi-
tionally been defined by standards that are at once scientific, economic, and

The Global Genome

7
juridical. For instance, GenBank, one of the main data repositories for infor-
mation pertaining to the Human Genome Project (HGP), is supported by
federal funds, housed within the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), is
managed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI, a
subunit of the NIH), and offers free access to anyone who wishes to view the
database online via its Web site. Other genome databases, such as those
managed by Celera Genomics, Structural Genomix, or Incyte Genomics, are
proprietary databases and offer access based on a substantial subscription
(mostly from institutions or corporations). Each of these databases has partic-
ular guidelines surrounding the patentability of novel compounds or processes
discovered using their systems. In addition, the organizations housing and
managing these databases—public and private sector alike—form alliances
and partnerships with pharmaceutical corporations for drug development. The
convergence of information technology with biotechnology has spawned a new
generation of biotech businesses not only in the United States and Europe,
but also in Japan, Latin America, and India.11 Finally, databases such as
GenBank are open-ended databases; they are built and designed to be con-
stantly updated and modified and to accommodate many simultaneous data-
base searches. They are databases built for exchange.
Already we can see several characteristics that distinguish biological
exchange in its modern context from earlier examples such as agriculture or
animal breeding. First and foremost among these characteristics is the fact
that what is exchanged in biological exchange is information. That is, the
“thing” that is the unit of exchange is biological information. Now, this bio-
logical information need not be exclusively in a digital or immaterial format;
it can also exist in very material ways. Take, for example, DNA. DNA exists,
certainly, in the nucleus of every cell in our living bodies. DNA can be
extracted from our cells and kept in a test tube for diagnostics and analysis.
DNA in this in vitro state can also be transferred from one cell to another or
from one organism to another. This is the principle behind basic genetic engi-
neering. DNA can also be encoded or digitized and stored as a sequence on a
computer database. This process is, ostensibly, what the various genome
sequencing efforts are all about. DNA can also be synthesized, and, in fact, it
can be synthesized using the prior, digital form of DNA in databases. Finally,
DNA can be materialized (or rematerialized) in the form of genetic therapies,
genetic drugs, or GMOs. In such procedures, we move across many bound-
aries, and the thread that connects them all is this notion of biological infor-

Chapter 1

8
mation. Whether it is in a living cell, a database, or a test tube, what remains
constant throughout (or so it is said) is biological information.
But biological exchange is more than just information. In other words, the
aim of biological exchange is not to render everything digital and immate-
rial, despite the industry hype over fields such as bioinformatics and genomics.
Rather, the aim of biological exchange is to enable a more labile, fluid mobil-
ity across media—to the extent that it is literally immaterial whether the DNA
is in a database or in a test tube. This point cannot be stressed enough. The
aim of biological exchange—and by extension the aim of the current inter-
section between biology and computers in genetics and biotechnology—is to
define biology as information while at the same time asserting the material-
ity of biology. Biological fields such as genetics and biotech are unique in this
respect, for, like the economic categories of production and labor, they always
require material interactions at some level. Biology can never totally relin-
quish its reliance on the concepts of biological matter, for, were it to do so, it
would be indistinguishable from computer science fields such as a-life or arti-
ficial intelligence. Even when biological theories want to make claim to a tran-
scendent quality (as in theories of vitalism or animism), there is still a minimal
acceptance of the “essential” material condition of biology. Indeed, our very
cultural associations with biology evoke its material, even visceral basis: dis-
sections, lab rats, microbes, microscopes, digestion, disease, reproduction, and
decay. Thus, biological exchange is not simply the “digitization” of biology,
for biology has arguably always been enamored of the “stuff” of biological life.
What we are witnessing in biological exchange is an emphasis on the
network properties of biology through this formulation of biology equaling infor-
mation. If biology is considered to be an abstract pattern or form—not just
a formation but an in-formation—then the material substrates through which
this information is distributed are of secondary concern, and that which is
seen to be at the core of biology (pattern, information, sequence) can be seen
to exist apart from the material substrate (cell, test tube, computer). The con-
sequences of this view, which has had a long and diverse history, are mani-
fold. On a scientific level, the development of biological exchange has made
research more efficient and has opened more opportunities for the distribu-
tion and sharing of knowledge among researchers—though disputes over
patents, proprietary “discovery systems,” and privacy have often impeded as
much as facilitated this potential. On a medical level, biological exchange has
enabled more rapid and accurate diagnostics and has further formalized the

The Global Genome

9
relationship between medicine and drug treatments in many First World
health-care systems—though public concerns over genetic discrimination,
testing, and health insurance continue to be major obstacles to a fully real-
ized genetic medicine. On the economic level, biological exchange has had
perhaps the greatest impact, allowing the biotech industry to grow and diver-
sify, especially in the pharmaceutical and agricultural sectors, though the vast
inequalities between developed and developing nations limits the promised
benefits of such applications. In each of these cases, a single DNA sequence
may be what is exchanged, but, depending on the context, that DNA sequence
can be seen as a disease-related gene, a symptom for the prescription of a
certain drug, or a patent for a novel discovery. In each case, we see a DNA
molecule, the very stuff of life; but in each case we also see how biological
exchange transforms DNA into much more than just the stuff of life.
Thus, the bases for our modern version of biological exchange are that (1)
biology be understood as information and that (2) information, in this case,
be understood as being both material and immaterial, with (3) the aim of net-
working that information. What are the results of establishing these three
foundations? One result is that biological exchange creates the conditions for
networks of biological exchange that operate irrespective of the traditional
boundaries between the immaterial and the material, the natural and the arti-
ficial, the medium and the message. Biological exchange, in conceiving of
biology as information that exists—and persists—across media, radically
widens the possibility of what can be exchanged within the biological domain.
Not only is the biological commensurate with the economic (e.g., microbes,
cells, or DNA that is patented or purchased for research), but the biological
can be internally exchanged in ways that are not limited by the division
between the material and the immaterial. A DNA sequence, as previously
stated, can be extracted, used for wet-lab analysis, encoded into a computer
database, and then synthesized for further testing (see figure 1.1). DNA’s
mobility across the in vivo, in vitro, and in silico contexts enables exchanges
across media, a condition I have previously called biomedia.12 Such a mobility
to biological exchange enables a DNA sequence downloaded from GenBank’s
database to result in a synthesized DNA strand, which may then be inserted
into a bacterial plasmid for culturing. Biological molecules can be encoded
into strings of data in a computer file (in the case of genomics); digital com-
puter files can be exchanged for biological molecules (in the case of DNA syn-
thesis); biological molecules can be rendered as intellectual property (in the

Chapter 1

10
Figure 1.1 Computer networks and biological networks: the Folding@home project at
Stanford University makes use of distributed computing over the Internet to analyze the
complex phenomena of protein folding.

case of gene patents); and intellectual property can be transformed over time
into genetic medicines tested in human clinical trials.
Thus, in contemporary molecular genetics and biotechnology, biology is
information, and information is both immaterial and material. Further-
more, this biological information is understood to be operative only within a
network. Yet much of this seems contradictory: material information, imma-
terial biology, and networks that seem to be indissociable from biology itself.
I can thus state a variant of the definition given previously: biological
exchanges conceive of “life itself” as informatic, and in doing so biological
exchanges informationalize without dematerializing.

Biological Exchange in the Human Genome Project

These characteristics of biological exchange can be further illustrated by an

example. Consider the international effort to sequence and map the human

The Global Genome

11
genome, which currently goes under the cumbersome acronym IHGSC. His-
tories of the “origin” of the HGP are many; and, as may be guessed, there is
a great deal of controversy about the details—both past and future. As Michael
Fortun notes, the HGP has been as concerned with its “promissory” aspects
as with its historical origins. Fortun frames the HGP’s convoluted history as
taking place in a “future anterior,” a promise of DNA sequencing as that
which will have been the foundation for a future scientific revolution. In this
sense, the argument that the HGP will transform “all of biology” (to use biol-
ogist Walter Gilbert’s term) can be proved only by actually doing the work.
As Fortun notes, “one does not know what ‘all of biology’ is, yet one pre-
sumes, in advance, that DNA sequences are ‘fundamental’ to it—or rather,
that DNA sequences will have been fundamental to it.”13
For my purposes here, I will not reiterate the many-sided history of the
HGP. Rather, I will pick up on some of the more disputed and controversial
points, especially concerning the institutional backdrop of the HGP, for this
backdrop reveals that, already, in the “beginning,” there was an implied focus
on the integration of informatics with biology. One such point of contesta-
tion is a 1984 meeting that took place in Utah. According to some accounts,
scientists such as Charles DiLisi were gathered to discuss the future prospects
of DNA sequence analysis. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE),
the meeting turned on issues pertaining to new techniques for the analysis of
genetic mutations resulting from radiation exposure. The DoE had already
been studying such phenomena, much of the data from Hiroshima and
Nagasaki survivors. In the mid-1980s, research scientists at the DoE began
linking their research on the biological effects of radiation to the then-
emerging techniques of genetic sequencing.14 But, as Fortun notes, the DoE
was less interested in national security than in the rising economic competi-
tion from Japan in the microelectronics and computing industries. However,
a transition can be detected between this meeting and another one a year later.
In 1985, Robert Sinsheimer organized an initial meeting on the sequencing
of the human genome at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The dis-
cussion at this meeting revolved around the possibility of sequencing the
DNA of an entire genome. This meeting and subsequent meetings would
include prominent figures in the scientific community, such as James Watson,
Paul Berg, Walter Gilbert, and Leroy Hood (Hood is an important figure in
this context because he is one of the developers of the automated gene sequenc-
ing machines now commonly used in genomics labs). In addition, numerous

Chapter 1

12
accounts of the history of the HGP note that the issue of economics was also
raised at subsequent meetings, particularly on the issues of patenting and pos-
sible public-private affiliations.15 Thus, if the 1984 meeting with DeLisi was
framed by the initiatives of Cold War science, the 1985 meeting organized
by Sinsheimer was framed by the emergence of new, computer-based tech-
nologies and the possibility of an industry specific to what would later be
called genomics.
The last point is significant because, from the beginning, the idea of
mapping the human genome was indissociable from the development of new
technologies for doing so. From the beginning, the DoE developed scientific
and technological plans for its proposed mapping efforts, and informatics was
a core part of this planning. Recall that this is 1986, some five years follow-
ing the introduction of the first IBM personal computers (PCs) and just two
years following the popularity of Apple’s Macintosh. Computing was not only
becoming less expensive, but also becoming more multipurpose. In addition,
the Internet was growing and diversifying. What had begun as a military
research project in the late 1960s had by the mid-1980s become a largely
university-based, American project. The network infrastructural basics had
been in place by the mid-1970s (TCP and IP protocols), and the 1980s saw
the emergence of USENET, the WELL, the Domain Name System (DNS),
and of course a host of network-based computer viruses. These parallel devel-
opments in the computer and information technology industries had a sig-
nificant impact on the original Human Genome Initiative. Without the
promise of a future integration of informatics and biology, it is likely that the
idea of genome mapping would have been much slower to start. By 1987, the
Human Genome Initiative had obtained its first budgets from the U.S. House
and Senate Appropriations Committee, and the project now became a joint
DoE and NIH endeavor. The HGP—the initiative’s new name—was officially
launched in 1990. It included a multi-million-dollar budget, a host of labs
throughout the United States, and other special provisions, such as a working
group on ethical, legal, and social issues. In 1993, Watson was replaced by
Francis Collins as head of the HGP, and by the late 1990s the project was
internationalized in its scope, including major sequencing labs in the United
Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and China. At this point, the HGP
became the IHGSC (see table 1.1).
At the same time that the original ideas for the HGP were being organ-
ized, J. Craig Venter, an NIH research scientist, became interested in the

The Global Genome

13
Table 1.1 The “Global” Organization of the IHGSC

Total human
DNA (in
Institute Location Kilobases)

Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Cambridge, Mass. 1,196,888 kb

Research, Center for Genome
Research
The Sanger Centre Cambridge, United Kingdom 970,789 kb
Washington University Genome St. Louis, Mo. 765,898 kb
Sequencing Center
U.S. DoE Joint Genome Institute Walnut Creek, Calif. 377,998 kb
Baylor College of Medicine Human Houston, Tex. 345,125 kb
Genome Sequencing Center
RIKEN Genomic Sequencing Center Yokohama, Japan 203,166 kb
Genoscope Evry Cedex, France 85,995 kb
GTC Sequencing Center Waltham, Mass. 71,357 kb
Department of Genome Analysis, Jena, Germany 49,865 kb
Institute of Molecular Biotechnology
Beijing Genomics Institute and Human Beijing 42,865 kb
Genome Center
Multimegabase Sequencing Center, Seattle, Wash. 31,241 kb
Institute for Systems Biology
Stanford Genome Technology Center Palo Alto, Calif. 29,728 kb
Stanford Human Genome Center Stanford, Calif. 28,162 kb
University of Washington Genome Seattle, Wash. 24,115 kb
Center
Department of Molecular Biology, Keio Tokyo 17,364 kb
University School of Medicine
University of Texas Southwestern Dallas 11,670 kb
Medical Center
University of Oklahoma Advanced Norman, Okla. 10,071 kb
Center for Genome Technology
Max Planck Institute for Molecular Berlin 7,650 kb
Genetics
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. 4,338 kb
German Research Center for Braunschweig, Germany 4,639 kb
Biotechnology
Genoma Analysis Group/other various 59,574 kb

Source: Nature 409 (15 February 2001): 860–921.

Chapter 1

14
technology of automated genome sequencing. In the mid-1980s, he met with
Michael Hunkapiler at Applied Biosystems, a company formed by Leroy Hood
for the manufacture of an automated genome sequencing machine. Venter
obtained a prototype sequencer, and in 1991 he and his colleagues filed a
patent claim for approximately 2,000 human gene fragments (which were
later refuted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office [PTO]). The patent
claim set off a storm of controversy and was quickly derided by Watson, then
the head of the HGP. Venter, after leaving the NIH, went on to start an inde-
pendent genomics company—the Institute for Genomics Research (TIGR)—
where he codeveloped the “shotgun sequencing” technique now used by many
genomics labs. In 1998, he formed Celera Genomics, and announced its inten-
tions to sequence the human genome in less time and for less money than the
federally funded HGP. The rest of this story is by now familiar, with the ten-
sions and competition between the public- and private-sector projects. The
competition resulted in a 2000 press campaign that announced, with great
fanfare, the completion of a “rough draft” of the genome and that featured
front-page images of President Clinton flanked by Collins and Venter, shaking
hands.
However, such media images do not mean that the two projects—public
and private, government and corporate—have become one, unified project.
Instructive differences can be noted between them on an institutional level.
Whereas the HGP emerged out of concerns of military science, Celera
emerged out of an interest in increasing the market for biotechnology, inde-
pendent of government regulation. However, both projects are united in their
commitment to developments in high technology: informatics, sequencing,
and data management systems. In fact, Perkin-Elmer, a major manufacturer
of genome sequencing machines, supplied the tools needed for both projects.
Indeed, informatics has become one of the central meeting points in the varied
tensions between the public and private sectors. The government-funded
HGP set up the Genome Data Base in 1991 and a year later established data
access and sharing guidelines for its labs. In the mid-1990s, the Genome Data
Base evolved into GenBank (managed by the NCBI at the NIH). A standard
for molecular biology and genetics research, GenBank is accessed by more than
40,000 users daily. GenBank was also used by both the IHGSC and Celera in
the error-detection phases of their sequencing efforts. Last, changes in gov-
ernment policy concerning patenting have further blurred the division
between the public and private sector. Although the U.S. PTO guidelines

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15
prohibit the patenting of any “raw” or unaltered genetic sequence, a host of
patents have been granted for gene sequences derived from or isolated by novel
means, in effect a “back door” for patenting gene sequences. Other policies
(such as the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980) sought to encourage the economic ben-
efits of genome research by allowing labs to apply for patents based on research
carried out with federal funds.
This brief account of the institutional history of the human genome reveals
the ambiguous relationship between informatics and economics. In a sense,
informatics is seen as that which enables economic development for genomics.
The advent of new sequencing technology, combined with computer databases
and networks, has ushered in an era of what Francis Collins, Michael Morgan,
and Ari Patrinos have called “large-scale biology.”16 It is precisely the two
developments I noted at the outset—globalizing production and integrating
informatics and biology—that Collins Morgan, and Patrinos point to as the
key factors in the field of genomics. It is difficult to imagine a genome project
without the use of computers, databases, and networks (see figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Computer lab or biology lab? The Whitehead Genome Sequencing Center in
Cambridge, Mass. Image courtesy of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Chapter 1

16
However, the foundation of informatics also creates new layers of economic
valuation (in part, it is said, to cover the high costs of informatics and infor-
mation technology). The conversion of DNA into “intellectual property” is
unthinkable without an informatic infrastructure that organizes DNA into
data strings, computer files, and information visualizations. It is almost
tempting to see this conversion as a broader redefinition of DNA and biology
as a concept, a concept that is also property (a phenomenon addressed in
chapter 2).
But genomics is not only about transforming all of biology into informat-
ics, for the assumptions of materiality that still inform biological science have
their part to play as well. The IHGSC’s efforts are instructive in this regard.
Not only does the IHGSC distribute its production centers across a number
of countries, but it also distributes biological information in two types of
“banks” or databases. The first type, as stated, is the computer database. There
are currently some 200 such databases online, with more than 500 commer-
cial software packages for sale and a host of noncommercial freeware or open
source projects as well.17 Aside from genomics databases, there are databases
for comparative genomics (genomes of different organisms), disease genome
databases, and databases dedicated to specific DNA fragments such as single
nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or expressed sequence tags (ESTs). In addi-
tion to this more familiar informatic type of database, however, there are also
a host of “wet” biological banks or “libraries,” which have been the conven-
tional way of archiving genetic material before the widespread introduction
of computers into the lab. An example is the bacterial artificial chromosome
(BAC). As its name indicates, the BAC involves using simple bacteria (which
have a small, circular DNA or “plasmid” as their genome) as the host for a
gene sequence from a human sample. Using the cut-and-splice techniques of
genetic engineering, scientists can insert the human gene into the bacterial
plasmid, thereby creating an in vitro database. As the bacteria replicates, so
will the inserted human DNA, making for a kind of biological copy machine.
Though more cumbersome than the manipulation of computer files, BACs
have been extensively used by the IHGSC labs in tandem with the computa-
tional methods of sequencing and alignment.
The two types of databases employed by genomics—computer databases
(UNIX) and biological databases (BACs)—demonstrate the extent to which
biotechnology privileges biological information across material substrates.
Furthermore, inasmuch as a database is not a database unless it is networked

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17
or accessed, these two types of databases form a complex, global genomics
network that spans communications as well as geographical relations. In this
way, the human genome is global in a technological sense: it is an online data-
base, accessible all over the world, a database to which researchers in labs all
across the world contribute and from which they retrieve data. The human
genome is global in a scientific sense: the ease of access and distribution of
data also means that scientific knowledge can be shared worldwide. The
human genome is also global in an economic sense: data in the genome data-
base are directly connected to data in the various U.S. and EU patent data-
bases (a connection that, in turn, restricts the sharing of information). In
addition, many pharmaceutical companies that do drug development based
on genome data are “global” companies in that their administrative, produc-
tion, distribution, sales, and research-and-development (R&D) departments
may be spread across different regions of the globe. The human genome is
global in a political sense as well: the IHGSC is composed of labs, institutes,
and universities from the United States, Europe (United Kingdom, France,
Germany), and Japan—a kind of United Nations of genetics. Finally, the
human genome is global in a cultural sense: the pervasiveness of genetics
themes in popular culture and the mass media in different cultures attests to
the increasing popularity of the “cultural icons” of cloning, genetic engineer-
ing, greedy corporations, and “mad scientists.”
We should also note a number of inconsistencies in this view of genomics
as a “global” activity, however. For instance, the IHGSC is a selectively global
endeavor; that is, only developed nations with the technological and economic
infrastructure to support bioscience research are included in its membership.
This exclusivity has meant, among other things, that the IHGSC has set both
technical and political criteria for a globally accepted, modern science. In addi-
tion, despite the press that the IHGSC is a “public” endeavor (as opposed to
the privatized genome project by Celera), the term public in this context means
something very specific: that the IHGSC centers in the United States (for
example) are federally funded and that the results of the genome mapping
research are made available to the public via the Internet. Although these are
positive steps toward making biological research and knowledge “open
source,” a number of questions follow: for example, has this public project
generated any patents or public-private sector alliances that might inhibit the
accessibility of information? At the very least, we can note that public in such
“Big Science” projects does not necessarily mean free of economic interest.

Chapter 1

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Again, it is not the very fact of economics that is problematic in itself (for
funding is always a reality), but whether certain kinds of economic interests
may inhibit rather than facilitate scientific innovation. Finally, a point about
tools: although much was made about the division between the IHGSC and
Celera as a split over public and privatized values, a third group joined the
two sides, Perkin-Elmer, the manufacturer of technologies for life science
research, such as automated genome sequencing computers. If the mapping
of the human genome has been a technology-driven quest, then it would
appear that Perkin-Elmer (and not the IHGSC or Celera) is the real motor
behind the genome mapping process. These and other characteristics serve to
remind us that genomics is a selectively global industry, creating a specific
map determined by Western science, technology, and governmental and eco-
nomic interests.
If the IHGSC is an example of a globalizing, biological exchange, then we
might ask a further question: Has the exchange of biology not been a part of
classical biotechnologies as well (e.g., livestock, breeding, agriculture)?
Earlier, I pointed out that, in a very general sense, biotechnology can be con-
sidered as old as civilization itself if we include such practices. Biological
exchanges, in this case, would simply be any appropriation and instrumen-
talization of nature, a definition that cannot account for the specificities of
globalization and the biotech industry. How can we distinguish classical
modes of biological exchange from contemporary ones? One of the primary
concepts that distinguishes modern genetics and biotechnology from earlier
examples is the role that information plays in articulating our knowledge
about biological “life itself.” Scholars and historians of science have long since
noted the close ties between cybernetics and biology in the development of
molecular biology during the post–World War II era. Indeed, as early as
1963—tens years after the Watson-Crick publications on the structure of
DNA—the philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem was situating the
then-emerging field of molecular biology and genetics within the larger
framework of the history of biology. As Canguilhem noted in one article,
“messages, information, programs, code, instructions, decoding: these are the
new concepts of the life sciences.”18 At the same time, molecular biologists
such as Jacques Monod and François Jacob were fond of describing protein
synthesis and gene expression as if they were computer systems. I explore this
transformation of biology into information in chapter 2, but, for the time
being, let me note that the influence of cybernetics and information theory in

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19
molecular biology has had profound consequences in the development of
a biotech industry. Online genome-databases, gene-finding software, and
genome-sequencing computers can be seen as the technical outcome of this
intersection between biology and informatics. In a historical sense and in a
contemporary, technical context, the ongoing motto of molecular genetics and
biotechnology has been “biology is information.”
However, it is one thing to note how the metaphor of information has been
employed within molecular biology, but quite another to suggest that that
metaphor is instrumentalized in artifacts such as DNA chips or genome data-
bases. As Lily Kay and Evelyn Fox Keller have noted, when the concepts from
cybernetics and information theory found their way into molecular biology,
they inadvertently raised fundamental questions about the substance of “life
itself.”19 The concept of information is actually a nonconcept, it holds no
content, only data. In the late 1940s, the mathematician and engineer Claude
Shannon was explicit on this point: information had nothing to do with
content or the message. All that was important was that a certain quantity
of information sent at point A arrives at point B.20 By contrast, molecular
biologists working during the same period were equally explicit about the
content of DNA and proteins. For Watson and Crick, the structure of DNA
was intimately tied to its sequence, or its “content.” Indeed, by the time
molecular biologists of the late 1960s were at work on “cracking the genetic
code,” all that mattered was the content. By the time the HGP was first
proposed by the U.S. DoE and NIH in the late 1980s, the content or sequence
was the primary goal, with structure (e.g., proteins) being of secondary
concern.
In short, molecular biology has continually dealt with the tensions between
two views of biological life: one view is that biology is indissociable from bio-
logical materiality, from the very “stuff” of life (molecules, cells, tissues, and
so on). Another, opposite view is that biological life is a kind of immaterial
pattern or sequence, information that is separate from its material instantia-
tion. These tensions between content and form, quality and quantity, sequence
and structure revolve around the basic premise that biology is information.
However, the key to understanding the complexities of genetics and biotech-
nology is in the realization of a paradox at the core of the concept of biologi-
cal exchange: that biology is information, and, crucially, that information is
both material and immaterial. One of the major tensions that resulted from
the introduction of information theory and cybernetics into molecular biology

Chapter 1

20
is this tension between biology and informatics, the material and immaterial
views of biological life.
What do such tensions say about the concept of biological exchange? For
one, they point to the operative tension within molecular genetics and biotech-
nology: the domain of the biological is at once the living body, an in vitro
cell culture, a sequence in a computer database, a process of genetic recombi-
nation or modification, even a file that describes a patent on a DNA sequence.
Again, however, the fundamental tension within molecular genetics and
biotechnology in no way implies the unfeasibility of these fields and their
practices. In a sense, it can be suggested that molecular biology and its related
fields are constituted by this tension between the biological and the infor-
matic. Biological exchange, then, can be understood as being based on two
seemingly contradictory statements: that biology is information, and that infor-
mation is both immaterial and material. This foundation enables biological
exchange to take place on a level akin to the economic, cultural, and politi-
cal exchanges we see in globalization.

Biopolitics in the Global Genome

If biological exchange is constituted by the contradictory—yet operative—

relation between the material and the immaterial, the biological and the infor-
matic, what is needed is a way of accounting for the operative nature of
biological exchanges. That is, despite (or, perhaps, because of ) these tensions,
biological exchanges happen daily, as we saw in the example of the HGP. We
can continue in this direction by bringing together two further concepts that
will help to emphasize the social, political, and economic aspects of biologi-
cal exchange, as well as the scientific and technological aspects. These two
concepts are Michel Foucault’s notion of “biopolitics” and, later, the notion of
“species being” formulated by Karl Marx.
First, however, we can begin by discussing the Foucauldian concept of
biopolitics. Much of Foucault’s interest in the life sciences can be understood
as an interest in the manifold ways in which “power takes hold of life.” For
Foucault, the nature of political power underwent a gradual change during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in the way in which
political power related to the life of its subjects through the concept of the
“population.” Yet Foucault’s context for his discussion of politics was not that
of contemporary biotech, but rather the eighteenth-century practices of

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21
demographics and population control. Thus, our question: How do we under-
stand Foucault’s concept of “biopolitics” after Foucault? That is, how has the
concept of biopolitics been transformed in the current context of the biotech
industry? What does biopolitics mean in an era in which genetic engineering
is a routine practice, in which biotechnologies are used in both medical and
nonmedical areas (law, engineering, computer science, warfare), in an era in
which new, hybrid technologies such as genome databases and genetic drugs
regularly appear?
Immediately, I should reiterate the twofold observation with which I
started: on the one hand, the globalizing tendencies of the biotech industry
and, on the other hand, the increasing integration of biology and infor-
matics, molecular biology and computer science, DNA and data. Yet, we can
already see the nascent evidence of this contemporary trend in the way
Foucault talks about biopolitics. For instance, in his inaugural lecture at the
Collège de France, he outlined as one of his future concerns the production of
“the knowledge of heredity,” or the role of genetics in the construction of the
population.21 Likewise, one of the defining characteristics of Foucault’s
concept of biopolitics is the role that the mathematically driven science of
statistics plays in defining the population as an entity amenable to political
control. Foucault links statistics and its related practices to the emergence of
the field of political economy; in such a context, statistics, demographics, and
the census become “sciences of the state.”
It can be said that Foucault’s emphasis on the emergence of the political
concept of “the population” stems from these two innovations in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: on the one hand, the development
of biological fields such as natural history, nosology, evolutionary and
contagion theories and, on the other hand, the application of mathematical
and statistical techniques toward those living beings, the “living
biomass,” that constitutes the state. We can, then, take a new look at
Foucault’s concept of “biopolitics” with the twofold tendencies of biotechno-
logy in mind.
Foucault calls “biopolitics” that mode of organizing, managing, and above
all regulating “the population,” considered as a biological, species entity. This
concept is differentiated, but not opposed to, “anatomo-politics,” in which a
range of techniques, gestures, habits, and movements—most often situated
within social institutions such as the prison, the hospital, the military, the
school—collectively act on the individual and individualized body of the

Chapter 1

22
subject. In a 1976 lecture at the Collège de France, Foucault summarized the
distinction between these two types of biopower:

Unlike discipline, which is addressed to bodies, the new nondisciplinary power is

applied not to man-as-body but to the living man, to man-as-living-being; ultimately,
if you like, to man-as-species. . . . And this new technology that is being established
is addressed to a multiplicity of men, not to the extent that they are nothing more
than their individual bodies, but to the extent that they form, on the contrary, a global
mass that is affected by overall processes characteristic of birth, death, production,
illness, and so on. So after a first seizure of power over the body in an individualizing
mode, we have a second seizure of power that is not individualizing, but, if you like,
massifying, that is directed not at man-as-body but at man-as-species. After the
anatomo-politics of the human body established in the course of the eighteenth
century, we have, at the end of that century, the emergence of something that is no
longer an anatomo-politics of the human body, but what I would call a “biopolitics”
of the human race.22

Foucault mentions the regulation of birth and death rates, disease control and
patient monitoring in hospitals, as well as more contemporary examples of
consumer data, individual identification forms, health insurance, health data
related to sexuality and psychology, and institutional surveillance of subjects.
Principle among these and other examples is the accumulation and ordering
of different types of information. The fields of statistics and demography are
thus key developments in the modern forms of biopolitics. The population is
articulated in such a way that its nontotalization may be rerouted via methods
or techniques of statistical quantification. This is not only a mode of efficiency,
but also a political economy of subjects and bodies. The result—or rather the
aim—is the development of “a power that exerts a positive influence on life,
that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to
precise controls and comprehensive regulations.”23
However, what makes Foucault’s concept of biopolitics useful for a critical
understanding of the biotech industry today is that it highlights two ten-
dencies that are a core part of the practices of biotechnology. First, biopoli-
tics defines an object of governing, which, as the quote earlier states, is put
in specifically biological, species terms: this is the modern concept of “popu-
lation.” The concept of the population defines, for Foucault, “a new body, a
multiple body, a body with so many heads that, while they might not be

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23
infinite in number, cannot necessarily be counted. Biopolitics deals with the
population, with the population as political problem, as a problem that is at
once scientific and political, as a biological problem and as power’s problem.
And I think that biopolitics emerges at this time.”24
Foucault notes a gradual historical shift from the governance of territories
to the governance of populations. Population does not just mean the masses or
groups of people geographically bound (that is, population is not the same as
territory). Rather, the population is a flexible articulation of individualizing
and collectivizing tendencies—“the endeavor, begun in the eighteenth
century, to rationalize the problems presented to governmental practice by the
phenomena characteristic of a group of living human beings constituted
as a population: health, sanitation, birthrate, longevity, race.”25 In this sense,
eighteenth-century medical interventions—programs such as the “medical
police” programs in Prussia, urban hygiene regulations in Paris, and the
English Poor Laws—had as their aim the correlation between political-
economic health and biological or species health. That is, biopolitics has as
one of its principle aims the nuanced coordination between individual and
mass bodies in which the political existence of the state is consonant with the
“health” of the state.
Along with this, biopolitics defines a means of production of data sur-
rounding its object, the population. This includes asking how data pertinent
to the regulation of the health of the population can be extracted from the
biological-political population.

The mechanisms introduced by biopolitics include forecasts, statistical estimates, and

overall measures. And their purpose it not to modify any given phenomenon as such,
or to modify a given individual insofar as he is an individual, but, essentially, to inter-
vene at the level at which these general phenomena are determined, to intervene at
the level of generality. . . . And most important of all, regulatory mechanisms must
be established to establish an equilibrium, maintain an average, establish a sort of
homeostasis, and compensate for variations within this general population and its
aleatory field.26

Within biomedicine, the “vital statistics” of reproduction, mortality rates, the

spread of diseases, and other factors become means of monitoring the popu-
lation as a single, dynamic entity.27 As a defined unit, the population-species
can not only be studied and analyzed, but also be extrapolated, its character-

Chapter 1

24
istic behaviors projected into plausible futures (growth, development, etc.).
The proto–information sciences of demographics and, later, statistics provided
a technical ground for a more refined, mathematically based regulation and
monitoring of the population. As Ian Hacking notes, “[o]ne can tell the story
of biopolitics as the transition from the counting of hearths to the counting
of bodies. The subversive effect of this transition was to create new categories
into which people had to fall and so to create and to render rigid new con-
ceptualizations of the human being.”28 In a historical analysis of the “statis-
tical enthusiasm” that swept English bureaucratic practices in the nineteenth
century, Hacking notes a number of significant developments in Western
biopolitics: the immense agglomeration of data concerning sicknesses of all
types and kinds, the incorporation of the biological processes of sickness into
statistical calculation, and, finally, a number of governmental and bureaucratic
offices whose express purpose was to collect and categorize these data, thereby
forming a system in which each individual was accounted for via the science
of vital statistics. “Disease, madness, and the state of the threatening under-
world, les misèrables, created a morbid and fearful fascination for numbers
upon which the bureaucracies fed.”29
It is important to note that biopolitics is not simply a technique employed
by governments for homogenizing the mass of its citizens. A key point stressed
by Foucault is that the “governmentality” of biopolitical practices is pre-
dicated on a dual approach that both universalizes and individualizes the
population. Biopolitics accounts for “each and every” element of the popula-
tion, the individual and the group, and the groups within the group (the
poor, the unemployed, the resident alien, the chronically ill). In this gradated
approach, populations can exist in a variety of contexts (defined by territory,
economic/class groupings, ethnic groupings, gender-based divisions, or social
factors)—all within a framework analyzing the fluxes of biological activity
characteristic of the population. Such groupings do not make sense, however,
without a means of defining the criteria of grouping—not just the individual
subject (and in Foucault’s terminologies subject is also a verb), but a subject
that can be defined in a variety of ways, marking out the definitional bound-
aries of each grouping. As individuated subjects, some may form the homo-
genous core of a group, others may form its boundaries, its limit cases. The
methodology of biopolitics is therefore informatics, but a use of informatics
in a way that reconfigures biology as an information resource. In biopolitics,
the body is a database, and informatics is the search engine.30

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25
 In the context of the contemporary biotech industry, what is helpful about
Foucault’s concept of biopolitics is the way in which it historically identifies
two elements central today to the ongoing development of biotechnology: the
role of biological knowledge and the techniques of informatic data manage-
ment and agglomeration. In the integration of biology and informatics, biopolitical
practices establish novel modes of regulation, management, and control. In fact, the
effects of biopolitics—medical normativity, an emphasis on the security of the
population, and the development of a political economy—can be seen as
issuing from the particular relationship between biology and informatics in
the biopolitical viewpoint.
After defining its object (the population) and its method (informatics),
biopolitics reformulates power as a positive, generative function and the role
of governance in terms of “security.” Here it is important to reiterate that, for
Foucault, biopolitics is most sharply differentiated from the sovereign model
by its generative characteristics. If the sovereign was defined in part by the
right to condemn to death, biopolitics is defined by the right to foster life:
“One might say that the ancient right to take life or let live was replaced by
a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death.”31 For the classical
political economists—Malthus, Smith, Ricardo—the population was an
entity at once volatile and yet inscribed by artificial boundaries, by the knowl-
edge of natural history, biology, and, later, evolution. The population was
therefore characterized by a number of problems that defined it: it could be
unstable, vulnerable to the collective effects of biological processes (disease,
infection, sanitation). Not only was the population biological, but its fluctu-
ations affected the body politic—the laboring body, the consuming body, the
military body, and so forth.
Thus, the imperative of security in biopolitics is at once biological and
political. For Foucault, the more familiar security of territory is further ela-
borated in a security of the population, “in a word, a matter of taking control
of life and the biological processes of man-as-species and of ensuring that they
are not disciplined, but regularized.”32 The security of biopolitics thus “has
to do with the preservation, upkeep, and conservation of the ‘labor force.’
No doubt, though, the problem is a wider one. It arguably concerns the
economico-political effects of the accumulation of men.”33
Despite this imperative of security in biopolitics, the relation between life
and politics within a technoscientific frame is never obvious or stable. In both
the sovereign and liberal-democratic formations, we find what Georgio

Chapter 1

26
Agamben calls a “zone of indistinction” between “bare life” and the qualified
life of the citizen.34 In more contemporary situations, we find what Hardt and
Negri refer to as “living immaterial labor” (the “intellectual labor” of the
information technology industries, technoscience, and media industries).35
Biopolitics is therefore never an ideology, but rather a particular problem
emerging within protocological relations, about how and whether to distin-
guish “life” from “politics.”
The security of biopolitics is precisely this challenge of managing a
network of bodies, data, and their interlinkages—travel advisories, global
health alerts, emergency-response protocols, selective quarantines, high-tech
diagnostics, and the medical and economic assertion of newer and better pre-
scription drugs. The problem of security for biopolitics is the problem of cre-
ating boundaries that are selectively permeable. Whereas certain transactions
and transgressions are fostered (trade, commerce, tourism), others are block-
aded or diverted (information sharing, a biological commons, migrating). All
of these network activities, many of which have become routine in techno-
logically advanced sectors of the world, stem from a foundation that is at once
biological and technological.
To summarize briefly, in Foucault’s concept of “biopolitics” there is an
implicit connection between two modes of articulating biological “life itself.”
One is an informatic view of the biological domain, its dynamisms, its tem-
poral processes, its manifest characteristics. Foucault locates the emergence of
this view in the eighteenth century, with the birth of demographics, politi-
cal economy, and statistics. This informatic view of biological processes—
birth and death rates, public health and disease, the formation of state
hospitals—has its roots in a set of techniques for quantifying and thus, in a
more refined manner, for articulating “life itself.” Along with this, Foucault
also points to the shift in modern forms of statecraft, from a concern with ter-
ritories to a concern over “the population.” The emergence of the concept of
the population within state-management forces is significant for Foucault, for
it defines the health of the population as the foundation of the health of the
body politic. This concept of the population is, as Foucault notes, one
grounded in the developing sciences of natural history, biology, and, later, evo-
lutionary biology. The population is not only a political matter, but also a
biological matter—and today, a genetic matter.
Thus, we have a constellation of a number of issues central to the con-
cept of biopolitics: race-population, biology-genetics, statistics-informatics,

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27
variation-polymorphism. One is tempted to see a secret link between the two
methodological (and ontological) shifts Foucault notes: an informatic view of
life and a genetic approach to life. Despite the uncanny intimacy between
these two threads—the informatic and the biological—Foucault never makes
an explicit link between them, except by a general inference that both the
science of statistics and the science of life (bio-logy) constitute a biopolitics, a
bioscience of the state.36 Although these sciences, taken individually, are
explicit in biopolitical practices, the precise link between them is elusive, and
Foucault rarely addresses their exact relation. One reason for this is that
neither perspective, in itself, can fully address the transformations in both the
nascent life sciences and the equally nascent approach of informatics, for it is
not that a changing informatic approach addresses an unchanging set of con-
cepts surrounding biological life, or vice versa. Both undergo significant
changes. And it can be argued that those changes do not happen concurrently,
but separately, although in coextension.37
To return to my initial question: How has biopolitics changed in the
current context of the biotech industry? What is the specific biopolitics of
biotechnologies? I can begin answering these questions by noting that the
nascent relationship between population and statistics in Foucault’s discus-
sion of biopolitics is magnified and developed in the biotech industry, which
results in the current integration and management of the relationship between
biology and computers, genetics and informatics. Fields as diverse as
genomics, patenting, GM foods, and pharmaceuticals share this basic com-
mitment to the relationship between genetics and informatics. Biopolitics can
be understood today as the ongoing regulation of the bioinformatic inclusion of “life
itself” into the political domain. What results is a continuous production and
permeation of “life itself” in contexts that are medical, social, economic, and
political. Biopolitics mediates between genetics and informatics. The point of
mediation is a certain notion of “information,” which derives from commu-
nications, cybernetics, and information theory. In biopolitics, however, a twist
is added: information is not exclusively immaterial or disembodied; informa-
tion in biopolitics is precisely that which can account for the material and
embodied and, furthermore, that which can produce the material, the embod-
ied, the biological, the living—”life itself.” Information is the point of medi-
ation through which biopolitics regulates genetics and informatics into a
sophisticated mode of governmentality or control.

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 This notion of “life itself” that is produced by and drives biopolitics is
understood to be consonant with an informatic view of the world. Genome
databases, biological “libraries” of cell lines, patient databases at hospitals and
clinics, prescription databases, insurance databases, online medical services,
and a host of other innovations are transforming the understanding of “life
itself” into an understanding of informatics. Again, it is important to stress
that this transformation does not have a dematerializing, disembodied effect.
Quite the contrary. The pills, therapies, test results, diagnostic measures,
insurance rates, and foods are the material output of this informatic view. In
rarer cases, cell therapies, in vitro fertilization, genetic screening, and tissue
engineering are literal instances of this biopolitical condition, in which data
is made flesh.
Biopolitics continually regulates the relation between biology and infor-
matics within the context of political and economic concerns. It does this in
order to reconfigure the biological domain and “life itself” as open to inter-
vention, control, and governance. At a very specific level, what is produced
from this process are unique artifacts such as genome databases, prescription
drugs, medical therapies, test results, insurance rates, patents, foods, and net-
works of uneven, asymmetrical production, distribution, and exchange. At a
general level, what is produced from this process is the very same concept of
“life itself” from which biopolitics begins. “Life itself” is the product of
biopolitics, and there is nothing more natural than “life itself.” If politics is
biopolitics, and if biopolitics is fundamentally productive, then what is pro-
duced is a notion of “life itself” that is amenable to governmentality through
the lens of informatics. It is in this sense that “life itself” is both material and
informatic.

The Species Being in the Global Genome

If we can indeed “upgrade” Foucault’s notion of biopolitics to contemporary

biotechnology, we are able to begin to understand how the operative tension
(of the material and immaterial, the biological and technological) in biotech-
nology works. We have seen how a biopolitical viewpoint has as its aim the
ongoing management and regulation of both the biological and the informatic
domains. However, this view leaves the relation between biological “life itself”
and economics in the background, or, rather, as a derivation of the aims of

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“governmentality.” Although Foucault was careful to articulate the economic
dimensions of biology within the concept of biopolitics, we nevertheless need
a way of bringing to the forefront the manifold economic characteristics of
the biotech industry. Be it in terms of genetic patents, government-funded
research, drug development, or health-care policy, the way that biopolitics
manages the relation between “population” (its biological element) and “sta-
tistics” (its informatic element) is in many ways mediated by one or more
systems of value. Thus, in addition to Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, we
can add another concept to our arsenal, one that places a greater emphasis on
the biology-economics relationship. This concept is what Marx called the
“species being” in his early writings.
What Marx brings to our current understanding of the biotech industry is
a way of seeing biology, economics, and politics as inseparable. Following
Marx’s lead, this shift in viewpoint requires not just philosophy, but also a
consideration of the “hidden abode of production” in biotechnology, the tech-
niques and technologies that constitute biology as a technology, bioinformat-
ics as in industry, and genetics as an economy. It requires a particular mode
of reading. It requires the reader to read someone such as Marx through the
lens of biotechnology. Although Marx’s earlier works are often criticized for
their tendency to idealize the human being’s relationship with nature, there
is much to be gained by a reconsideration of the early Marx—but through the
lens of biotechnology. In particular, it is Marx’s concept of the “species being,”
found in its most elaborated form in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
of 1844, that brings together biology and economics in a way that helps us
understand the approach of the contemporary biotech industry.
Marx’s 1844 manuscripts are most often read for the passages concerning
alienation and “estranged labor”—the condition in which “the object which
labor produces . . . confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the
producer.”38 In a capitalist system, the human subject, having nothing to sell,
must sell his or her capacity for work (what Marx would later call “labor
power”). But this then involves transforming the capacity for work into a
“thing,” an object for purchase and for sale. The result is that neither the pro-
ducts of labor nor the laboring activity itself belongs to the human subject,
for they have been sold in return for wages. The process of laboring and the
products of labor do not directly benefit the human subject doing the labor-
ing. These products, which enter the market, become so many “alien objects,”
or “labor which has been congealed in an object.”39 Your actions are not your

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own, nor are the things that you produce, which are the results of your actions.
In Marx’s paradoxical formulation, the “increasing value of the world of things
proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men.”40 The
more you produce, the less you are. Marx emphasizes this point (in some ways
a phenomenological point) by making reference to the relation between labor
and “life”: “The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer
belongs to him but to the object. . . . Whatever the product of his labor is,
he is not.”41
However, Marx’s points concerning life, labor, and estrangement make
sense only if the act of production or labor is seen to be inimical to being
“human.” That is, the human subject can become alienated and disenfran-
chised as a laborer only if there is some foundational link between productive
activity and the “life,” which is then pulled apart and separated into purchased
labor power, and a “life” driven by immediate necessities. This, in turn,
requires that we think of production or productive activity as a core part of
the human condition. Indeed, Marx stresses this point both in early writings
and in the Grundrisse and Capital, although it takes different shapes and forms
in the later works. “[T]he productive life is the life of the species.”42 “The
only thing distinct from objectified labor, is non-objectified labor, labor which is
still objectifying itself, labor as subjectivity.”43 “The labor process . . . is pur-
poseful activity aimed at the production of use-values. . . . It is the universal
condition for the metabolic interaction between man and nature, the ever-
lasting nature-imposed condition of human existence . . . it is common to
all forms of society in which human beings live.”44 In general, productive
activity—but not necessarily “work”—is, for Marx, the core of what it means
to be human, both in the sense that production qualifies the human subject
and in the sense that the human subject becomes human through productive
activity.45 But this fundamental link between life and labor also provides the
conditions for the estrangement of labor from life, production from the
species. In this way, “private property is thus the product, the result, the
necessary consequence, of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker
to nature and to himself.”46
But, aside from the points Marx makes concerning production, what is
often left undermentioned is the fact that he frames his discussion of estranged
labor within the context of biology. The 1844 manuscripts articulate three
types of estranged labor that result when the human subject treats his
or her capacity for labor as a thing for purchase and sale. There is, first, the

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estrangement of the human subject from the products of labor, from what he
or she makes. The products of labor are not direct use values and do not
directly benefit the human subject making them. Second, there is an estrange-
ment from the very process of production, from the very productive activity
itself. The capacity to produce is dissociated from the human subject’s expe-
rience of being a subject and is externalized in commodity production.47 Thus,
both what is made and the act of making are rendered into something outside
of the human subject. Finally, Marx notes that estranged labor ultimately sep-
arates the human subject from an integral sense of being “human.” Estranged
labor transforms the human “species being, both nature and his spiritual species
property, into a being alien to him, into a means to his individual existence.
It estranges man’s own body from him, as it does external nature and his
spiritual essence, his human being.”48
What does Marx mean by this curious term, the species being?49 Within a
discussion on political economy, we as readers are suddenly confronted with
explicit references to biology and natural history. Marx mentions the estrange-
ment of the species being only after his explanation of the estrangement from
the products and process of labor: “Man is a species being, not only because
in practice and in theory he adopts the species as his object . . . but also
because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself
as a universal and therefore a free being.”50 Again, such statements make
sense only if we begin from the premise that nonalienated production and
productive activity are in some ways the core of what it means to be “human.”
For something to become estranged, it must first be integral and integrated.
The estrangement from the species being is, then, the most wide-reaching
form of estranged labor and, possibly, the most fundamental. However, in
the context of political economy and biology, this conclusion raises more
questions than it answers. What exactly is this supposedly nonestranged,
nonalienated form of production? How exactly does the very biology of the
human being play into the production and productive activity of the “species
being”?
Marx’s concept of the species being is actually a cluster of related concepts.
As noted, the term species being refers simply and directly to the capacity for
productive activity that is specific to human beings. On a basic level, then, a
consideration of production in the context of political economy also necessi-
tates some consideration of production as a biological activity. As Marx notes
in volume 1 of Capital:

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Labor is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man,
through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between
himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature. He sets
in motion the natural forces which belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head and
hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own
needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in
this way he simultaneously changes his own nature.51

However, production in general is not specific to human beings. Marx does

note that animals also produce, but what defines the species being for Marx
is the way in which human production and productive activity differ from
production by animals. For instance, whereas animals produce for the short
term and for immediate need, human beings also produce for the long term,
and they can produce in absence of immediate need. Further, whereas animals
display complex modes of producing (Marx often cites “social insects” such as
ants and bees), human beings produce intellectually and physically, and both
forms of production constitute a material production than can exist ideally
before it exists actually.52
Perhaps, for Marx, the key differentiator between human and animal pro-
duction lies in the concept of “life activity.” As previously intimated, pro-
duction and productive activity are the crux of the species being. Marx notes:

For, in the first place labor, life-activity, productive life itself, appears to man merely as
a means of satisfying a need—the need to maintain the physical existence. Yet
the productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. The whole
character of a species—its species character—is contained in the character of its
life-activity; and free, conscious activity is man’s species character. . . . Conscious
life-activity directly distinguishes man from animal life-activity. It is just because of
this that he is a species being.53

The particular life activity of the human species is not only the ability to work
conceptually or to work in the long-term or even to work outside of imme-
diate necessity. The particular life activity of the human is that its being is in
its doing, and the character of its doing is that it always has the whole species
being as the goal. Conscious, reflective life activity directed toward the species
being as a whole is thus the aim of the species being. This goal is most empha-
sized when life-activity is expropriated in a capitalist system:

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The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species life: for he duplicates
himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and
therefore he contemplates himself in a world that he has created. In tearing away from
man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species
life, his real species objectivity, and transforms his advantage over animals into the
disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.54

Life activity can thus operate at several levels, depending on the context. The
context provides what Marx calls the “means of life,” of production. Life acti-
vity can certainly be an immediate “means of life” in the sense of providing
basic necessities for survival and continued maintenance. Life activity can also
be a more general “means of life” in the sense that production and productive
activity are understood to be an integral, nonestranged activity that defines
what it means to be “human.”55 Finally, life activity is also the object of expro-
priation in economic systems such as industrial capitalism, in which biologi-
cal life activity (or labor power) is rendered into a commodity to be purchased
and sold. In this case, life activity becomes an estranged “means of life,” a life
activity that is forced to produce that which it does not use or to carry out
productive activities that bear no direct relation to the human subject or the
species being.
Our conceptual cluster is growing: species being, life activity, means of life.
One final, important concept follows from these others, and it has to do with
how the species being’s life activity (productive activity) relates to its envi-
ronment. Although this is not the place to discuss Marx’s complicated atti-
tudes toward “nature,” what I can note is that the species being is constituted
as much by its internal biology as by its being embedded in an environment.
Marx refers to this integral relation between species being and environment
as an “inorganic body”:

The universality of man is in practice manifested precisely in the universality which

makes all nature his inorganic body—both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means
of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life-activity. Nature
is man’s inorganic body—nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself the human body.
Man lives on nature—means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in
continuous intercourse if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is
linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of
nature.56

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The environmental milieu of the species being is as defining a characteristic
as its anatomy, physiology, or biology. The “inorganic body” Marx speaks of
is also a nonhuman body, a collective body that is, despite its collective char-
acter, highly differentiated. However, to keep such statements from descend-
ing into the naive ecological idealism of the 1960s (or indeed of German
romanticism prior to Marx), it is important to emphasize the biological and
biotechnological lens through which Marx is being considered here. Marx’s
notion of the inorganic body takes on greater significance in light of modern
debates concerning epigenetics (“nature versus nurture”; genetic effects of
environmental factors), deep ecology (borrowing from systems theory
approaches), and the ongoing research into the polygenetic factors of disease
(studies in gene expression networks and biopathways). In effect, Marx’s inor-
ganic body already provides a link between a more complex systems view of
the organism and the manifold ways in which the organism is “put to work”
in various biotech industries.
These views can be summarized by noting that in bringing together
biology and political economy, Marx’s notion of the species being may serve
as a means of emphasizing the biological dimensions of production, without
assuming biological essentialism. This last point is crucial, for it serves to indi-
cate one of the critical claims Marx makes: the species being is more than merely
biological. Marx outlines several elements that distinguish the human species
being from other forms (e.g., the emphasis on conscious, reflective action),
but, even more important, he also refuses any “state of nature” narrative that
would presuppose a primordial species being prior to estranged labor in
society. This is as evident in the early writings as in the later writings. As
Marx notes in his critique of classical political economy, “Do not let us go
back to a ficticious primordial condition as the political economist does, when
he tries to explain. Such a primordial condition explains nothing. He merely
pushes the question away into a gray nebulous distance.”57 “Production by an
isolated individual outside society . . . is as much of an absurdity as is the
development of language without individuals living together and talking to
each other.”58 It is thus important to read Marx’s critique of political economy
alongside the particular biologism of the concepts of the species being, life
activity, and so on.
For Marx, the species being is constituted by several factors. It is consti-
tuted by production, productive activity, or the “life activity” of the species
being. This means that productive activity is what it means to be “human,”

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but the “human” is understood here to be fully social and historical. That is,
productive activity is specifically conscious, reflective production and not
simply “production in general.” There is no life activity outside of society; to
posit an “outside” of society is as impossible as positing an “outside” of the
species being. The species being not only is life activity, but is divided among
various “means of life,” which can be immediate or long-term activity, pro-
ductive or unproductive activity, necessary or excess activity. Finally, what
qualifies this species being is that it functions in some integrative, systemic
way with its surroundings or its environment. It is this material, bodily
“space” between the species being and its surroundings or environment that
constitutes an “inorganic body.”

Biomaterial Labor I: Estranged Biologies

Between Foucault’s notion of biopolitics and Marx’s constellation of concepts

surrounding the species being, what can we derive about the particular logic
of the biotech industry?
As we have seen, Foucault’s work on the biopolitics of the population
during the eighteenth century raises a number of issues that are still perti-
nent in today’s global biotech industry. Of particular note are new biological
theories and protoinformatic techniques, which Foucault locates in the emer-
gence of vital statistics, demographics, and state concerns over public-health
management. Again, one of the key transitions he highlights is the shift in
the object of political control, from a geopolitical “territory” to a biopolitical
“population,” the latter described as a “global mass that is affected by overall
processes characteristic of birth, death, production, illness, and so on.”59 This
shift is informed by science, but a science contextualized by concerns over the
health and welfare of the population as a political entity. We can say that, for
Foucault, biopolitics is the moment in which “population” folds into “nation,”
the event in which public health folds into national security, the process
through which biology folds into politics. From this vantage point, what is
required are not draconian prohibitions, but rather practices that intervene,
modulate, regulate, manage, and oversee the ongoing dynamics of the popu-
lation’s health. The political force of biopolitics is, then, not command, but
rather a mode of control. The knowledges of medicine, natural history, and
an emerging biological science play central roles in mediating between citizen
and species, nation and population, politics and biology.

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 This emphasis on the population—as a biological and a political entity—
also means that the citizen who is part of a nation is also an organism that is
part of a species. As Foucault notes, biopolitics, as a set of measured inter-
ventions and regulations, is “applied not to man-as-body but to the living
man, to man-as-living-being; ultimately, if you like, to man-as-species.”60 It
is worth pausing for a while on this formulation, in which the category of the
“human” is defined both biologically as a species and politically as a part of
a citizenry. We might ask: What exactly does it mean to consider the popu-
lation as both citizenry and species? What, in fact, is the relation between
citizen and species in the political contexts of public health, national security,
political economy, and so forth?

Within this set of problems, the “body”—the body of individuals and the body of
populations—appears as the bearer of new variables, not merely as between the scarce
and the numerous, the submissive and the restive, rich and poor, healthy and sick,
strong and weak, but also between the more or less utilizable, more or less amenable
to profitable investment, those with greater or lesser prospects for survival, death and
illness, and with more or less capacity for being usefully trained.61

It is this connection—species, production, citizen—that Marx explored in

his early writings on political economy. Whereas Foucault suggests that
biopoltics configures the population as a biological species, Marx had already
noted the unique “species being” of human labor and the way in which this
species being was in the process of being transformed by industrial capital-
ism. Paolo Virno has recently highlighted this intersection of life and labor,
noting that in post-Fordist capitalism “the living body of the worker is the
substratum of that labor-power which, in itself, has no independent exis-
tence.”62 Life becomes a sort of medium for the biological capacity for labor.
But this is also a political instance as well. For Marx, the “imperative of
health” is also, in many ways, an imperative of wealth. In this sense, produc-
tion and labor form a core part of biopolitical practices, for it is production
and labor that form the essential processes of the continued health of the pop-
ulation and the nation: the material production of goods and the biological
reproduction of the population; the economic generation of value and the
biological management of health. What is the relation between “species” and
“citizen” in biopolitics? One answer is that species and citizen are mediated
by processes of labor and production, in which economics has biological effects

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and in which biology serves as the guarantee for political and economic
security.
Between Foucault’s notion of a biopolitical population (“human beings
insofar as they are a species”) and Marx’s notion of species being (“labor, life
activity, productive life itself”), we can deduce several elements that will lead
us back to a consideration of contemporary biotechnologies. First, in Marx as
in Foucault, the relation between human and nature is complex. There is no
essential, extratechnological relation between human and nature. In fact, Marx’s
notion of human beings’ “inorganic body” frustrates any attempt to isolate
a state of nature separate from society.63 The very approach of political
economy—in Foucault as in Marx—is this consideration of biological
processes that are thoroughly embedded within political and economic
systems. The condition of the human is not that it is first a natural state and
then gets transformed into the political state; rather, what the biopolitical
species being shows us is that there is already in place a certain political
economy, a certain system through which human beings biologically and
politically organize and manage their life activity.
Yet—and this is the second point—the particular kind of labor of which
both Marx and Foucault speak is not simply the labor of machines or robots
in a factory. The labor of which the biopolitical species being speaks is a thoroughly
biological labor: birth, death, reproduction, disease, growth, sanitation, and, as
Marx notes, a whole “social metabolism.” Through Marx’s species being and
Foucault’s biopolitical population, we can see how labor is configured not just
as a technical, artificial means of production, but as a process that is isomor-
phic with biological processes such as metabolism, reproduction, and biolog-
ical growth and decay. In the biopolitical species being, we have not only the
body in the factory, but the body as a factory. In biotech fields such as trans-
genics—in which animals are genetically engineered to produce compounds
needed for human medical therapies—we have a biological system that
produces only biology, genes that express only certain proteins, cells that
metabolize only certain compounds, milk from an animal that contains
human insulin. Biology produces biology, through completely “biological”
means, but in totally novel conditions, and this is where the tech in biotech
comes into play.
From this, we can deduce a third point, which is that the biopolitical species
being labors, even when it is not at “work.” That is, the particular kind of bio-
logical labor performed by the species being, by the population, is unique in

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that it is a nonhuman type of labor. Even when we are asleep, our bodies are
performing biological labor in our circulatory system, respiratory system, even
at the cellular and molecular levels of metabolism and gene expression. This
is an obvious, even ridiculous point, but it does bear reflection on in light of
the biotech industry’s focus on genetic engineering, GMOs, and transgenics.
A body that never stops laboring is also a biology defined by production, a
species being defined by its own particular type of labor.
It is this peculiar type of biological labor that forms the domain of con-
temporary biopolitical control. Certainly, it is not the only kind of labor we
find in the biotech industry—innumerable laboring bodies of all kinds are
needed to provide the right conditions for this kind of biological labor, and
they are framed by larger organizations such as university labs, pharmaceuti-
cal corporations, and hospitals or health-care centers. But, arguably, all these
individuals—lab technicians, CEOs, factory workers, graduate students, and
so on—are constellated around one or more biological processes that are recon-
textualized in novel ways (new genetic drugs, novel diagnostic systems, tech-
niques for genetic analysis, manufacture of model organisms for laboratory
study). At the heart of this constellation is this strange biology that is also a
technology, a biological labor that does not work, genetic “information” that
is materialized in a range of contexts (databases, test tubes, DNA chips,
bacterial plasmids).
For Marx, the transformation of the species being’s productive capacity into
a mere commodity means that the vital labor of the species being (ideally inte-
grated with the human being’s larger “inorganic body”) was turned into “dead
labor,” labor that goes nowhere except into exchange and surplus value. As is
well known, Marx’s critical point is that although this transformation is ben-
eficial for industry as a whole and for those who own the means of produc-
tion, it has disastrous effects on the working class—and on the larger species
being. Industrial capitalism has the effect, then, of totally instrumentalizing
the biological labor of the species being, thereby liquidating the integrated
“inorganic body” of the living world in favor of a total objectification of labor
in commodities.
Our own views today may be less reductive and more complicated, given
the ways in which emerging technologies and new modes of production have
transformed our views of the relationship between human and nature, biology
and technology. Critics of globalization such as Hardt and Negri suggest that
Marx’s notion of dead labor has been replaced, in the era of the Internet and

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information technologies, by an “immaterial labor” that encompasses cultural
production, services, and the general trend toward an informatic economy.
Although this replacement may have taken place, we can also suggest that a
novel kind of material labor has evolved out of the biotech industry, at least
since the 1970s and the development of the first genetic engineering tech-
niques. This kind of labor, as already noted, is fully biological and yet is
inseparable from political and economic effects. It is strangely nonhuman, at
work in the molecular spaces of cells, enzymes, and DNA, and it never stops
working, whether or not we as individuals pay attention. It is fully informatic,
constituted by genetic codes, protein-folding motifs, and biopathways, but it
never completely relinquishes its affiliation with the material, messy “stuff”
of biology. It is something that we can perhaps call biomaterial labor, or
even living dead labor.64 Biomaterial labor is the kind of biological-yet-
technological mode of production that is the foundation of the biotech
industry: a technology that is fully biological. Biomaterial labor is the con-
dition of Foucault’s biopolitical population and Marx’s species being, within
the context of the practices of fields such as genetic engineering, transgenics,
GMOs, genetic therapies, and regenerative medicine.

Biomaterial Labor II: “I Walked with a Zombie”

My elaboration of Foucault’s notion of biopolitics and Marx’s concept of

the species being was necessary to make the following proposition concern-
ing biotechnology: the biotech industry appropriates the species being at the molecu-
lar, genetic, and informatic levels, and, in doing so, it refashions human biological life
activity or labor power as a form of nonhuman production. Paradoxically, in the
biotech industry, what is valued is not human labor, but the specific labor
power or life activity of cells, molecules, and genes. The upshot of this
approach—an approach not that different from the industrial capitalism Marx
describes—is that Marx’s species being is transformed into a “molecular
species being,” a species being in which labor power is cellular, enzymatic,
and genetic.
We can further explain this phenomenon by noting a few examples of bio-
material labor. Consider the following applications of biotechnology:

RLC/Mo-cell Line The Mo-cell line is an example of “immortalized cells”

or cell lines maintained in laboratory conditions for research. Cell lines enable

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multiple copies of a cell to exist in a cell culture for study, and they also enable
the cells to exist in a state that is close to their original, biological state in
the organism. Although the practice of deriving cell lines has been in exis-
tence since the 1950s (the HLA tumor cell line), it was not until the late
1970s that cell lines became a center of controversy. In 1976, businessman
John Moore became ill with a rare form of leukemia. His physicians at UCLA’s
medical center diagnosed him and took a number of tissue samples from him
in subsequent visits. In addition to treating Moore, the UCLA physicians had
the idea of isolating Moore’s T-lymphocytes in a cell line and selling that line
to interested pharmaceutical corporations. In 1984, they were granted a patent
on Moore’s derived T-lymphocytes (U.S. PTO no. 4438032) and had negoti-
ated some $15 million with Sandoz Pharmaceuticals for the development of
Moore’s cells. Upon learning of this, Moore filed suit, claiming that he was
not informed of the marketing of his cells. An initial court ruling in 1984
rejected Moore’s claim that an individual has property rights over his or her
own discarded tissues. This decision was reversed in 1988 by the Court of
Appeals, which accepted that Moore did have property rights over his own
biological materials. The final decision in 1990 by the Supreme Court was a
compromise: individuals cannot sell their biological materials, but Moore was
entitled to remuneration because he was not informed of the sale. The ambi-
guity—which still exists to this day—is whether property relations over one’s
own body include the ability to market and sell those materials. Today the
Mo-cell line is held at the American Type Culture Collection, and is estimated
to be worth more than $3 billion.65 Researchers can purchase cells from the
Mo-cell line as ATCC catalog number CRL-8066.

OncoMouse The famous OncoMouse is an example of genetic engineering

used for bioscience research. Mice have long been used as “model organisms”
for the study of human disease, and, indeed, the recent efforts to map the
genomes of various organisms has found a large number of similarities or
disease homologs between mouse and human genomes. A novel kind of
laboratory mouse was introduced in the late 1980s. This particular type of
mouse was genetically engineered with genes (oncogenes) that would reliably
produce breast cancer tumors. In 1988, the U.S. PTO granted a patent for the
OncoMouse (U.S. PTO no. 4736866), as it was called, the first such patent
for a living animal. Although the mouse was dubbed the “Harvard Mouse”
because it was developed by researchers at Harvard University, the actual

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41
patent on the mouse was assigned to DuPont Chemicals, who financed the
research. The OncoMouse could then be marketed to laboratories for the study
of breast cancer, in effect initiating a new kind of “biological supply”
business. (Similar such model organisms have been developed; in 1987,
for instance, an NIH team engineered mice with AIDS in their germ line.
Researchers such as Robert Gallo warned of the high mutation rate in HIV
and the possibility of the AIDS mouse unleashing a “super AIDS.”) The Onco-
Mouse is a mass-produced mouse whose sole purpose is to develop cancer; in
this sense, it functions for researchers as a kind of universal biological system
for the molecular study of cancer.66

t-PA Clotbuster Protein The so-called clotbuster protein is an example of

the use of transgenic technology in creating “mammalian bioreactors.” In the
1980s, the techniques of genetic engineering had enabled the recombination of
genetic material from different species. Although genetic material from
humans and other organisms had been inserted into animals and plants for the
purposes of livestock breeding and agriculture, the same techniques were also
used to transform animals into vehicles for the production of desired compounds
for human medical use. These mammalian bioreactors, as they were called, were
most often cows, pigs, sheep, and goats, who produced a particular compound
(such as human insulin) in their milk as a result of an inserted human gene. The
desired compound could then be extracted from the milk and then processed
and purified, ready for drug manufacturing. One such example was a goat engi-
neered to produce a blood-clotting protein (tissue plasminogen factor, t-PA) in
its milk, a compound useful for treating blood clots in cardiac patients. The t-
PA goat was developed by researchers at Genzyme Corporation, along with
Tufts University. Similar mammalian bioreactors have been developed, includ-
ing a sheep that produces the protein AAT in its milk (for the treatment of
emphysema), developed by Pharmaceutical Proteins Ltd. and the Scottish Agri-
culture and Food Research Council, as well as a failed attempt by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a pig that can produce human
growth hormone (HGH). To date, a wide range of medically useful compounds
have been produced in this manner, including human interleukin-2, human
lactoferrin, antitrypsin, human protein C, collagen, and fibrinogen.67

These are only the most obvious examples of biomaterial labor. In these
examples—immortal cell lines, model organisms, mammalian bioreactors—

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it is not difficult to see a novel type of technology developing in which the
production process and product are thoroughly biological, a labor carried out
by cells, enzymes, and DNA. However, although each of these cases is differ-
ent scientifically, there are a number of important consistencies between them.
To begin with, biotechnology by definition implies an instrumental approach
to the biological domain. This, in itself, is not necessarily problematic, for it
can also serve as the basis for alternative practices such as sustainable
agriculture and complimentary or alternative medicine. But with technolo-
gies such as industrial-driven genetic engineering or transgenics, we see a bio-
logicomedical model that is inseparable from an economic-business model.
Indeed, nearly every account of the biotech industry notes the simultaneity of
scientific and economic innovation: recombinant DNA and the formation of
Genentech, polymerase chair reaction (PCR) and the Cetus Corporation, trans-
genics and DuPont, and a wide range of examples related to the pharmaceu-
tical industry. However, we should be cautious of any attempt to limit such
views to the commercial sector, for there also exists a “governmentality” sur-
rounding biotech that is in many ways inseparable from the economic and
business models: alliances between the corporate and public sectors patenting
disputes between developed and underdeveloped countries, and policies that
allow universities and nonprofit organizations to apply for patents based on
federally funded research.
Shall we, then, demand the separation of biology and economics, science
and commerce? This would be, to say the least, a naive position, but also a
nearly impossible one at a time when governments deregulate and apply for
patents, when “Big Pharma” increasingly globalizes its operations, and when
the hegemony of U.S. and European science research largely dictates the terms
of global health programs. Perhaps, instead, the question is, How can we
identify and assess those moments at which the imperatives of biology and
economics are at odds with each other? It can be argued that the majority
of high-profile ethical disputes within the biotech industry have to do with a
conflict between interests, a conflict between medical benefit and economic
benefit.
Understanding such differences requires an understanding of the assump-
tions that inform biotechnology as a hybrid of science and industry, biology
and economics. I have already noted one central aspect of the biotech indus-
try—its general approach toward the biological domain as a source of mate-
rial production and the production of economic value. But what is also unique

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43
about the three examples given earlier is that the productive activity or
“life activity” specific to them is strangely nonhuman. We see cells that are
“immortalized” in the lab, genetically engineered animals that automatically
produce compounds for medicines, and genetic sequences moving from an
organism to a computer database and then into a genetically designed drug.
We can ask: Who or what does the “work” in the biotech industry? As an
increasingly global industry, biotechnology certainly employs human labor at
all levels, from business and marketing to basic research, to the development
of products and services, to public relations and media campaigns. But it can
be easy to overlook another, equally significant type of labor in biotechnol-
ogy: the uncanny, nonhuman “work” carried out by the biological components
of cells, proteins, and DNA.
This is, indeed one of the lessons of the biotech industry: production is not
limited to human subjects or groups, but can be extended to the nonconscious,
“molecular” level of cells, enzymes, and DNA. Early biotech companies such
as Genentech and Cetus were built on the capacity of their biological,
molecular labor power—that certain enzymes can splice DNA at particular
locations (recombinant DNA), that a set of genes together produce certain
proteins under the right conditions (human insulin), and that DNA’s base-
pairing processes can be harnessed in a machine (PCR). Without the core of
this biomaterial labor, the company arguably does not exist. Thus, not only
does the biotech industry adopt an instrumental approach to biology, but in
doing so it also locates the productive life activity of biology at the level of
cellular metabolism, gene expression, protein synthesis, and so on. The life
activity of the species being is not just biological, but molecular. It is
biological and economic, a biomaterial labor power.
This emphasis on the biomaterial labor of biotechnology is not in any way
meant to deny the presence of the labor of human subjects in, for example,
the pharmaceutical industry or the high-tech field of genomics. In the same
way that labor power appears as something strangely nonhuman in biotech,
so we can say the same for the estrangement or alienation of biology, but it
is an estrangement quite different from the way Marx used the term. In the
biotech industry, the estrangement of biology occurs as a separation of process
from context, biology from milieu. For instance, the culturing of cell lines
requires a separation of the “natural” processes of cell replication from the
milieu of the organism and from the subsequent recontextualizing of cell
replication in the laboratory (Petri dishes, nutrient, incubator). Similarly,

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medical transgenics involves the separation of the protein synthesis process
and its recontextualization into another host organism (genetic engineering,
cloning, extraction of compounds from animal milk or meat). In short, in
industrial biotech, biological life-activity can be technically estranged to such
an extent that cells, enzymes, and genes can biologically function outside of
the body.68
To summarize, in the biotech industry a number of assumptions constitute
its approach to the biological domain. First, the biotech industry approaches
biology in an instrumental fashion. Biotech sidesteps the traditional biology-
technology division, understanding biology as a technology, as a productive
technology in its own right. This means that the core labor power of the
biotech industry is the life activity of biological components and processes,
which are constellated by R&D, product pipelines, marketing, and corporate
management. But further, the biotech industry also specifies biological labor
as the labor of cells, enzymes, and DNA. The labor power of the biotech indus-
try is not just the manifold labor power of human beings, but the molecular
labor power of cells, enzymes, and DNA. In these circumstances, biology
produces both biological and economic value: genes synthesizing protein
products, enzymes catalyzing cellular reactions, and cells metabolizing useful
compounds for medical and economic ends (human insulin, HGH). This type
of labor power is biomaterial labor, a form of labor power that is at once bio-
logical and economic. In the biotech industry, labor power is cellular, enzymatic,
and genetic.
Given these assumptions of the biotech industry, we might be led to ask
a deceptively simple question: Who sells the labor power in the biotech indus-
try? On one level, the answer is quite straightforward—the productive capac-
ity of cells, molecules, and genes is “sold” most often through licenses on
patents, “informed consent” agreements, clinical trials for new drugs, selec-
tive government funding of research, and a host of related practices that are
simultaneously medical and economic in nature. Again, not all of these prac-
tices are problematic in themselves, simply by their mere existence. Rather,
the question is, In what contexts, under what conditions, and in whose inter-
ests do we see the conflict between medical and economic benefit? But the
question of who sells the labor power of biotechnology also has another, less
visible layer to it. Recall that in the traditional scenario elaborated by Marx
and other political economists, the capacity for labor or life activity was sold
by the individual human subject, most often because that subject had nothing

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45
except his or her capacity for work to sell. The “buying and selling of labor
power” thus implies at a basic level the conscious, voluntary (if coercive), and
pragmatic act of transforming the life activity of the species being into a
commodity.
Yet consider the examples cited earlier—genetic engineering, transgenics,
cell lines, mammalian bioreactors, and so on. Certain entities—government-
funded labs, biotech companies, pharmaceutical corporations—are involved
in the exchange and circulation of biological materials, but who sells or offers
up labor power? The answers that come up are almost comical: it is not the
individual human beings from which genetic samples are taken, for the
molecules in those samples are made to perform quite different tasks within
laboratory bacterial plasmids or animal cells. It certainly is not the cells,
molecules, or gene themselves, and it certainly is not the range of sheep, mice,
and pigs used as industrial bioreactors for drug production. Thus, one of
the central contradictions in the political economy of the biotech industry
is: biology is ceaselessly made to work, and biological life activity is constantly
producing, yet the seller of labor power is absent from the production
formula.
This curious absence points to a theme that runs throughout this book. On
the one hand, the biotech industry configures biology as “natural” and thus
something that is morally (if not legally) outside of the economic sphere of
commodity production. Biotech deals with “life itself,” life that cannot be
bought or sold, life that is—we are told—served by the particular technolo-
gies that the biotech industry develops. Biotech is safe, healthy, and benefi-
cial, largely because the “technology “ it develops is seen to be “natural.” On
the other hand, the biotech industry also explicitly configures biology as a
technology, as a commodity, as economic property. Biology is that which can
be “worked up” and worked on, thereby transforming biology into property.
Selected gene sequences can be isolated using novel techniques; genetic
sequences can be derived into mutated forms, into complementary DNA
(cDNA) sequences, into messenger RNA (mRNA) transcripts; and genetic
engineering can produce novel hybrid organisms, from oil-eating bacteria to
human insulin–producing pigs. All these developments are biological, but
also technological and thus subject to current patent laws.
This transformation of biology into property is in many ways the core activ-
ity of biotechnology. In fact, we can propose that in the political economy of
biotechnology there is no “buying” and “selling” of labor power in the

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conventional sense. Or, at the very least, there are more levels of valuation,
production, and exchange in biotechnology than the direct buying and selling
of genes, cell lines, or transgenic organisms. In the biotech industry, we see the
continual transformation of biological value and medical value into economic value, a
continual refashioning of the species being as at once biological and economic, as a form
of “biomaterial labor.”

Genomics Is Globalization

I began this chapter by noting two related trends in biotechnology: an increas-

ing tendency toward the globalizing of the biotech industry and a tendency
toward the integration between biology and informatics, genetic and com-
puter “codes.” These two developments are clearly related, for the global scope
of the biotech industry has greatly benefited from advancements in informa-
tion and network technologies. Likewise, the development of global genome
projects, of public-private alliances, and of expanding markets for the genetic
drug industry provide the conditions for online bioinformatics software and
databases. So, on one level, the global organization of the biotech industry is
consonant with the technical integration of bioscience and computer science.
But it should also be apparent that the biotech industry is unlike the infor-
mation technology or communications industries. Although there may be a
general trend toward the “informatization” of production, toward the imma-
teriality of products and services, this trend has only meant a reinvention of
material production for the biotech industry. This is the key to under-
standing the unique properties of the biotech industry: its simultaneous em-
bracing of the information technology revolution and its equal interest in
biological materiality, the “stuff” of biology. This position is at once onto-
logical and economic. The biotech industry vigorously incorporates informa-
tion technologies with the same fervor that it enables the synthesis of DNA,
lab-grown tissues, and genetic drugs. This would appear to be a contradic-
tion, but, as a range of examples show, it is not. In fact, it can even be said
that the “industry” part of biotechnology is predicated on the operative,
functional nature of this apparent contradiction: biology is information, and
biology is materiality. This is, as I have suggested, only an apparent contra-
diction, for the tension between biology and informatics is only a tension if
they are mutually exclusive: if biology cannot be immaterial, and if infor-
matics cannot be material.

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47
 What, then, is the “global genome”? The global genome suggests, first,
that genomics is globalization and vice-versa. The act of literally stretching a
human genome across selected parts of the globe creates a distribution
network for that biological data. Despite its international billing, the IHGSC
network structure still led to the universal body, the human genome. But
alongside the IHGSC’s activities are a panoply of genomics programs dedi-
cated to the individualizing aspects between one genome and another: minute
mutations such as SNPs, or the effort to map the genomes of ethnic popula-
tions. The human genome thus gains a kind of biological universality at the same time
that it partitions and fragments biological types. The global genome creates the
conditions for new forms of standardization, be they in terms of technical stan-
dards (e.g., GenBank “flat file” format), economic standards (WIPs), or cul-
tural standards (the pop cultural “icon” of DNA and genetic essentialism).
The field of genomics and the example of the IHGSC form a kind of para-
digm for the globalizing tendencies in the biotech industry.
But beneath this literal distribution of a human genome via the Internet
lies an important argument concerning the “nature” of biology and biologi-
cal “life itself.” The concept of a genetic “code”—the product of the postwar
discourses of genetics and cybernetics—has culminated in a set of new atti-
tudes toward biology and technology, nature and artifice. In particular, there
is no extratechnological, preinformatic biology. All biology is informatic from
the beginning. Marx’s species being is always already bioinformatics, a natural
organism whose naturalness consists in the fact of its informatic constitution.
This, however, does not mean that biology has ceased to be “natural.” In fact,
it is a primary strategy of the biotech industry to insist on this dual aspect of
“life itself”: biology is at once the “stuff of life” and essentially informatic.
Not only is biology accounted for via informatics, but informatics is always qualified
by biological materiality. For instance, in the practices of genetic screening,
DNA fingerprinting, or medical surveillance networks for epidemics, “infor-
mation” comes to supplement or even to stand in for the subject. In a related
vein, all information derives from and culminates in some form of biological
materiality, such as lab-grown tissues, cell cultures, or genetically engineered
plasmids.
This complex relationship between biology and informatics means that the
biotech industry can always be identified by the novel, chimeric artifacts it
produces. DNA chips, online genomes, oligonucleotide synthesizers, RNA
“antisense” drugs, recombinant viral vectors, and artificial chromosomes are

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48
just some of the biotechnologies to be found within the biotech industry. But
such chimeras are not random mixtures of biology and technology. They are
the direct products of the biotech industry: the tools and technologies that
surround the biomaterial labor of cells, enzymes, and DNA; the many differ-
ent types of biological databases; and the systems that generate and assign
value to the artifacts of biotechnology. Technical artifacts, storehouses of knowl-
edge, and banks of value.

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49
 2

Bioinformatic Bodies and the Problem of

“Life Itself”

The Two Faces of DNA

In popular culture, it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate DNA from

its computer-generated representation. Whereas earlier science fiction films
such as Bride of Frankenstein could reference only in language the existence of
the molecular level, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries DNA
can be represented in all its informatic and three-dimensional splendor.
Whether the DNA in question be that of human-insect hybrids (The Fly;
Spider-Man), mutants (The Hulk, the X-Men films), alien invaders (The Thing,
Virus), or plain old genetic surveillance (Gattaca), wherever one finds biology
in popular culture, one also finds that which generates biology: computer
graphics and imaging technologies. But beyond this, popular culture also
posits a further proposition: not only do computers represent DNA, but DNA
is in some strange way translatable with information itself: consider the “rage
virus” of 28 Days Later, the biotechnological hybrid of virus and media vio-
lence, or the viral logic of the media virus in Ringu.
But in a sense, none of this is new and was already presaged in the life sci-
ences. After all, in the 1940s didn’t physicist Erwin Schrödinger already
hypothesize that the genetic material in all living beings was a “hereditary
code-script”?1 And didn’t Watson and Crick’s 1953 papers on the structure
of DNA simply affirm what earlier biologists had guessed, that DNA is a
code?2 When François Jacob and Jacques Monod published their research on
genetic regulatory mechanisms, wasn’t their formulation of the “cybernetic
enzymatics” a further postulation that DNA is a computer?3 And when
Heinrich Matthaei and Marshall Nirenberg announced that they had “cracked
the genetic code” in 1962, didn’t this once and for all establish the fact of
DNA as a code and biology as information?4 This history has been well doc-
umented by historians of science such as Lily Kay and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger,
especially in the exchanges between molecular biology, on the one hand, and
cybernetics and information theory, on the other.5 In addition, cyberneticians,
information theorists, and computer scientists were similarly paying attention
to DNA as well. Claude Shannon’s information theory grew out of his dis-
sertation dealing with the algorithmic and combinatoric properties of a
genetic code, and computer scientist John von Neumann, in speaking of the
relationship between the brain and the computer, noted how DNA forms, in
the biological organism, as a kind of memory system.6
Thus, historically speaking, there is plenty of precedent within the hard
sciences for this intersection between genetics and informatics, biology and
technology. Yet, in a way, the motto “biology is information” is not spoken
by anyone, but rather demonstrated by the surreal artifacts that populate the
biotech lab: online genome databases, DNA chips, combinatorial chemistry,
three-dimensional molecular modeling, gene-targeting software, and “wet-dry
cycles” in drug development. In these and other hybrid artifacts, we see not
only the integration of the biological and the technological, but also the inte-
gration of a material and an immaterial understanding of biological life. The
field of bioinformatics is a good example in this regard, for it directly brings
together bioscience and computer science, genetic and computer “codes.”
Simply defined as the application of computer and networking technologies
to the research problems of molecular biology, bioinformatics has quickly
grown into a discipline of its own and into a significant industry as well. High-
profile projects such as the sequencing of the human genome have been largely
bioinformatics-driven projects, and bioinformatics research on the Internet is
increasingly becoming an indispensable tool for molecular biology labs.
In the current context of bioinformatics, we have a set of questions to con-
sider. How does bioinformatics reconfigure the relationship between biology
(as natural) and technology (as artificial)? In the negotiation between biology
and technology, how does bioinformatics balance the inherent tension between
the material and immaterial? Contemporary discourses surrounding cyber-
space, virtual bodies, and cyborgs endlessly play out the informatization
of the biological, material body. These discourses not only assume a

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52
pretechnological body, but also foster a vision of the body that is highly tex-
tualized and semiotic (“material-semiotic nodes” and so forth). Biotechnology,
however, defined in part by its connections to biology, is preoccupied with the
materiality of the biological body and not with the immaterial domain of
virtual bodies and avatars. And yet the body’s materiality is also always con-
textualized by a discourse of materiality.7 So what is happening in a field such
as bioinformatics? Is bioinformatics simply the “computerization” of biology?
No doubt bioinformatics and biotechnology generally take us far beyond the
well-worn tropes of the cyborg and its affiliates. Any technique or technology
used in biotech research demonstrates this: PCR, gene therapy, microarrays,
even tissue engineering. In the myriad of techniques and technologies
that can be observed in the biotechnology lab, a common ontological and
political-economical viewpoint stretches across them all. A “natural”
biological process (such as DNA base-pair complementarity) is repurposed and
serves as the “technology” for each process, but in a different context (such as
the precise heating and cooling cycles of PCR). This technology is purely
biological—a technology because it is purely biological.
This point assumes that bioinformatics—and by extension biotechnol-
ogy—must work in either the material domain of biology or the immaterial
domain of informatics. Bioinformatics refuses this split in its practices and
products, however. For instance, the online genome database was at one time
the living cells of human volunteers and subsequently cDNA libraries in the
lab. The same can be said for the U.S. PTO database as well. Similarly, all the
software and databases count for nothing if they do not in some minimal way
reconnect and “touch” the biology of living cells and living patients via ther-
apies, tests, or drugs. Thus, we can rephrase our question another way: How
does bioinformatics—as an increasingly foundational approach in biotechnol-
ogy research—strategically bring together the informatic and the biological
in such a way that it can accommodate both the material and the immaterial,
both medical benefit and economic value?
In this chapter, I address this tension-filled zone between the biological
and the informatic, the material and the immaterial. The key concept is the
concept of “life itself”: the notion of an unmediated, self-present core of
biological life, and yet a notion that is inseparable from all philosophical,
scientific, and economic mediations. Thus, my opening questions lead us to
a consideration of “life itself” in both its philosophical-historical dimensions
(via Canguilhem’s work on the history of biology) and its political-economic

Bioinformatic Bodies and the Problem of “Life Itself”

53
dimensions (via Marx’s analysis of capital). The question I ask throughout is,
How, in fields such as bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics, does “life itself”
constitute at once a foundation and a problem for biotechnology?

Hacking the Genome

As previously stated, the discipline of bioinformatics encapsulates many of the

tendencies in biotech research to bring together genetic and computer codes.8
Although molecular biology and the life sciences generally have always relied
to some extent on a set of techniques, tools, and technologies for research, the
recent entrance of modern computers and networking technologies into the
biotech lab has meant that the molecular biologist must also become in some
sense a computer programmer. The emerging field of bioinformatics is a good
example in this regard. It not only brings together genetic and computer
codes, but in doing so it also brings together the biotech and computer indus-
tries, and combines the disciplines of molecular biology and computer science.
In fact, bioinformatics can simply be defined as the application (or integra-
tion) of computer science to molecular biology.9 There are degree-granting
bioinformatics programs at a number of U.S. universities, and there are even
“for dummies” books on bioinformatics as well as more specialized books on
computational biology. As a scientific field, bioinformatics became known to
the general public owing to its key role in the various human genome pro-
jects. Both the publicly funded consortium (IHGSC) and Celera have noted
how the sequencing of the human genome would not have been possible were
it not for bioinformatics. In general, bioinformatics has specialized in three
areas of biotechnology research: sequence and structure analysis (genomics,
proteomics), data management (large-scale sequence repositories such as
GenBank), and the development of integrated systems for “in silico biology”
(simulation systems for the testing of drug compounds).
Early genetic databases, influenced in part by the innovations in genetic
engineering during the late 1970s, were primarily information-management
databases.10 Their primary goal was to organize large amounts of data effi-
ciently in a standardized database structure operating in a computer system.
Most of these systems were locally run and operated; that is, they were
laboratory-specific databases with limited “time-sharing” capacities over
networks.11 Thus, their main advantage was to function like a library’s card
catalog system—local use in the accommodation of data management. An

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early example was the PC/GENE software package produced by Intelli-
Genetics, which not only performed database-management tasks, but could
also automatically translate a given gene sequence into its corresponding
protein or amino acid code, based on the prior knowledge of gene-protein cor-
respondences.12 Other software applications are working on either providing
relationships not previously known or functioning on the level of statistical
probability and prediction analysis. Instead of manually (one is tempted to
say “physically”) cross-checking genome databases and protein databases,
intelligent software agents and data-mining programs can be set to target a
particular gene-protein relationship or gene pattern. When the first threads
of data began to come in from the government-funded HGP in the early
1990s, most of that data was archived in a computer database called GenBank,
now managed by the NCBI (figure 2.1). Because the rate of sequencing was

Figure 2.1 The ENTREZ online genome browser, hosted by the NCBI.

Bioinformatic Bodies and the Problem of “Life Itself”

55
slow, and because only a handful of labs were working on the genome, the
management of the GenBank database was something that could be handled
by a small staff of biologists and computer scientists. As sequence data came
in, they would be entered into the database, where researchers accessing the
network (this is pre-Web, recall) could access the most recent sequencing
results.13 Many such tools can run off of a laptop or are made to operate
exclusively online (as with the online Basic Local Alignment Search Tool
[BLAST]).14 The gradual networking of universities and research institutions
and the tendril-like expansion of the Internet provided technical means of con-
solidating research results into centralized information nodes. The introduc-
tion of desktop computers and the Web, as well as educational spending on
information technologies, helped to advance molecular biology into the infor-
mation age.
Several factors contributed to the emergence of a distinct discipline of
“bioinformatics” as the HGP progressed during the 1990s. Within the lab
itself, several improvements were made in genetic sequencing and replication,
such as PCR, more efficient gel electrophoresis tools, and, finally, fully auto-
mated gene sequencing computers.15 In addition, although the HGP remained
a U.S.-based project, it increasingly expanded itself, forming more substan-
tial partnerships with the United Kingdom’s Wellcome Trust and establish-
ing outposts in Germany, Japan, China, and France. These two factors
combined to produce an unprecedented rise in the genomic data being pro-
duced—a far cry from a small group of labs manually funneling data into a
single database. The deluge of information has in recent years necessitated
an efficient, accurate, and sophisticated means of managing all of it. The new
field of bioinformatics has thus come to play an indispensable role in
genetics and biotechnology research.
The bioinformatics response has been to diversify and specialize the exist-
ing technology, while also supporting a cross-platform compatibility in
product development and implementation. For example, the PROSITE and
SWISS-PROT databases are specifically protein databases, whereas other data-
bases focus on the genomes from other organisms (e.g., the mouse genome
database, pioneered by Celera), RNA sequences, SNP or genetic polymor-
phisms, and gene pools of ethnically distinct populations (e.g., the Icelandic
Health Sector Database from deCode Genetics).16 What these efforts helped
to promote were the standardizing potential of networked computer-based
labs and the notion of a distributed information reservoir.17 With the

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introduction of the Web and more user-friendly software applications into uni-
versities and research institutions, the possibility of the online lab has become
a reality. Biological information is thus not a matter of local reference, but of
global distribution and access (or access limitations), operating according to
protocols of uploading and downloading. In addition, as an intersection of the
fields of molecular biology and computer science, bioinformatics has become
a notable topic within the scientific community; the number of articles in
science publications dealing with bioinformatics saw a sharp rise during the
1990s, and online hubs such as Biospace.com regularly post numerous job
opportunities for bioinformatics specialists.
As a business, bioinformatics has shown steady growth and has promoted
an optimistic future. A July 2000 report described bioinformatics as a $300
million industry, which was preceded by a March 2000 report that predicted
the bioinformatics industry would be worth $2 billion by 2005.18 Bio-
informatics companies tend to work in one of three areas: so-called pick-and-
shovel companies, which are low-risk ventures that provide the tools and
hardware necessary for laboratory research; software and service companies,
which perform data management and software-based analysis; and the
pharmacogenomics-based companies, which utilize the products of the first
two areas in the development of drugs, gene-based therapies, or genetic and
diagnostic tests.
As an industry, bioinformatics has many overlaps with the pharmaceutical
and health-care industries. This has meant, among other things, that
bioinformatics has been shaped by economic as well as scientific and medical
imperatives. According to a 2000 report by the Biotechnology Industry
Organization (BIO), more than 90 FDA-approved, biotech drugs and thera-
pies were for sale in the United States, with an additional 370 pending FDA
approval.19 Since 1995 (concurrent with the dotcom boom and the rise of
bioinformatics as a field), this boom has meant that an average of 16–24 drugs
or therapies per year have made it to the market.20 This trend is noteworthy
in light of the fact that the total time for most drug-development programs,
from concept to FDA approval, is often 15 years or more.
Bioinformatics has not only helped to speed up this process, but it has also
helped to attract further investment: according to a report by Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), U.S.-based pharmaceuti-
cal companies invested an estimated $26 billion in R&D in 2000, an incred-
ible jump from the estimated $8 billion spent just a decade earlier.21 Part of

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57
this increase is owing to the nature of the drug-development process. Many
pharmaceutical companies require 15 years to take a drug from research to
market, with an average cost upward of $500 million per drug candidate. In
addition, of the 5–10,000 compounds initially screened, only one actually
receives U.S. FDA approval.22 Even when a drug is granted approval and on
the market, there is a significant rate of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and
drug nonresponsiveness; in some cases, drugs can be withdrawn from the
market owing to severe or underconsidered ADR factors.23
With all this investment and risk, how are profits made? One primary area
is in patents, especially in the United States but also in the European Union.
A recent study by GeneWatch UK, a policy research and watchdog group,
listed the top-ten genetic patent holders from both the public and private
sectors. What is noteworthy is that this study was carried out by accessing
the GENSEQ database, a commercial database that contains all genetic
sequences patented worldwide. The report’s top-ten list includes Genset
(applications on more than 36,000 gene sequences), Genzyme (patent claims
on more than 8,500 sequences), and the U.S. NIH (patent claims on just less
than 3,000 sequences).24
Bioinformatics, according to many reports, promises to make the drug-
development process more accurate and efficient. In a standard drug-
development process, which includes a discovery phase, a preclinical phase,
and three types of clinical phases, bioinformatics plays a key role in the initial
discovery and preclinical phases—the most time-consuming and costly phases
of the process. In the discovery phase, researchers identify potential “drug
targets,” or compounds upon which a drug might act. Through experiment,
database research, and the mining of scientific literature, thousands of targets
are identified that are connected to the particular disease being studied. These
compounds are then tested using “high-throughput screening” (HTS) tech-
niques, in which a large number of compounds can be simultaneously tested
against the target for any responses. The “hits” from these tests constitute a
“lead series,” or set of candidate compounds whose selectivity and potency
serve as the starting point for a drug therapy. In the preclinical phase that
follows, the lead series candidates are tested in the lab and on animals in order
to understand better the mechanism of the compounds (pharmacokinetics),
possible side effects (toxicology), and drug-design approaches (computational
chemistry). Once these studies have been completed, an Investigational New
Drug (IND) application may be filed with the U.S. FDA, which, if accepted,

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will allow the candidate compounds to begin human clinical trials. In addi-
tion, bioinformatics also comes into play at a later stage of the process, in the
testing of individual patients for potential ADRs based on their genetic
makeup. The “input” data of the drug-discovery process are therefore directly
linked to the “output” data of drug screening and prescription for patients.
In summary, the boost given to the pharmaceutical industry through bioin-
formatics has been in three primary areas: the identification of “drug targets”
(molecular compounds upon which to act); “lead discovery,” or the creation
of novel drug compounds; and the production of genomics-based tests for
already-existing drugs. The latter is broadly called pharmacogenomics, which,
according to one definition, is “the study of the entire spectrum of genes that
determine drug response, including the assessment of the diversity of the
human genome sequence and its clinical consequences.”25 Along the way,
computer and informatics-based technologies play a central role, from the
mining of genome databases to the study of metabolic pathways in the cell,
to the computational study of common drug candidate classes, such as pro-
teases, ion channels, and G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs, a type of mem-
brane protein). Computer technologies are promising to play a key role in
drug development, but the process is obviously still very much tied to the
material and biological conditions of the clinical trial phases. Thus, although
a novel drug candidate may be driven by bioinformatics and pharmacoge-
nomics technologies, at some point the in silico world of drug discovery must
directly and materially interface with the in vivo world of the human body
(mediated by the in vitro experiments in the discovery and preclinical phases).
This set of interactions is of interest here in both ontological and political-
economic terms. The manifold passages from a file in a genome database to a
patent file, to the pharmacogenomics study of a lead series, to a genetics-based
test for patient ADRs are the primary interests of this chapter.
Thus, bioinformatics is not simply a subset of computer science, nor is it
simply the newest tool for molecular biology research. It is a set of novel
informatically driven practices and knowledge that have taken shape along-
side bioinformatics as a discipline, a business, and an industry. Two main
things are interesting about bioinformatics. First, bioinformatics is as much
an ontological endeavor as it is a biological one. This endeavor goes beyond
the rhetorical exchanges of postwar molecular biology (the metaphor of the
genetic “code” and so on), without ever absolutely denying the metaphorical
role that informatics plays in molecular genetics. In a sense, bioinformatics

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59
takes all the terminology, concepts, and metaphors of informatics at face value;
it moves with great ease between the metaphor of DNA as information and
the construction of online genome databases. As we shall see, assumptions
concerning the division between the material and immaterial, or the biolog-
ical and the informatic, are redefined and reshaped in various ways along the
way. Bioinformatics is, first and foremost, an ontological practice, demon-
strating the ways in which DNA is information and the ways in which infor-
mation materializes, and, above all, participating in the reconfiguration
of dominant ways of understanding the relation between the living and non-
living, the biological and the technological.
But—and this is the second interesting point—bioinformatics is not just
in the business of philosophy; as an emerging field, it has outlined for itself
a set of specific aims and areas of application (e.g., pattern matching in
sequence alignment, database management in genomics, three-dimensional
graphics in molecular modeling). Bioinformatics does not exist in a vacuum,
in which the niceties of the formal relationships between DNA and informa-
tion are endlessly examined. In many cases, the same genetic code in a genome
database such as GenBank is also found in the U.S. PTO database in a patent
file for a derived gene or gene product. Indeed, a number of commercially
available databases are dedicated to the correlation of genetic and patent data
for researchers, academic departments, and biotech companies. A single gene
sequence can potentially generate a great deal of economic value, from the
genomics-based development of drugs to the forging of temporary alliances
between biotech start-ups and large pharmaceutical corporations, to the cre-
ation and marketing of genetic tests, to patent licenses for the development
of other laboratory techniques and technologies. Bioinformatics is not just an
informatic view of biology; it is also at the same time a biological view of eco-
nomic value. In other words, the ontological question “What is life?” is always
folded into a set of political-economic questions, such as, “Can biology be
turned into a technology?” or “Can life be property?”
This twofold character of bioinformatics—at once ontological and politi-
cal—can be called the politics of “life itself.”26 One of the defining features of
this politics of “life itself” today is the unique view of the biological body
that has been instantiated by molecular biology. As Nikolas Rose notes, this
“molecularization . . . was a reorganization of the gaze of the life sciences, their
institutions, procedures, instruments, spaces of operation and forms of capi-
talization.”27 The phrase “life itself” is in scare quotes—and will remain so—

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for a number of reasons. For one, it denotes a term used again and again by
molecular biologists during the 1950s and 1960s in popular-science books on
the genetic code—the idea that there was a master code that coded for the
very biological foundations of life or “life itself.” This twofold aspect, at once
biological and yet informational, signals a reformulation of what counts as
“life itself.” Sarah Franklin summarizes this process: “nature becomes biology
becomes genetics, through which life itself becomes reprogrammable infor-
mation.”28 But the phrase “life itself” also denotes the slipperiness of any claim
to have discovered an essence—mechanistic or vitalist—of biological life. As
the philosopher and historian of science Georges Canguilhem notes, this
emphasis on “life itself” drives much biological thinking in the West, from
Aristotle’s animating “Soul” to Darwin’s selection mechanisms, to the emer-
gence of molecular biology during the postwar era. The elusive nature of “life
itself” seems to be both the basis of biology and the point that always stands
outside of biology.
Molecular genetics and biotechnology are the latest phases in this ongoing
interest. The politics of “life itself” occurs alongside the discourses of cyber-
netics and information theory as much as it occurs alongside biology and bio-
chemistry. Biotechnology as an industry adds another twist: that the pursuit
of “life itself” is more than a purely intellectual inquiry; it has always been
about the ability to instrumentalize whatever comes under the phrase “life
itself.” There is another, underconsidered history of biotechnology (including
modern forms of breeding, agriculture, and fermentation processes) in which
“life itself” is synonymous with the “uses of life.”

SB-462795 (Not THX-1138)

Because much of bioinformatics can be highly abstract, it is helpful to con-

sider a case study. The aim is twofold: first, to provide a concrete example
through which to consider the ontological and economic aspects of bioinfor-
matics, and second, simply to illustrate the increasingly formalized and even
routine character of the pharmacogenomics process in drug discovery. The
example is not necessarily a high-profile or controversial drug, but neither is
it an insignificant or failed drug candidate. In fact, the example is actually an
unfinished account because, as of 2004, the drug itself is still in human
clinical trials. The example is the drug candidate SB-462795, a drug for
osteoporosis, a degenerative disease that destroys the bone marrow cells. It

Bioinformatic Bodies and the Problem of “Life Itself”

61
is estimated that osteoporosis affects some 10 million people in the United
States alone, with an additional 18 million affected by low bone mass; a major-
ity of those affected are women in middle to late age.29 SB-462795 was devel-
oped by the biotech company Human Genome Sciences in conjunction with
the pharmaceutical corporation GlaxoSmithKline; in 2002, Human Genome
Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline entered SB-462795 into Phase I human clin-
ical trials.30
According to Human Genome Sciences, SB-462795 is the first drug can-
didate to have been derived specifically from genomics and bioinformatics
technologies.31 This claim has been countered by Celera Genomics, which,
along with the pharmaceutical corporation Merck, also claims to have an
osteoporosis drug candidate entering clinical trials.32 Whatever the case may
be, what is clear is that SB-462795 represents what may be a new generation
of drugs produced largely—if not exclusively—via bioinformatics. Whereas
conventional drug development predominantly “black-boxed” the genetic
mechanisms of disease, bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics aim to mine
genome data as the starting point for the drug-discovery process. PhRMA,
the primary voice in the United States for the pharmaceutical industry, notes
that “while yesterday’s scientists relied on a combination of persistence and
serendipity to find compounds that might work against diseases, today’s sci-
entists are supplementing the old approaches by using new technologies that
increase efficiency and enable researchers to create new medicines.”33 Human
Genome Sciences has led in the development of other, similar drug candidates
along these lines, including an enzyme inhibitor used for the treatment of car-
diovascular disease (Lp-PLA2), a protein that speeds the repair of damaged
tissues (KGF-2), and a drug candidate that displays revascularization proper-
ties in the heart (VEGF-2). However, SB-462795 is an interesting example
because the story of its evolution brings together the scientific, technical,
institutional, and economic aspects of bioinformatics.
SB-462795 is also referred to as a “cathepsin-K inhibitor.” In the normal
functioning of the body, an enzyme called cathepsin-K (figure 2.2) breaks
down bone marrow cells (osteoclasts) as new ones (osteoblasts) are generated.
This process is usually regulated, such that enough cells are continuously
regenerated in order to maintain the structural integrity of bones. In some
types of osteoporosis, the cathepsin-K enzyme is overexpressed in osteoclast
cells; that is, the genes that code for the synthesis of the cathepsin-K enzyme
are overactive, producing excessive quantities of the enzyme, which in turn

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Figure 2.2 A simplified molecular model of a cathepsin-K molecule (Protein Data Bank ID:
1ATK), showing motifs and domains. From the Protein Data Bank. See B. Zhao, et al., “Crystal
Structure of Human Osteoclast Cathepsin K Complex with E-64,” Nature Structural Biology
109 (1997).

results in cathepsin-K enzymes breaking down healthy or even new bone

marrow cells at a greater rate than new cells are generated. The result is that
the bone marrow literally becomes shot through with tiny “holes” owing to
the degradation of bone marrow cells, making the bones themselves weaker
and brittle. The SB-462795 drug candidate is based on research that has
shown how the inhibition of the cathepsin-K genes improves bone resorption
in mice. SB-462795 thus aims to decrease or lower the overexpression of
cathepsin-K genes (and thus of the cathepsin-K enzymes). It is for this reason
that SB-462795 is also referred to in a less-cumbersome way as a cathepsin-
K inhibitor.
In 1993, GlaxoSmithKline (then SmithKline Beecham), at the time
working on a drug for osteoporosis, asked Human Genome Sciences to analyze
an osteoclast sample. Although GlaxoSmithKline had long been in the

Bioinformatic Bodies and the Problem of “Life Itself”

63
pharmaceutical industry, the then-emerging technologies of genome sequenc-
ing and analysis attracted it to Human Genome Sciences. Human Genome
Sciences took the cell samples and within three weeks had produced cDNA
libraries and fully analyzed the genome of the osteoclast cells. Company
researchers found that a certain class of the cathepsin enzyme was overex-
pressed in the osteoclast cells and that a relationship existed between this over-
expression and the degradation of bone marrow cells in osteoporosis. Based
on this research, Human Genome Sciences received two patents: one in 1996
for Human Osteoclast Derived Cathepsin and another in 1999 for a derived
cathepsin-K gene.34 At the same time, in 1997, GlaxoSmithKline and Incyte
formed diaDexus, a company whose to aim was to develop and market tests
for osteoporosis and other diseases.
The industry side of SB-462795 can be seen from the original 1993 agree-
ment established between Human Genome Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline.
Under this agreement, Human Genome Sciences would receive clinical devel-
opment “milestone payments” for the drug candidate as well as royalties for
any subsequent compounds discovered by GlaxoSmithKline through the use
of Human Genome Sciences’ techniques and technology. GlaxoSmithKline
would, of course, retain the gains made by the marketing, promotion, and
sales of the drug once it reached the market, though some of this profit might
be shared with Human Genome Sciences. From this agreement, both Human
Genome Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline formed the Human Gene Therapeu-
tic Consortium, a group that included Takeda Chemicals Ltd., Schering-
Plough, Merck KGaA, and Sanofi-Synthelabo as a way of facilitating alliances
and potential product development centering around a bioinformatics- and
genomics-based technology platform. Although the initial term of the con-
sortium expired in 2001, it identified more than 400 research programs along
the lines of SB-462795, and it also serves as an indicator of the increasingly
common trend of situational, temporary alliances between the different sectors
of the biotech industry.
The development of the cathepsin-K drug SB-462795 can be seen as a
paradigm for how bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics research proceeds.
Whether the aim is to develop a novel drug or to study the gene expression
patterns for a particular biopathway, the components are often the same: a
combination of more traditional “wet-lab” technologies such as PCR or BAC
libraries and informatics-based tools such as computers, databases, software
for imaging and analysis, and so forth. Indeed, a technology such as the

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automated genome sequencing computer is a literal hybrid of both types of
technologies: a wet-lab component of biological samples and an in silico com-
ponent of scanning and analysis technologies. In many molecular biology labs,
the practices of bioinformatics are becoming more and more routine. At every
step of the way, both the computer itself and the concept of a genetic “code”
is central to how the research is done. How was Human Genome Sciences able
to analyze and develop the cathepsin-K drug candidate so rapidly? We can
use this example to outline what has now become a somewhat standard
protocol in bioinformatics-based drug development:

 Acquisition of biological sample and sample preparation;

 Isolation and purification of DNA or RNA from cell sample;
 Sequencing of DNA or RNA using automated genome sequencing com-
puters (including creation of cDNA libraries);
 Translation of DNA into an amino acid sequence using software;
 Analysis of both DNA and amino acid sequences against the human
genome databases (including use of EST and/or sequence-tagged site [STS]
information);
 Possible application for patents on novel techniques or derived gene
sequences;
 Analysis of both DNA and amino acid sequence against other model organ-
ism genome databases (e.g., the mouse genome, the fruit fly genome, etc.);
 Analysis of both DNA and amino acid sequence against structural prop-
erties and homologs of protein databases (from primary to tertiary protein
structure);
 Design of novel compound (drug or therapy) based on analysis and homol-
ogy studies;
 Selection of model organisms and in vitro systems for preclinical
experiments;
 Clinical trials in humans (phases I–III);
 New Drug Application (NDA) to U.S. FDA;
 Pending approval, ongoing “postmarket” analysis;
 Development and marketing of genomic tests specific to drug35

Although this list is incomplete and brief, what should be evident is the
degree to which computer and information technologies play a central role in
molecular biology and the drug-development process—without ever implying

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65
the wholesale transformation of biology into an immaterial, “virtual” practice. This
dual assertion—informatic and material—is the key to understanding the
promises, potentials, and contradictions in the foundational assumptions that
bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics set forth.
In a way, then, we can invert Timothy Leary’s famous maxim that “com-
puters are the drugs of the 1990s” and say that for the biotech industry drugs
are the computers of the twenty-first century. Even within the nonspecialist
discourse, the idea of a genetic “code” has become second nature, having found
its way even into science education, science journalism, and popular culture.
It seems that both in science research and in culture generally, the distance
separating biology and informatics has begun to collapse, but without biology
simply becoming virtual and without informatics simply becoming an exten-
sion of the biological. What has happened, then, to the notion of “life itself”
in this process? Addressing this question requires us to consider bioinfor-
matics and pharmacogenomics from both an ontological and an economic
perspective.

Canguilhem and “Life Itself”

From the most general perspective, thinking about biological life is as old as
thinking about thinking. Canguilhem notes that “the theory of the concept
and the theory of life have the same age and the same author.”36 He is speak-
ing of Aristotle, “the logician of the concept and the systematic philosopher
of living things.”37 The links between philosophy and life, ontology and
biology, are, at first vague and abstract. In any definition of biological life, be
it mechanist or vitalistic, there is always something that escapes, something
that exists beyond the ability of conceptualization. And yet nothing is more
self-evident and less in need of proof than the fact of life. What could be more
impractical—and, more important, impossible—than the age-old, unanswer-
able question “What is life?” For Canguilhem, the seemingly vague question
concerning “life” is both ancient and contemporary. Consider, as an example,
the titles of books published by molecular biologists during the postwar era,
books about the then-emerging field of molecular genetics and aimed at non-
specialist, popular audiences: Francis Crick’s Life Itself, François Jacob’s The
Logic of Life, J. B. S. Haldane’s What Is Life? Andre Lowff ’s The Biological Order,
Henry Quastler’s The Emergence of Biological Organization, and George Beadle
and Muriel Beadle’s The Language of Life. Such books owe a great deal to Erwin

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Schrödinger’s lectures entitled “What Is Life?” in which the existence of a
“hereditary code script” was hypothesized in decidedly informatic terms. More
recently, diverse books such as Robert Sinsheimer’s What Is Life? Lynn
Margulis and Dorion Sagan’s What Is Life? and bioinformatician Pierre Baldi’s
The Shattered Self continue to pose the questions first elaborated in a specifi-
cally genetic manner by molecular biologists of the postwar era.38
If the question concerning “life” is at once very old and yet very contem-
porary, how can we understand its most recent permutation in the age of the
HGP, bioinformatics, and pharmacogenomics? We can begin by taking as our
primary object of study the term “life itself.” As previously stated, this seem-
ingly innocuous phrase remains terminally in scare quotes in this volume in
order to evoke constantly a reflexivity concerning the relationships between
biology, philosophy, and political economy. More accurately, we can refer to
the concept of “life itself,” a concept that has changed a great deal over time
and at any given moment is constituted by more than one approach. The
concept of “life itself” refers not only to scientific knowledge concerning bio-
logical life (today, something articulated at the molecular-genetic level), but
also to the ways in which that knowledge is never just scientific. As we have
already seen in the example of cathepsin-K (a case study to which I return
later), the concept of “life itself” today brings together digital DNA, engi-
neered in vitro proteins, intellectual property, alliances between companies,
and genetic tests for use in medicine. Understanding how the concept of “life
itself” is transforming and transformed by the current integration of biology
and computers requires a further consideration not just of the concept of “life
itself” but also of the concept of life itself. It is to this topic that I now turn.
In 1966, Canguilhem gave two lectures in Brussels, both entitled “The
Concept and Life.”39 He gave the lectures just four years after Marshall Niren-
berg and Heinrich Matthaei had succeeded in “cracking the genetic code” and
some thirteen years following the research of James Watson, Francis Crick,
Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin on the structure of DNA. Though
Canguilhem had long been interested in the history of biology and in partic-
ular in the relationship between philosophy and biology, this new stage in the
development of biological science signaled a significant new twist in the long-
standing quest after “life itself.”
The title of Canguilhem’s lectures is instructive. As he notes at the outset,
to have a concept of life is, in a sense, to be life itself: “For Aristotle, soul was
not only the nature but also the form of the living thing. Soul was at once

Bioinformatic Bodies and the Problem of “Life Itself”

67
life’s reality (ousia) and definition (logos). Thus, the concept of the living thing
was, in the end, the living thing itself.”40 In tracing the interest in the rela-
tion between concepts and life back to Aristotle, Canguilhem is also sug-
gesting that, despite the reliance on quantitative analysis and the techniques
borrowed from information theory, the then-emerging field of genetics still
displayed an Aristotelian interest in life-giving “form” or “Soul.” As Can-
guilhem notes, “when we say that biological heredity is the communication
of a certain kind of information, we hark back in a way to the Aristotelian
philosophy with which we began. . . . If we are to understand life, its message
must be decoded before it can be read.”41 Yet, at the same time, genetics was
not simply Aristotelian in the same way that seventeenth-century natural
history or eighteenth-century vitalism were; its unique appropriation of infor-
mation theory and cybernetics made it at once the most modern of biologi-
cal sciences and yet a science in which Aristotle’s life-giving “form” reappears
as genetic sequence or molecular structure. “Messages, information, programs,
code, instructions, decoding: these are the new concepts of the life sciences.”42
The value of Canguilhem’s contribution to the philosophy and history of
biology is in the way in which he understands biochemistry and molecular
genetics as endeavors that are at once philosophical and technical, ontologi-
cal and “economic” (in the broadest sense of the term). In developing a more
critical understanding of contemporary bioinformatics and pharmacoge-
nomics, I would like to spend some time elaborating the problem of “life
itself” in Canguilhem’s writings. In one sense, for Canguilhem the history of
biological thought can be seen as a footnote to Aristotle. In Aristotle can be
found the seeds of what would later become natural history, physiology, even
the modern emphasis on self-regulation and organization.43
Canguilhem highlights three elements from Aristotle’s biological writings.
First, Aristotle’s notion of the life-giving “form” or “Soul” in De anima makes
a distinction between matter and form in the organism, the latter providing
the invisible yet immanent principle of organization for the former.44 In the
passage from an acorn to a fully grown tree, the form of the organism exists
in potential and is eventually actualized through the biological processes of
growth and development.45 It is this basic notion—an organizing principle
distinct from, yet immanent to the material of the organism—that Canguil-
hem detects even in modern biochemistry and genetics. Although the passage
from Aristotelian form to genetic information is not a straight, progressive
line, Canguilhem nevertheless points to the concepts of “biochemical speci-

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ficity” and cellular “errors in metabolism” as examples of a new type of genetic
Aristotelianism.
Second, Canguilhem highlights the role of “organization” in the
Aristotelian teleology. Although he does not claim that the history of biology
is a history of variations on the teleological argument (form is function), he
does give great significance to the various terms derived from organ (organon)
in Aristotle:

it was Aristotle who coined the term “organized body.” A body is organized if it pro-
vides the soul with instruments or organs indispensable to the exercise of its powers.
. . . The concept of organism developed in the eighteenth century, as naturalists, physi-
cians and philosophers sought semantic substitutes or equivalents for the word “soul”
in order to explain how systems composed of distinct components nevertheless work
in a unified manner to perform a function.46

Terms that occupy a central place in biological thought—organ, organic, organ-

ization—are, for Canguilhem, versions of Aristotle’s emphasis on the organi-
zation of the living. Although the emphasis on teleology changes (especially
with Darwinian evolution), the emphasis on formal causes does not. Aristo-
tle’s writings on biology reiterate this point: if you want to know what it is,
look at what it does. Aristotle’s famous example of the eye is exemplary in
this regard: if the organism is the eye, then the life-giving “form” or “Soul”
is sight. Canguilhem’s interest in Aristotle’s concept of organon is directly
linked to the modern interest in biological organization—biocomplexity,
autocatalysis, and self-organization in biological systems. Indeed, Canguilhem
traces the biological concept of self-organization back to eighteenth-century
vitalism and natural philosophy, examples of what he calls “the autocracy of
nature.”47
Finally, along with the Aristotelian concepts of “form” and “organ,”
Canguilhem highlights the principle of motion or animation, the principle
that stood out for Aristotle among all others as the defining character of life
itself. Encapsulating Aristotle’s biological philosophy, Canguilhem notes that
the “fundamental concepts in Aristotle’s definition of life are those of soul and
organ. A living body is an animate and organized body. It is animate because
it is organized. Its soul is in fact act, form, and end.”48 Furthermore, “life,
identified with animation, thus differs from matter; the life-soul is the form,
or act, of which the living natural body is the content: such was Aristotle’s

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69
conception of life.”49 If it moves, it is alive. Motion or animation is thus
directly related to organization and form:

A remarkable and interesting fact from the epistemological standpoint is the prolif-
eration of terms containing the prefix auto-, used today by biologists to describe the
functions and behavior of organized systems: auto-organization, auto-reproduction,
auto-regulation, auto-immunization, and so on. . . . Living systems [in these sciences]
are open, non-equilibrium systems that maintain their organization both because
they are open to the external world and in spite of being open to the external
world.50

This emphasis on animation implicitly brings in a dynamic, temporal quality

to the organism, but it also emphasizes the automobility of the organism as
well. The organism moves itself, and, in doing so, it provides for a range of
resistances to the processes of decay, degradation, and disorder or entropy. In
this regard, Canguilhem often cites the Xavier Bichat maxim: “Life is the
collection of functions that resist death.”51 But this resistive quality of life is
also a resistance of order against entropy, of organization against randomness,
of information against noise. It is this more modern formulation of Bichat’s
maxim that is taken up by biochemistry and genetics. Thus, at the molecu-
lar level, it is not so much that something is alive because it moves, but rather
that it is informed that it moves and thus is alive.52
The relationship between Aristotelian “Soul” and genetic “information” is
part of a broader, more complex historical transformation that Canguilhem
briefly outlines in a 1973 encyclopedia article simply entitled “Vie” (Life).53
Canguilhem identifies four, largely overlapping threads in the history of
biological thinking on “life itself.” Each thread is dominated by a principle
understood to be nontranscendent and yet distinct from the particular mate-
riality of the organism: animation (which is the most elaborated in Aristotle),
mechanism (articulated in philosophy and biology by Descartes, and adum-
brated by Harvey and Malpighi), organization (again stemming from Aristo-
tle but taking fuller shape in Comte, cell theory, and Bernardian physiology),
and, finally, information (resulting from the intersections between cybernetics/
information theory and molecular biology).54
For Canguilhem, the point in outlining these threads is precisely to empha-
size the nonlinear, overlapping, discontinuous character of biological think-
ing. In the case of molecular genetics, the influence of cybernetic “feedback”

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and the concepts of information theory are decisive in reformulating the ques-
tion concerning “life itself.” Canguilhem points specifically to information
theory in this regard: “Claude Shannon’s work on communications and infor-
mation theory and its relation to thermodynamics (1948) appeared to offer a
partial answer to an age-old question about life. . . . Is organization order
amidst disorder? Is it the maintenance of a quantity of information propor-
tional to the complexity of the structure?”55 Whereas the second law of ther-
modynamics describes how an object will tend toward a more disordered state
(a state of greater entropy), the example of living organisms seems to provide
a counterexample, where growth, development, regeneration, and adaptation
resist the tendency toward entropy.
Keeping in mind the three Aristotelian elements that Canguilhem
points to—form, organization, animation—we can further elaborate on how
genetics and bioinformatics transform the question of “life itself.” Modern
genetics, in the significance given to the notion of “genetic information” or a
“genetic code,” implicitly refashions Aristotle’s notion of form, organ, and
animation. Instead of a teleologically driven form (recall Aristotle’s example
of the eye), genetics gives us a technically driven information (genes are not
determined or determining, but they do express, mutate, and replicate via
protein intermediaries). Likewise, instead of an organ’s serving as the princi-
ple of order for the organism, genetics and biochemistry emphasize the notion
of organization, even self-organization (e.g., protein folding, bonding speci-
ficity between enzymes, metabolic networks in the cell). Finally, instead of the
more physiological principle of animation or motion, genetics offers the model
of political economy: the production, distribution, and consumption of molec-
ular compounds within the cell (transcription/translation, membrane signal-
ing and transport, cellular metabolism).
However, in this transformation of the concept of “life itself,” a number of
important questions arise. Canguilhem points to one: “Where does biologi-
cal information originate?”56 That is, the model of genetics presupposes the
existence of genetic information already as part and parcel of the living system.
Is there a stable quantity of information in the living cell? Is new informa-
tion created or lost in the lifespan of a cell? For that matter, we can ask a
deceptively simple question: What counts as biological information? Is it the
number of genes, the number of proteins, the number of interactions between
them, or some statistical measure of gene expression levels or metabolic activ-
ity? Canguilhem notes the quasi-evolutionary solution given by Henri Atlan,

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71
in which information in the cell arises through the selection from a back-
ground of “noise” (which mimes Norbert Wiener’s definition). We might also
mention biocomplexity researcher Stuart Kauffman, who has proposed a
similar solution, but one based on the self-propagating, self-regulating prin-
ciples of simple RNA-type molecules (“collective autocatalytic sets”).57 Yet,
despite these interesting approaches, the problem of “life itself” still hinges
on the priority of some nonmaterial yet immanent principle of organization.
Canguilhem asks, “[M]ight the meaning of organization lie in the ability to
make use of disorganization?”58
I can summarize Canguilhem’s approach to genetics by deriving three
propositions from his work:

 The first proposition is that molecular genetics is an attenuated Aris-

totelianism; the concept of a “genetic code” is, in the framework established
by Canguilhem, a more technical, operative version of Aristotle’s “form.”
Genetics, however, is not completely Aristotelian because it is, as a biologi-
cal science, predicated on the materiality of the organism, on the “stuff”
of life.
 A second proposition is that genetics concerns itself less with the consti-
tution or morphology of the organism and more with the ways in which an
organism is “informed.” The emphasis on codes, sequences, and other data
types makes genetics—and bioinformatics—very distant from the kind of
visible analogies established by natural historians. Indeed, Canguilhem
wonders what the discourse of nature’s anomalies, its monsters and teratolo-
gies, might be in genetics: “According to Aristotle, a monster is an error of
nature which was mistaken about matter. If in contemporary molecular
pathology, error generates formal flaws, hereditary biochemical errors are
always considered as a microanomaly, a micromonstrosity.”59
 This relationship between information and error leads to a third proposi-
tion: in the medical context, genetics facilitates, or at least inculcates, a shift
from the organism to the sequence as the basic unit of “life itself.” At issue
here is much more than mere scientific reductionism, for a number of genomic
and so-called systems biology approaches have been able to incorporate molec-
ular genetics into a systemswide view that includes technologies such as DNA
microarrays and computer databases.60 Yet the shift away from organism to
sequence, with all its connotations of “code” and “information,” also reveals a
significant fissure in the concept of “life itself.”

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Consider the ways in which information theorists such as Claude Shannon and
molecular biologists such as Francis Crick define “information.” For Shannon
and his colleague Warren Weaver, information is explicitly defined as a quan-
titative unit, a statistical measure of a message moving from point A to its
destination at point B.61 As they state, “two messages, one of which is heavily
loaded with meaning and the other of which is pure nonsense, can be exactly
equivalent, from the present viewpoint, as regards information.”62 Thus, in
the context of information theory, information is a quantity, a pattern, or a form
that exists irrespective of, from the perspective of information transfer, content
or meaning.
As Evelyn Fox Keller notes, precisely the opposite occurs in molecular
biology’s appropriation of terms such as information, code, and sequence from
information theory and cybernetics.63 In genetics, a single base pair muta-
tion—from an A (adenine) to a C (cytosine), for instance—can result in a
drastic change in phenotypic expression. Diseases such as sickle cell and cystic
fibrosis do in fact result from, respectively, single base pair and single gene
mutations. And, as noted, new fields such as pharmacogenomics are predi-
cated on the search for the minute genetic differences (SNPs) that make some
patients more susceptible to side effects than others. Thus, when Watson and
Crick talk about “genetical information,” they define information in exactly the
opposite way in which the term operates in the information and computer sci-
ences.64 This tension—between an informatic definition of information and a
genetic definition of information—has become even more complicated today,
in which biological research and computer research are increasingly integrated
into genome databases, gene-finding algorithms, and molecular-modeling
software. In short, fields such as bioinformatics contain the residues of the
Aristotelian tension between “form” and “information,” a tension that is, par-
adoxically, materialized in artifacts such as in vitro plasmid libraries and
online genome databases.

“In a Nature Twofold They Shine”

We can now outline several key characteristics of the concept of “life itself”
in contemporary fields such as bioinformatics and pharmacogenomcis.65 Let
us return to our example of the cathepsin-K drug candidate SB-462795.
Recall that this cathepsin-K drug developed by Human Genome Sciences is
currently in clinical trials and is among the first genetic pharmaceuticals to

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73
have been developed from the use of genomics and bioinformatics (as opposed
to more traditional methods grounded in wet-lab research). What are the char-
acteristics of “life itself” in such bioinformatic contexts?
To begin with, the concept of “life itself,” as Canguilhem shows, always
involves a reliance on Aristotelian notions of “form,” or some organizing prin-
ciple that coordinates discrete parts (e.g., gene sequences) into functional
wholes (e.g., gene expression pathways). For bioinformatics this principle is
actually twofold: sequence and structure. Indeed, the major gap within bioin-
formatics is the so-called sequence-structure gap, for it is in this intermedi-
ary zone that the one-dimensional feature of sequence is transformed into a
three-dimensional molecular structure, from gene to protein. In the case of
the cathepsin-K drug candidate, the drug-discovery process began from infor-
matics, from the sequencing and analysis of osteoclast cells; that is, initial
analysis began in silico. What this implies is that although the other proper-
ties of osteoclasts are not without import, the sequence and the patterns of
that sequence served as the starting points for the discovery process. What is
the life-giving form to osteoclast cells? In this case, it is implicitly the prin-
ciple of organization within the genetic sequence—a sequence derived and
analyzed within the computer.
However, “life itself” is not merely concerned with the Aristotelian form,
or the life-giving principle of a cell or protein, but also with the biological
processes through which that form is expressed and made manifest. In the
case of the cathepsin-K compound, the identification and isolation of the
cathepsin-K genes was only a first step; the real results would come only from
understanding the role these genes played in the phenotypic overexpression
of the cathepsin-K protein in the living cell. Form is thus incomplete without
the efficient cause of some biological process (in this case, gene expression).
For this, researchers at Human Genome Sciences used comparative genomics
to analyze the cathepsin-K genes against their homologs in other species such
as mice (a common model organism for humans). Again, the recent progress
in both the human genome and the mouse genome has made such compara-
tive analyses possible using the Internet to access these databases. Using not
only genomics databases, but also enzyme classification, EST, and biopathway
databases, the drug-discovery process can generate a great deal of data with-
out ever entering the wet lab (though this is never done without wet-lab
research). These first two characteristics—form and process—suggest that in
the era of bioinformatics-driven drug discovery, “life itself” is a dynamic

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principle of organization that can be analyzed irrespective of specific material
instantiation.
In spite of what would seem to be a tendency to make the biological fully
“virtual,” neither bioinformatics nor the drug-discovery process takes place
completely in the computer or on the Internet. This point cannot be stressed
enough: bioinformatics is as material as it is immaterial, all the while constituted
by an informatic approach to the biological domain. What this means is that, for
bioinformatics, Aristotelian form and process is not enough; in a way,
bioinformatics seems to be a dissatisfied Aristotelianism. Computer-assisted
sequencing and analysis can go so far, but the drug-discovery process demands,
at some point, a return to the wet lab. In the case of the cathepsin-K drug,
this return happened after the in silico drug-target identification and valida-
tion processes (identifying the compound to act upon and matching that com-
pound with the manifestation of disease). In this case, animal studies using
the cathepsin-K therapy were the first loop from the digital to the biological
in the “wet-dry cycle” of the drug-discovery process. This tension is crucial
to understanding fields such as bioinformatics. Though, as Canguilhem notes,
modern genetics and biochemistry may smuggle in Aristotelian “form,” they
also remain resolutely materialist, if for no other reason than that their end-
point or application must be something material (a gene therapy, a drug) or
must in some way materially touch the body of the medical patient.
Although these three elements of form, process, and matter significantly
inform the role of “life itself” in bioinformatics, another element is equally
important: the role that various discursive exchanges play in the transforma-
tions of the concept of “life itself” within these scientific fields. I have already
noted the significant roles that the sciences of cybernetics, information theory,
and early computer science played in the formation of molecular genetics
during the postwar era; this influence can be seen today in the range of hybrid
artifacts that populate many biotechnology labs, from genome databases to
DNA microarrays. The intersection between genetic and computer “codes” is
in many ways the dominant theme of the recent history of molecular biology
and genetics, and it will arguably take new forms in the leading-edge fields
of bioinformatics and “in silico drug discovery.” However, as also noted, such
conceptual exchanges are at best incomplete exchanges and approximate
appropriations. Such approximation, in some instances, can affect the way in
which scientific knowledge is determined. For instance, the fields of cyber-
netics and information theory, largely contextualized by World War II

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75
military research, configured “command and control” within communications
and weaponry systems in a particular way; agency was human based and
largely centralized, though augmented by an array of mechanical or informa-
tional prosthetics or both. In importing the concepts of “information,” “code,”
“noise,” and so forth, molecular geneticists such as Francis Crick implicitly
imported the notions of command and control that were part of those con-
cepts. Thus, the emphasis on the “central dogma” of genetics during the 1960s
(“DNA makes RNA makes proteins, and proteins make us”) configured DNA
as a kind of command-and-control system that deployed instructions outward
to the synthesis and organization of proteins in the cell. Though one still finds
versions of the central dogma in textbooks, it has taken some time for this
largely reductive maxim to be complemented by more complex approaches
emphasizing gene regulation, biopathways, and protein-protein interactions.66
The concept of “life itself” becomes even more complicated if we consider
not just the discursive exchanges between disciplines, but also the end product
or application for fields such as bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics. A large
number of biotechnology fields are directly contextualized by their potential
application in medicine and health care. This is, on the surface, the rationale
for the need for patents as well as publication, for incentives for application
as well as incentives for knowledge production. And, certainly, the very def-
inition of biotechnology implies such an instrumental approach: biotechnology
is a technology of biological life, a technology in which biological “life itself”
is at once the processes of production, distribution, and consumption. In
biotechnology, “life itself” is both the technology and that which the tech-
nology aims to benefit. For instance, the cathepsin-K drug candidate is both
a biological compound and a technological mode of intervention into an
organism. It is at once fully “informatic,” being based on sequence analysis
and database research, and fully “biological,” being engineered to interact in
a biological manner in the cells of the organism or patient. There is, we should
not forget, another important layer, and that is the economic layer. The
cathepsin-K compound may perform biologically in the cell, but that per-
formance will directly affect the economics of companies such as Human
Genome Sciences or GlaxoSmithKline, and it will also indirectly affect the
business of diagnostics for osteoporosis based on this knowledge. In this sense,
the cathepskin-K drug functions biologically as well as economically; indeed,
it functions economically to the degree that it functions biologically. Because
the business of drug development is costly and time-consuming (as noted, it

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often takes 15–20 years from basic R&D to FDA approval), the concept
of “life itself” is, in cases such as these, always more than biological. It is a
biological “life itself” that is in many ways not separate from a technical and
economically functional concept of “life itself.”
So far I have offered only a partial listing of the characteristics of “life itself”
in the domain of bioinformatics and drug development. What should be
apparent is how the ontological concerns of Aristotelian “form” are closely
tied to the political-economic concerns of application and instrumentality.
Clearly, there is nothing wrong with the development of successful genetic
therapies and drugs in general; but, all the same, it is important to acknowl-
edge and pay attention to the complicated, manifold interests in fields such
as bioinformatics. Biotechnology is both a science and an industry, and in
examples such as the cathepsin-K drug candidate it is not difficult to see how
the medical and economic values are not always in sync. In some instances, a
drug candidate may perform biologically in a way that runs counter to the
economic interests of its development (e.g., the HER2 test for cancer). In other
cases, potential economic value is facilitated by new diagnostic technologies
(e.g., the HLA-B test for the AIDS drug Abacavir). Depending on the direc-
tion in which the balance between medical and economic value tips, we may
see in the future the combination of population genomics, genetic screening,
and pharmacogenomics result in the “medicalization of lifestyle,” or what one
report calls “pills for the healthy ill.”67
In the example of cathespin-K, the concept of “life itself” is at once onto-
logical and economic, not only in the sense that a particular molecular com-
pound performs both biologically and economically, but also in the broader
sense of economy, meaning efficiency, productivity, minimum energy expendi-
ture. We can return to Canguilhem’s work in the history of biology on this
point. In discussing the “thematic conservation” of the theme of normality in
the biological sciences, Canguilhem notes how in the seventeenth century the
metaphor of “animal economy” was first put forth to account for the ways in
which the organism regulated its own biological functioning. If Descartes’s
mechanism could not account for the self-regulating and self-moving proper-
ties of animals (as opposed to machines), then perhaps the notion of an animal
economy could account for it: “Like the domestic economy, the animal
economy required wise government of a complex entity in order to promote
the general welfare. In the history of physiology the idea of ‘animal economy’
was responsible for a gradual shift from the notion of animal machine to the

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77
notion of organism over the course of the eighteenth century.”68 The concept
of a biological or animal economy is significant historically given the con-
current rise of natural history’s systems of classification and the development
of modern notions of political sovereignty in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. It
may also be seen to function as a precursor to the later development of clas-
sical political economy in Ricardo, Smith, and the biologically inspired work
of Malthus. For Canguilhem, the notion of animal economy (instead of animal
machine) served as a hinge to the prevalence of concepts derived from Aris-
totle’s term organon: order, organization, organic, and so forth, “the idea that
a certain order obtains in the relations of the parts of a mechanism to the
whole.”69 The economic model would persist through the nineteenth century,
albeit in a different form, in the guise of industrialism’s factory model in
Bernardian physiology. Here, the specialization of the organism’s parts is
analogized as a biological division of labor. As Canguilhem notes, “since the
organism was conceived as a sort of workshop or factory, it was only logical
to measure the perfection of living beings in terms of the increasing struc-
tural differentiation and functional specialization of their parts, and thus in
terms of relative complexity.”70
Economy in this sense is broader than any specific mode of exchange or pro-
duction, though, obviously, not isolated from it. In this sense, an animal
economy or biological economy would be what Aristotle meant by entelechy,
or the ways in which the principle of living organization resulted in a spe-
cific, efficient end or aim. Yet the end of the organism, like the end of “life
itself,” is, in another sense, death. The organism ceases at the moment of its
end, and yet its end is consistently to “resist death,” as Bichat put it. It is
perhaps the notion of animal economy that serves as a bridge here, for it artic-
ulates biological function as a correlative of the economizing activity of the
organism, of what is costly and of what comes cheaply. If, as Canguilhem sug-
gests, the economic model plays a significant role in the concept of “life itself”
(though in historically conditioned, different ways), then perhaps we can
elaborate on the impact of this connection between biology and economy in
bioinformatics.

The Economy of DNA, or Marx as Bioinformatician

Consider again our case study of Human Genome Science’s cathepsin-K com-
pound. We can ask, What are the different types of value in the development

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of such a drug candidate? From one perspective, it is the drug itself that is of
the most value, for the measure of the success of the drug is directly related
to the potential economic gains for Human Genome Sciences and Glaxo-
SmithKline. Thus, the measure of economic value is predicated on the measure
of biological or medical value; or, put another way, animal economy deter-
mines, in part, financial economy. The task of the drug-development process
from this vantage point is therefore to turn information effectively into a
product, to turn an abstract, immaterial entity (e.g., genetic sequence on a
database) into a concrete, material entity (an FDA-approved prescription
drug). The exclusive reliance on information in itself goes only so far. In the
business of health care and pharmaceuticals, the endpoint is always the mate-
rial, biological body of the patient, and it is this biological baseline that must
be confronted.71 Although information may be of value in itself, it is only part
of the picture. Thus, connecting information to the biological body is the primary
challenge of “life itself” in the age of bioinformatics. The measure of the two types
of value—medical and economic—are based on effectively transforming some-
thing immaterial that is exchanged into something material that is consumed
as its endpoint.
Yet, from another perspective, the biological, material body of the patient
is not the endpoint of the drug-development process, despite the newfound
role bioinformatics promises to play in the process. The average drug devel-
oped using biotechnology arguably benefits only partially from direct drug
sales. The booming industry of diagnostic tests—many genetics based—and
the linking of such tests to computer databases are also significant parts of the
drug-discovery process and the pharmaceutical industry. These two aspects—
diagnostics and databases—are more services than products and, as such, are
dependent on information technologies to deliver results accurately. In the
case of diagnostics, pharmacogenomics techniques, including the use of DNA
microarrays, are promising to be able to match the genetic makeup of indi-
vidual patients to particular drugs in order to minimize ADRs. This possi-
bility, combined with the increasing diversity of biological databases
(including SNP databases, population-specific genome databases, and tradi-
tional patient data in clinics), means that both medical and economic value
are predicated on the ability of information to perform computational and
analytical work. Here, economic value is predicated on medical value, but in
a way that is different from the case of drug discovery. From a purely eco-
nomic standpoint, there is less risk involved in the offering of these types of

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services, for a diagnostic test can be medically and economically beneficial,
whether or not an ADR is discovered in a drug that is tested. Indeed, a
common critique leveled at the idea of pharmacogenomics is that it offers a
way for pharmaceutical companies to sell better the drugs already on the
market, instead of transforming or even questioning the logic of drug
development. Instead of a traditional “one size fits all” approach, pharma-
cogenomics simply shifts the scale of its operations into a “many sizes fit
all” approach. As a number of more critical reports suggest, the basic
principles of drug effectiveness, regulation, and testing are still left largely
unquestioned.
In the first approach, we have a product-based economy, which takes the
biological and the material as its endpoint. In this model, the challenge for
bioinformatics-based drug discovery is to transform information effectively
into a material product or therapy; information must minimally benefit the
biological body of the patient so that any minimal economic benefit may be
possible. This seems to be common sense, and it fits many of our experiences
in the health-care sector: a visit to the doctor leads to one or more tests, and
the results from those tests (combined with physician consultation) lead to
one or more prescriptions, which then takes the patient to the pharmacy. Yet
any number of factors limit this approach from the economic standpoint: for
instance, the patent on a drug may run out, and the competition from the
generic drug market may force a company to develop a “new” drug that takes
its place.
But if we consider this same process from the larger picture of a bioinfor-
matics industry, there is more than this simple information-into-drugs equa-
tion. As can be witnessed in the development of many drugs, including the
cathepsin-K candidate, the process includes not only an actual pill, but also
patents, licenses on patents, tests, and databases, not to mention direct-to-
consumer marketing for new drugs. From this perspective, the challenge for
a bioinformatics-based drug-development process is different. The challenge
is now to maintain the recirculation of products (pills, testing technologies)
back into information (databases, test results, marketing and media cam-
paigns). If drugs currently exist in a cycle of technological obsolescence similar
to the information technology industry, then the main challenge put forth to
the pharmaceutical industry is not how to develop sustainable and effective
treatments, but rather how to transform temporary material products continually
into the long-term generation of information. What generates economic value, from

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this standpoint, is an infrastructure for the production of information, yet
without ever completely severing the link to the patient’s biological body.
These two perspectives on the medical-economic valuation of the
cathepsin-K drug candidate correspond to what Karl Marx has famously called
the “general formula of capital.” Speaking about nineteenth-century indus-
trial capitalism, he notes that the nature of capital can be considered through
two perspectives on exchange. The first is the perspective of the individual
worker and consumer. In this perspective, the individual works a certain
number of hours manufacturing a commodity, for which a wage is given in
the form of money. That person then takes the money and purchases other
commodities produced by other individuals—food, clothing, or housing. Or,
in the context of health care, an individual who works at an information tech-
nology job receives wages (part of which may go toward health insurance),
and, if the person is ill, that money is exchanged for a prescription drug, which
is then consumed.72 This admittedly simplified context includes two sub-
processes: the transformation of a commodity into money and the transfor-
mation of money into another commodity. Another way of stating this is that
the product of the individual’s labor power is exchanged for money, and then
that money is in turn exchanged for the product of the another individual’s
labor power.73 In a sense, even in this basic relationship, capitalist exchange
already coordinates living, biological labor power via immaterial, money
intermediaries. Marx was fond of using biological metaphors for the process
of exchange. As he notes, “in so far as the process of exchange transfers com-
modities from hands in which they are non-use-values to hands in which they
are use-values, it is a process of social metabolism.” Thus, the exchange of
money for commodities and commodities for money constituted the core
“metabolic interaction of social labor.” Although in a modern context the
emergence of service industries, flexible accumulation, and information-based
or immaterial labor has made this basic relationship more complicated, what
we can retain from Marx’s analysis is this basic “metamorphosis of commodi-
ties through which the social metabolism is mediated.”74
This perspective—that of the individual worker-consumer—is what Marx
calls “selling in order to buy.”75 Commodities as material objects and use
values are mediated by the immaterial exchange values represented by money.
The endpoint is the use or consumption of the commodity, be it food, cloth-
ing, or housing. Marx abbreviates this relationship by the formula C-M-C, in
which the capitalist exchange process is seen to be the dual transformation of

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commodities (C) into money (M) and then back into commodities, which are
then used or consumed. In describing this process as a “metamorphosis,” Marx
means quite literally that one type of thing is transformed into another type
through a dynamic, morphological process mediated by the equivalence of
quantitative values. Thus, “[f]rom the mere look of a piece of money, we
cannot tell what breed of commodity has been transformed into it. In their
money-form all commodities look alike.”76 Thus, in the formula C-M-C, each
moment in the metamorphosis of commodities necessitates the intermediary
of money; in other words, each moment in the transformation of material
objects necessitates their mediation by immaterial means of equivalence.
However, as Marx notes, this description represents the individual worker-
consumer’s perspective. A different picture is created when we consider not
only the discrete individual, but the dynamics of the system as a whole. From
this perspective, the formula C-M-C is inverted, and the endpoint of the
system is precisely that it has no endpoint. From this systemwide perspective,
the C-M-C circuit is only a kind of subroutine within a larger set of dynamic
processes. This larger process is the inverse of the preceding formula: M-C-
M¢, in which money is exchanged for money via the intermediary of com-
modities and in which the money that returns is more than the money
originally invested. Keeping with our simplified example of health care, a
pharmaceutical company may pay a licensing fee for a patent to produce a pre-
scription drug, but that drug will not be the endpoint, for the drug serves
the function of boosting investments in the company as well as generating
sales from spinoff products such as diagnostic tests. Marx calls this “buying
in order to sell.” The real goal of capital, then, is not merely to mediate
between material commodities or use values, but rather to use commodities
as intermediaries in the ongoing, expansive generation of capital. “In the cir-
culation of C-M-C, the money is in the end converted into a commodity which
serves as a use-value; it has therefore been spent once and for all. In the
inverted form M-C-M, on the contrary, the buyer lays out money in order
that, as a seller, he may recover money.”77
Two consequences result from this perspective. The first is that in the medi-
ation of money through commodities, quantitative value becomes the ground
for exchange. “The process M-C-M does not therefore owe its content to any
qualitative difference between its extremes, for they are both money, but solely
to quantitative changes.”78 Though Marx is careful to note that this quanti-
tative exchange process is itself conditioned by a range of qualitative factors

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(such as the social creation of demand and the process of “valorization”), the
process of capital is predicated on the transformation of M into M¢, or of value
into greater value, of investment into profit (and back into investment). The
second consequence is therefore that “the circulation of money as capital is an
end in itself, for the valorization of value takes place only within this con-
stantly renewed movement. The movement of capital is therefore limitless.”79
Again, Marx does note that commodities are consumed as use values in this
process, but that the use value or pattern of consumption is often conditioned
by the larger aim of exchange value.
Thus, in the example of the cathepsin-K drug candidate produced by
Human Genome Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline, we can see a process similar
to the one Marx describes as the “metamorphosis of commodities” and the
general formula of capital (M-C-M¢). Certainly, from one perspective, the
drug-discovery process results in a consumable “thing,” But from the per-
spective of the movement of the economic process as a whole, that moment
of material production and consumption exists within a larger framework that
emphasizes the further generation of value, a kind of biological valorization
process. The drug-discovery process for SB-462795 resulted not only in an
actual drug for testing in clinical trials, but also in a number of patents (one
for human osteoclast-derived cathepsin, another for a derived version of the
cathepsin-K gene), an osteoporosis test sold to Quest Diagnostics, and the for-
mation of a gene therapy consortium of pharmaceutical and biotech compa-
nies. What at one level appears to be a relatively straightforward economic
relation—wages into insurance, insurance into drugs, drugs into the body—
is at another level a dynamical, unending process of valorization—patents into
drugs, drugs into tests, tests into patents.
However, the example of bioinformatics and cathepsin-K is not fully
accounted for by the model Marx proposes, for fields such as bioinformatics
and pharmacogenomics must, as we have seen, constantly negotiate the space
separating the material and the immaterial, the biological and the informatic,
the complex of Aristotelian form, organ, and animation. Indeed, Marx does
note that the process of capital is forced to deal temporarily with material
commodities, but that the ultimate aim of capital is to obtain a kind of imma-
terial, free-floating state. For Marx, the “material variety of the commodities
is the material driving force behind their exchange, and it makes buyers and
sellers mutually dependent, because none of them possesses the object of his
own need, and each holds in his hand the object of another’s need.” Yet the

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contradiction in the general process of capital is that if the process is taken
purely in terms of the exchange of equivalencies, there can be no surplus value
and no profit: “If commodities, or commodities and money, of equal exchange-
value, and consequently equivalents, are exchanged, it is plain that no one
abstracts more value from circulation that he throws into it. The formation
of surplus-value does not take place.”80
Thus, on the one hand, capital is defined as the process in which money is
turned into more money via commodities, and yet this exchange of equiva-
lencies denies the creation of surplus value, the very thing it is supposed to
make possible. A pharmaceutical company invests a certain amount of money
in the development of a drug with the intention of extracting some surplus
value or profit from this drug (either in direct sales or in licenses or spinoff
services). In the case of cathepsin-K, the C in the M-C-M¢ formula is thus the
material pill, the drug itself. Yet the potential profits gained do not arise from
pricing alone, for pricing does not address the more fundamental issue of how
a differential can emerge from an equivalency. In this case, even the pricing
mechanisms of the drug industry, although they calculate potential gains,
cannot account for the conditions that make possible the derivation of a dif-
ferential from equivalencies.81
If this is the case, from where might the profit differential arise? The
pricing of the cathepsin-K drug must take into account the investments made
by GlaxoSmithKline, but this inclusion only establishes equivalency. Where
does the difference of profit arise? Perhaps it is in the ambivalent, yet neces-
sary descent into the material domain that the differential of profit can be
found. In a sense, the C in the M-C-M¢ formula is not just the drug itself,
but the drug functioning (or not functioning or malfunctioning) inside the
body of the patient, the drug in a biological context. Indeed, in drug devel-
opment the delicate balance between making a profit, suffering a loss, and
breaking even is predicated on the biological functioning of the drug-body
relationship. It is for this reason that Marx turns his attention to the labor
process and the valuation of labor power. In speaking of industrial capitalism,
he notes that innovations on the level of production serve as the profit differ-
ential, the difference that arises from the equivalency of exchange. In the
nineteenth-century context, this meant, among other things, the technologi-
cal development in “large-scale manufacturing,” which not only maximized
the output per unit of time, but also redefined labor power according to spe-
cialization and the division of labor.

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 When we turn to the case of bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics, we
can similarly notice two major transformations in the drug-development
process that, the companies hope, will create the profit differential. The first
is that the commodities in the biotech industry, like in many other industries,
are increasingly becoming immaterial and informatic. The medical applica-
tion of biotechnology is directed primarily toward prescription drugs, but a
panoply of service-based industries satellite the actual development of drugs:
database management, data analysis, software design, “infomedicine,” and, of
course, diagnostics. But this can be detected in a range of other industries as
well (most notably the information technology and entertainment sectors).
What is unique about biotechnology generally and about the bioinformatics
and pharmacogenomics industries specifically is that it is not only commodities
that are becoming more immaterial, but also the bodies that consume those commodities.
To be sure, patients’ biological bodies are not being “uploaded” in some kind
of science fiction scenario. But the hegemony of molecular genetics, when
combined with new information and computer technologies, has created a
context in which the biological body—“life itself”—is increasingly under-
stood and analyzed in informatic ways. The push toward pharmacogenomics
and, in some cases, toward preemptive genetic testing has as its aim the devel-
opment of a totally in silico monitoring and diagnostic system for biological
“life itself.”
One possible consequence of this tendency—a tendency supported by a
great deal of investment capital in pharmacogenomics technologies—is that
genetic medicine will “touch” the body only to the degree that the body and
“life itself” are understood in informatic ways. If we accept Marx’s description
of the general process of circulation of capital and the ambivalent necessity
for capital to descend temporarily into the material domain, then, with the
body reconfigured as an informatic entity, capital can potentially bypass to a
greater degree the vulnerabilities of the C intermediary in the M-C-M¢
formula. By supporting the creation of genome databases, patient-specific
genetic tests, and integrated medical and pharmacy data networks, the biotech
industry facilitates minimal contact with the biological body. Or, to be more
specific, the general tendency toward a bioinformatics-based approach to drug
development makes contact with the biological body determined by the
degree to which that body and “life itself” are understood as informatic. Thus,
the passage from Aristotelian form to genetic information is mediated by capital. We
can even extend Aristotle’s metaphor into Marx’s analysis. In the same way

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that, for Aristotle, the true function of the eye is sight, the true biological
function of DNA becomes the generation of capital (as information): the
“form” of DNA is information.
As previously stated numerous times, this tendency toward an informatic
understanding of “life itself” in no way implies the total liquidation of the
material, biological body. The point is that the material biological body—
“life itself”—is also the informatic body. The body materially counts only
inasmuch as it is understood as information and as genetic information. From
Marx’s political-economic perspective, fields such as bioinformatics and phar-
macogenomics can be seen as an attempt to create a new type of commodity,
one that is not based on services, affective entertainment, or immaterial goods.
This new type of commodity is just material enough to permit the M-C-M¢
cycle to continue; indeed, another name for Marx’s general formula is what
the pharmaceutical industry calls “wet-dry cycles.” This minimally material
commodity is just material enough to permit the necessity of further genetic
tests and the ongoing consumption of new drugs in the cycle of obsolescence.
But as a form of “life itself” that is informatic and bioinformatic, this com-
modity creates a more seamless transition from M to M¢; the area of greatest
vulnerability and risk—the living body—is thus placed at one or several
removes from its context in novel artifacts such as genome databases and SNP-
based diagnostic tests. If, as the hopeful forecasts for pharmacogenomics state,
drug development is to take place almost entirely in silico in the future, and
if, in such a context, the body is only minimally material, then this mode of
economic valuation would seem to be the most beneficial for the biotech and
pharmaceutical industries.82
Yet, despite this attenuated materialism, the pharmaceutical industry is
not always able to derive a profit differential from information alone. In a
sense, “life itself,” being ambivalently material and immaterial, also resists
the M-C-M¢ process. We can see this resistance most explicitly in cases where
a drug is inaccurately prescribed, where the regulation process fails, or where
severe ADRs are reported for drugs on the market. The human clinical trial
is still the true testing ground of a drug. But even a human clinical trial is
framed by a range of factors, including the population chosen for the trial and
the difficulty of maintaining standards of drug effectiveness. In many cases,
the real clinical trial for new drugs happens after FDA approval; drugs are
really tested when they are already on the market.

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 Milieu and Life

At once informatic and material, dealing with the “code” of life and “life
itself,” fields such as bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics are much more
than the mere disembodiment of bioscience and medicine through informa-
tion technologies. Although the concept of a genetic or protein “code” is, to
be sure, widespread in the research, the deployment of this concept in a range
of practices—from sequence analysis to genetic testing for ADRs—reminds
us that biology has, if anything, become more material, not less.
Yet in all the discussions concerning “pairwise sequence alignment,”
“homology modeling” in proteins, and “knockout experiments” for selected
biopathways, one factor has curiously been sidelined: environment. The rela-
tion between organism and environment raises a great many issues, including
causality, determinism, individuation, and adaptation. In the history of bio-
logical thought, the relation between organism and environment has been a
constant concern, and, in a sense, biological theories ranging from mechanism
to vitalism to evolution can be seen as different attempts to bridge the gap
between the two. Have bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics, through their
use of new technologies, been able to integrate the organism-environment
division successfully? Or has that division simply been reconfigured as a divi-
sion between “lead” and “target” molecules in pharmacogenomics?
Canguilhem, writing about the paradigm shift taking place with bio-
chemistry and molecular genetics, notes that the medical concept of pathol-
ogy may be replaced with that of informational “error.” He traces the
emergence of this paradigm to early-twentieth-century biochemisty and in
geneticist Archibald Garrod’s phrase, “inborn errors of metabolism.” In bio-
chemistry, Canguilhem finds the twofold emphasis on biological processes that
function “in error” and that are also inherited from one generation to the next.
What exactly is inherited in such cases? Not the molecules themselves, but
some mode of functioning or malfunctioning, a pattern of relationships
between molecules (overexpression of certain genes, inability to metabolize
certain compounds in the cell, etc.). Everything “works” biologically in that
the basic processes of protein synthesis and enzymatic reactions take place,
except that the rate or relations through which they take place result in a
pathological state for the organism: “Insofar as the fundamental concepts of
the biochemistry of amino acids and macromolecules are concepts borrowed

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87
from information theory, such as code or message; and insofar as the struc-
tures of the matter of life are linear structures, the negative of order is
inversion, the negative of sequence is confusion, and the substitution of one
arrangement for another is error. Health is genetic and enzymatic correc-
tion.”83 For Canguilhem, two effects of this transformation are the defusion
of the role of individual responsibility in illness and, in some of the more
extreme cases, the determination of the individual organism’s biological state
by the effects of chance, probability, and noise. Such a view of the organism
alters the notion of “adaptation” in its Darwinian usage (and results, in part,
in the “new synthesis” of evolution and genetics in the early twentieth-
century). Adaptation is no longer a principle of the organism’s flexibility, but
rather a kind of informational processing of the “factual data of the environ-
ment.”84 In this case, it is not only the organism that is understood in infor-
matic terms, but the environment, context, or situation in which the organism
is living. Thus, the question, If the organism is essentially informatic, is the
environment of the organism also essentially informatic?
Canguilhem addressed this question in a lecture dedicated to the concept
of “milieu.” In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the concept of
“milieu” was positioned against the organism (despite the differences between
Lamarckian and Darwinian notions of adaptation) and had inherited dual
physical and geographical notions.85 However, the organism-milieu distinc-
tion was further complicated by the growing research in biology and ethol-
ogy, which showed how different organisms respond to a single environment
in radically different ways. Influenced by both nineteenth-century biology and
the then-emerging fields of biochemistry and genetics, Jacob von Uexküll’s
research in biosemiotics began to distinguish further between milieu and envi-
ronment. The former—milieu—was constructed by the organism through its
particular sensory apparatus, whereas the latter—environment—was simply
the external, natural world. For Uexküll, the milieu (or Umwelt) was therefore
quite distinct from the environment (or Umgebung) as such.86 An organism
may have any number of external forces acting upon it, but its sensory appa-
ratus enables it to take note only of certain ones; in this way, the organism
actively engages the environment through the establishment of a milieu. As
Canguilhem notes, for the organism, “the specific behavioral milieu (Umwelt)
is a set of stimuli that have the value and significance of signals. To act on a
living thing, it is not enough that physical stimuli be produced; they must
also be noticed. . . . Umwelt is therefore a voluntary sample drawn from the

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Umgebung, the geographical environment.”87 Thus, we have one environment
and many milieus corresponding to many organisms. In addition, the milieus
are stratified: a milieu for the organism may be the nucleus, the cell, or the
external environment. “From the biological point of view, one must under-
stand that between organism and environment there is the same relationship
that exists between the parts and the whole within the organism itself. . . .
The biological relationship between the being and its milieu is a functional
one, and as a result it changes as the variables successively change roles.”88
This general distinction between milieu and environment has been elabo-
rated more recently by biologist Richard Lewontin, who proposes a new
view of genetics as a “triple helix” of genes, organism, and environment. As
Lewontin sharply notes, “the organism does not compute itself from the infor-
mation in its genes nor even from the information in the genes and the
sequence of environments.”89 This sort of determinism is the point of critique
for Lewontin, for it fails to take adequately into account the “chance” prop-
erties of random processes such as “developmental noise.” Lewontin proposes
a view of the organism-environment divide based on interrelationality: “Taken
together, the relations of genes, organisms, and environments are reciprocal
relations in which all three elements are both causes and effects.” But, beyond
this, Lewontin concurs with Canguilhem regarding the emphasis on the
active, creative processes of the organism. As Lewontin states, “organisms not
only determine what aspects of the outside world are relevant to them by pecu-
liarities of their shape and metabolism, but they actively construct, in the
literal sense of the word, a world around themselves.”90
For Lewontin, the point of critique against the reductionism of much
genomics-based research is that it often excludes both milieu and environ-
ment in its hunt for “disease-related genes.” Or, when a notion of environ-
ment is allowed, too often it implodes the milieu into the environment,
effectively polarizing the organism against a sharply demarcated, external
environment. Lewontin’s triple helix serves to show how the concept of milieu
operates at many levels: gene, organism, and environment. As Canguilhem
notes, these relationships are not simply a matter of information processing,
but of an informatic-based understanding of biological life that is inseparable
from the material, meaning-making processes of the organism: “Biology must
therefore first consider the living as a meaningful being. . . . To live is to
spread out; it is to organize a milieu starting from a central reference point
that cannot itself be referred to without losing its original meaning.”91

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 The question raised by the concept of the milieu is whether or not there
can be an informatics-based understanding of the relations between organism,
milieu, and environment. Can there be a milieu of bioinformatics? In other words,
is it possible to account adequately for significant, extragenetic factors in the
biology of the organism without having to renounce wholesale the informatic
paradigm of molecular genetics? Biologists such as Lewontin and Lynn
Margulis seem to suggest that it is possible. Indeed, such a view is implicit
in the emphasis on networks in biochemistry and in the study of gene expres-
sion networks and biopathways. However, the question is what changes would
be required in the process, especially in cases where—as we have seen—the
informatic paradigm of genetics smoothly dovetails into the economic
paradigm of patenting and the production of diagnostic data as ends in
themselves.

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 3

A Political Economy of the Genomic Body

The Burdens of Data

During the summer of 2000, both the “publicly funded” IHGSC and Celera
Genomics announced the completion of the sequencing of the human
genome.1 The milestone event was given much press, including a White
House press conference, in which President Clinton described the genome
map as “the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by
humankind.” However, the joint announcement was preceded by a long string
of tensions and disputes between the two projects, primarily over the issues
of access to information, decentralized operations, and joint publication.
Whereas Celera was concerned over its ability to develop proprietary database
subscription services, the IHGSC was concerned over simply keeping up with
the pace at which Celera’s sequencing machines were churning out genome
data. The familiar public-private tensions continue to this day, but it is also
important to note that despite the organizational and infrastructural differ-
ences between the two projects (Celera’s more centralized operations in
Maryland versus the IHGSC’s international outposts), both genome projects
were unified in their use of new genome sequencing technologies: automated
sequencing computers, genome analysis software, and visualization tools.
In early 2001, when both teams published their reports, one newspaper
headline wondered, “What Do We Do with All That ‘Junk DNA’?” The
article was referring to both projects’ finding that approximately 97 percent
of the total human genome actually consists of “noncoding regions” of DNA.
This means that only 3 percent of the genome contains information for the
production of proteins, leaving vast stretches of sequence as “junk DNA.” In
truth, the article’s deduction is inaccurate because it is thought that noncod-
ing regions may play a significant regulatory, repair, or maintenance role in
the genome.2 The term junk DNA—used more in the popular science dis-
course than in research—is worth paying attention to, however, especially in
the larger context of managing the so-called deluge of data the genome proj-
ects have generated. “Junk,” of course, is not garbage. Garbage is waste that
is disposed of or that can be disposed of, whereas junk is waste that may pos-
sibly be of use—someday. And, thus, junk sits around, waiting to fulfill its
potentiality at some undefined, later date. The idea of junk DNA is in this
sense accurate because that 97 percent of the human genome has increasingly
become a source of anxiety for scientists in the attempt to communicate to a
nonspecialist public the findings of the genome projects. Not only were there
far fewer actual genes than expected (from the ambitious estimates of 100,000
to the more modest number of 30,000), and not only were the smallest dif-
ferences found between the genome of me and you (an average of 0.1 percent
differences between one individual’s genome and another), but, on top of these
findings, only a small fraction of the total human genome was said to contain
any meaningful “information.” It seems that the average human genome is
almost nothing but junk; or, put another way, the human genome seems
to be determined largely by genetic excess—the problem of too much
information.
The strange “problem” of junk DNA in genomics is contrasted by the enor-
mous level of investment in genomics as a significant part of the biotech indus-
try, including the various -omic fields made possible by genomics: proteomics;
structural genomics; pharmacogenomics; genomics dedicated to other organ-
isms (the mouse, the fruit fly, viruses); and the development of projects
dedicated to the transcriptome, spliceosome, interactomes, and so forth. For
instance, in 2000, Celera Genomics reportedly received $900 million in
financing (much of which went to their various genome efforts), a sum that
dwarfs the U.S. NIH’s HGP budget of $250 million.3 Celera’s genome data-
bases, as of 2000, could be accessed through a subscription of between $5
and $15 million (for corporate subscribers; academic labs would pay some
$8,000).4 Other companies, such as Millennium Pharmaceuticals, are taking
a different route, concentrating on partnerships with pharmaceutical com-
panies for the development of genetic tests. Millennium has established

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partnerships with “Big Pharma” corporations such as Bayer, Eli Lily, and Pfizer
for the development of drugs and diagnostics. Yet another business model is
presented by Human Genome Sciences, which has been focusing on the use
of genome information to revolutionize the drug-development process. Aside
from its more than 7,000 patent files on genes or gene-related compounds
(many of them pending approval), Human Genome Sciences has three of the
industry’s first genome-based drugs currently in human clinical trials.
The potential benefits of genomics, both medical and economic, are not
just the stuff of media hype. It has also been given substantial support by
those working in the field. For instance, in a 2003 article in Science on the
promises of “large-scale biology,” Francis Collins, Michael Morgan, and Ari
Patrinos suggest that the “organization of large, international collaborative
projects” such as the IHGSC can help decentralize bioscience research and
thereby help it to move more effectively from basic research to medical appli-
cation. As the authors note, “genomics holds the promise of ‘individualized
medicine,’ tailoring prescribing practices and management of patients to each
person’s genetic profile.”5 The benefits, the authors propose, not only will
come to those in the developed world, but will have “an enormous impact on
health in the developing world,” as well as promising to help environmental
scientists to “create better methods of cleaning up toxic material, production
experts [to] streamline industrial processes, and energy researchers [to] work
toward sustainable, nonpolluting energy sources.”6 Likewise, in an article
published just after the 2000 genome announcement, Samuel Broder, G.
Subramanian, and Craig Venter suggest that one of the primary medical
benefits of the human genome findings is in the vision of a personalized
medicine, a model of prescription drug health care tailored to the genomic
makeup of the individual patient.7 The authors specifically point to what they
call the genomic differences in “host-pathogen interactions,” or the ways in
which gene expression and other factors affect the pathogenic potential of a
virus or bacterium.8 As they state,

The genome will provide practical benefit when there is integration of genomic infor-
mation (genetic loci) with the phenotypes of clinical disease. We are in the midst of
a major paradigm shift in biology and medicine: the process of looking at genes in
isolation has now shifted towards exploring “networks” of genes involved in cellular
processes and disease, identifying molecular “portraits” of disease based on tissue or
organ involvement, and ultimately defining the biochemical readouts that are specific

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to clinical conditions. The era of “personalized medicine” will evolve as a parallel
process, wherein DNA variations recorded in human populations will be integrated
into the above paradigm, to guide a new generation of diagnostic, prognostic and ther-
apeutic modalities designed to improve patient care.9

Although numerous differences are apparent in the approaches and specific

positions of the IHGSC and companies such as Celera, both public and private
efforts support this broad vision of a more specific, more efficient, personal-
ized medicine stemming from genomics and its related fields. If we take into
account the factors mentioned here—an excess of genetic information (junk
DNA, repeat elements, etc.), a growing genome industry, and an effort to
streamline the linkages between genome research and medical application—
then it is not difficult to understand genomics as the medical, technological,
and economic management of information—that is, as a political economy.
In this chapter, my aim is to consider the human genome and the field of
genomics as a technoscientific effort to produce and manage huge amounts
of information. The perspective of political economy can be useful in such an
endeavor, for fields such as genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics can in
many ways be understood as sets of techniques for producing, distributing,
exchanging, and making use of biological information. That biological infor-
mation may be in a material form (e.g., plasmid libraries, cell cultures) or in
an immaterial form (e.g., online databases), and it may be used, applied, or
consumed in a range of contexts (e.g., drug development, genetic tests, DNA
fingerprinting, etc.). What makes fields such as genomics interesting in this
light is that they combine two forms of value together: the medical and sci-
entific value of “discovery science,” and the institutional and commercial value
of products, services, and property rights. Although the aims may ultimately
weigh in on the side of the medical and scientific benefits of such research,
motive (individual or institutional) is not the issue here. Rather, what is at
stake is the development of an understanding of how, in some cases, the dual
investment in medical-scientific value and commercial value may not always
work together in a smooth way.10
This chapter covers a great deal of ground, moving from a consideration
of genome databases to a consideration of the textual and informatic tropes in
genetics, to a consideration of various hardware systems used in genomics.
The thread connecting these topics is the view of genomics as a political
economy of the genetic body. However, the overall aim is to show how

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genomics performs two intertwined functions: the production of an excess of genetic
information and the development of new technologies for managing that excess. This
basic process is seen to be consonant with the economic interests of the biotech
industry, which endeavors to link basic research in genomics to its applica-
tion in the pharmaceutical industry (particularly in drug development and
diagnostics). In particular, the tension between an excess of data and the man-
agement of that excess is resolved through a novel form of “biomaterial labor,”
in which the nonhuman labor power of cells, enzymes, and genes is redefined
as both material (that is, as living labor) and as informatic (that is, as a biotech-
nology). The concept of political economy, then, is taken as both a philo-
sophical concept and a critical one. It is for this reason that the critiques of
political economy found in Karl Marx and Georges Bataille are helpful in elu-
cidating how the practices of genomics manage all that “junk DNA.” First,
however, more should be said about the concept of political economy itself.

Critique I: DNA as Source Code

Although the term is not often used today, political economy brings together its
eighteenth-century definition—the production, distribution, and consump-
tion of wealth—with its more modern connotations regarding the political
impact of economic practices and policy legislation. In the eighteenth century,
the European mercantilist approach to political economy emphasized a form
of state-controlled production and trade, especially regarding monopolies and
barriers to free trade. The classical political economists who responded to mer-
cantilism—Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill—emphasized just
the opposite. Their more liberal view toward free trade and laissez-faire eco-
nomics, unfettered by state intervention, can still be witnessed in contempo-
rary debates surrounding globalization. For Smith, the “mode of subsistence”
in the Western world of the eighteenth century was a capitalism based on the
division of labor, an economic system that made “liberty” dependent on and
consonant with commerce. Freedom meant the freedom to buy, sell, and
exchange goods on the level playing field called the market. Smith’s famous—
or infamous—description of the “invisible hand” of capitalist market forces
enabled a coexistence between the freedom to pursue selfish interests in the
competitive market and at the same time the responsibility to benefit the com-
munity as a whole. Thus, the central question for classical political economists
was poised between the benefit of the people who constituted a nation and

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the need of that nation to develop wealth to support its populace. The
challenge was thus, in Smith’s words, “providing a plentiful revenue of sub-
sistence for the people” at the same time as supplying “the state or
commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public service. It proposes to
enrich both the people and the sovereign.”11
However, the concept of political economy elaborated in this chapter is a
different version, a critique of the political economy elaborated by Marx, pri-
marily in his 1857–58 notebooks, which have been given the title Grundrisse.
In the introduction to these notebooks and manuscripts, Marx outlines a
number of criticisms of classical political economy. The first of these criti-
cisms is his questioning of the ways in which classical political economists
rendered categories such as labor, wage, rent, and profit as universal, natural-
ized categories. Marx’s criticisms of authors such as Smith and Ricardo are
that they not only assumed such categories as universal, but they projected
the universality of the categories of political economy into the past, thereby
making it seem as if eighteenth-century capitalism were the inevitable ful-
fillment of a tendency that had always been nascent in economic relations.12
In particular, Marx points to how political economists such as Smith and
Ricardo began their analyses from the assumption of the property-owning and
property-seeking individual subject, rather than accounting for how such a
subject had been formed by historical forces. Classical political economy thus
took the economic subject “not as a historical result but as history’s point of
departure,” in effect “an ideal, whose existence they project[ed] into the
past.”13 Marx’s strategy, in both early and later writings, is to emphasize con-
stantly the historical character of economic relations: “Only in the eighteenth
century, in ‘civil society,’ do the various forms of social connectedness confront
the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external neces-
sity.”14 This critique will be helpful for us in emphasizing the historicity of
the concepts of “information” and “code” in molecular genetics and genomics,
especially when seen as technologies that produce large amounts of
information.
Genetic information enters here in a redoubled manner. First, it is pro-
duced through the methods, techniques, and procedures for physical and
sequence mapping, often in literalized carbon-silicon hybrids (e.g., the DNA
chip). Second, it is reprocessed on an informatic level, rerouting the specificity
of individual genetic polymorphism into a mathematical result of quantita-
tive data across a designated population field.15 What results is a kind of

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bioinformatic montage of social normalization across three lines: that of
genetic reductionism (ideologies of causality and biological determinism),
that of genetic homogenization (either pathologization or marginalization
of polymorphisms or point mutations), and that of a fragmented statistical
averaging assembled to form a genetic model corresponding to hegemonic
notions of normativity and health.
As we have seen, the informatic tropes in molecular genetics during the
postwar era were owing in part to Francis Crick’s efforts to pursue the genetic
code (“the book of life,” “the code of codes,” and so forth).16 In the late 1940s,
physicist Erwin Schrödinger suggested in a lecture entitled “What Is Life?”
that the development of genetic science had made possible a new under-
standing of biological life in terms of information mechanisms and quantum
mechanics. As Schrödinger stated (prior, of course, to the elucidation of DNA’s
structure), the chromosomes of every cell “contain in some kind of code-script
the entire pattern of the individual’s future development and of its function-
ing in the mature state.”17 He would go further, calling the hereditary units
in the chromosomes “law-code and executive power,” endowing genetic mate-
rial not only with information-storage capacity, but with instrumentality as
well.18 This reference to information was no accident; the complex roles that
mainframe computers played in the war and thereafter the increasing dis-
semination of computers in business and industry made for a fertile discourse
concerning computerization and society.
It was during this time that Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon sepa-
rately began to develop theories of information.19 Along with colleague
Warren Weaver, Shannon developed a simple model for studying information
transmission, one that envisioned a linear process moving from the sender to
encoder, through a medium, to decoder, and then to receiver. Though Wiener
and Shannon’s theories of information differ in important ways, both were led
toward a consideration of information as a process independent of content.20
What this consideration amounted to was that information theory was, for
Shannon, concerned exclusively with the transmission of data, irrespective of
what the “message” actually said—it was a thoroughly quantitative and sta-
tistical issue. Thus, essential aspects of information theory were not specific
to the contents of the message to be transmitted, but were concerned prima-
rily with the efficiency and accuracy of the encoding/decoding mechanisms,
as well as with the medium of transmission. The implications of this classi-
cal version of information theory is that, as Katherine Hayles points out,

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“information lost its body.”21 As Hayles suggests, when information is equated
with disembodiment, a critical intervention is needed in order to point out
the embodied contingencies of information and the subjects immersed in
information.22
This historically and socially rooted equation of information with disem-
bodiedness is one of the major assumptions behind the gradual “encoding” of
genetics during the same period in which Wiener and Shannon were doing
their research. Well aware of the then-current developments in cybernetics
and information theory, Watson and Crick explicitly adopted a language in
their articles referencing information, messages, and codes.23 The influence of this
general terminology persists to this day, especially in light of the advances
made in molecular engineering, biotech, and genetic engineering—not to
mention in popular science books, media reports, and classroom textbooks.
One of the greatest challenges put to genomics has been how this universal
informatic code operates with such diversity and variety within and across
species.
Modern genetics has for many years supposed that this process occurred in
a linear fashion, from the “master molecule” of DNA to the end product of
a particular protein.24 This notion of DNA as a controlling mechanism—
that is, as a “steering” mechanism, as in classical cybernetics—implies both a
causality and the positing of a point of origin in the biological regulation of
the body. Influenced in part by contemporary developments in cybernetics,
nonlinear dynamics, and complexity, many contemporary approaches are rad-
ically reconfiguring the role DNA plays in the organism.25 Such perspectives
place a great deal less emphasis on DNA as of central concern; rather, what
becomes important are patterns and networks, the multitude of heterogeneous
elements that collectively form an operational matrix. The telos of such oper-
ational collectivities is, certainly, the production of key molecules such as
amino acids, but it is also the reproduction of the system itself. Current genet-
ics research suggests not only that DNA is much less responsible for the pro-
duction of proteins, but that one of its primary functions seems to be the
reproduction of its own state. As Susan Oyama and others make clear, DNA
is, by current standards, relatively inert, controlling nothing and containing
only “lists” or “recipes” that are referenced by certain other molecules.26 For
Oyama, concerned with deconstructing the assumptions regarding the genetic
basis of evolutionary and developmental change, DNA serves the function of

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a kind of guarantee of agency in the body’s smallest regions: “The discovery
of DNA and its confirmation of a gene theory that had long been in search of
its material agent offered an enormously attractive apparent solution to the
puzzle of the origin and perpetuation of living form. . . . [I]n fact, genetic
information, by virtue of the meanings of in-formation as ‘shaping’ and as
‘animating,’ promised to supply just the cognitive and causal functions needed
to make a heap of chemicals into a being.”27 According to such emerging per-
spectives, the genome map (that the essence of the genetic body is found in
the DNA) is only a small part of the picture, not taking into account the
actual pathways, “subsidiary” molecules, intracellular environment, and a host
of other parameters. Despite these advances in deconstructing the centrality
of DNA, genomic mapping—largely for political and economic reasons—still
assumes the primacy and indeed causality of DNA as the instigator if not the
reservoir of the totality of genetic meaning.
We can again extend our analysis thus far and suggest that one of the
primary manifestations of the close ties between genetic and computer infor-
mation has been the formation of an epistemology known as “genetic reduc-
tionism.” As a critique, genetic reductionism suggests that genetics relies on
and is dependent on the metaphors that historically have been appropriated
from a technical field.28 In its worst-case scenarios, this view of genetics comes
with the consequences of eliding the differences between information (as dis-
embodied, as quantitative) and the organism (as embodied, as qualitative).
More important, it becomes especially problematic when ways of under-
standing biological life as informatic are naturalized and their conditions
of emergence effaced. Reductionism in the biotech industry is, in a sense,
nothing new, nor is the well-known relationship between molecular biology
and information theory, genetics and cybernetics. Much of this history has
been exhaustively covered by historians such as Lily Kay, as well as by those
writing from the perspective of science studies (Evelyn Fox Keller, Richard
Doyle, Donna Haraway, and many others). These and other studies often note
the following key points:

 The scientific language of codes, information, sequences, texts, books, and

maps includes historically derived tropes and figures that significantly influ-
ence the theory and practice of molecular biology and genetics. Far from being
a transparent and self-evident “code” or “map”—as in popular accounts, such

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as Matt Ridley’s Genome—these scientific tropes and figures play a central role
in the articulation and construction of objects of knowledge. In the life sci-
ences, the hegemony of the “genetic code” is one such object.
 More specifically, it is in the discursive exchanges between, on the one
hand, biochemistry and molecular biology and, on the other, information
theory and cybernetics that we can see the gradual, uneven, and polyvalent
shaping of the language of genetic codes, genetic “transcription” and “trans-
lation,” and the metaphors of the “book of life.” Molecular biologists such as
Francis Crick, James Watson, François Jacob, Jacques Monod, George Gamow,
Max Delbrück, Martynas Ycas, Henry Quastler, and others worked together
and separately on what came to be known in the 1950s as “the coding
problem”: how a mere four base pairs (A, T, C, G) generated 20 amino acids,
which then went on to form complex proteins of different specializations in
the cell. In attacking this Cold War “enemy code,” biologists were influenced
by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver’s work in information theory, Norbert
Wiener’s work in cybernetics, and John von Neumann’s work in cellular
automata.
 However, this appropriation of information theory, cybernetics, and early
computer science was not a direct one; in the process, the definition of infor-
mation changed several times because the pairing between, say, Wiener’s cyber-
netic feedback model and gene expression was not always a one-to-one match.
In some instances, conceptual and metaphorical mutations occurred (as in
Watson and Crick’s misappropriation of Shannon’s definition of information);
in other cases, the informatic paradigm came to shape biological and genetic
knowledge directly (as in Jacob and Monod’s configuration of gene regulation
as akin to informational feedback in a computer).
 In these studies of the relationship between genetics and informatics,
not only are the information sciences seen to have significantly shaped
postwar molecular biology research, but the particular way in which it was
shaped tended to emphasize the abstract, immaterial pattern, the form or
information, of molecular biology. It is not difficult to see how a genetic reduc-
tionism followed from a perspective that placed undue emphasis on DNA and
genes, on what Crick and Watson called “the master molecule.” In our con-
temporary context, the headline-making news of the discovery of “genes for
X” as well as the health-care and pharmaceutical industry’s emphasis on
gene-based drugs and diagnostics can also been seen as outgrowths of this dis-
cursive exchange. Indeed, many of the current debates over genetic patenting

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and the sharing of information also take place within this broad historical
shift.

This is, briefly, the crux of much of the science studies research on molecular
biology and genetics. Although this research has been extremely helpful in
elucidating the processes through which scientific paradigms arise and the
artifacts they construct, we might go further and extend these studies to make
a few more points of clarification, given our context of genomics, bioinfor-
matics, and pharmacogenomics.
First, the intersection of molecular biology and informatics does not mean
that the former is dematerialized by the latter. Information theory and cyber-
netics do emphasize abstract pattern over concrete materiality, but it is pre-
cisely in their incorporation into molecular biology and genetics that we see
a new concept of biological materiality emerge. The mere existence of tropes
denoting codes and sequences does not imply the “informatization” or “vir-
tualization” of biology. If anything, the introduction of information theory
and cybernetics into molecular biology and genetics has meant the opposite:
fields such as pharmacogenomics utilize information technologies to enable
new practical modes of materialization—for example, in the genomically
designed drugs and diagnostics that molecularly touch patients’ bodies.
Similarly, laboratory technologies such as oligonucleotide synthesizers, DNA
microarrays, and genome sequencing computers demonstrate the extent to
which informatics is a material science.
Second, despite this newfound materiality made possible via informatics,
there is also a strong emphasis on the valuation of genes or DNA. Genetic
reductionism implies a certain mode of valuation, and in a reductionist
framework what is of greatest value is the code—even more so than the thing
itself. This is at once a separation of molecule and code (in that a sequence
can be studied without the cell from which it was extracted) and a new type
of reintegration (in that code materializes molecule and molecule informa-
tionalizes code). The very idea of a genome database implies this twofold rela-
tion—at once nothing but the source code (minus the material or body) and
yet somehow the core of “life itself.” But the existence of actual computer
databases is not a prerequisite for this type of thinking. As we saw earlier, the
development of in vivo and in vitro “banks” such as plasmid libraries shows
us the extent to which informatics had already infused biological laboratory
techniques. A database can exist, in effect, without computers of any kind.

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Today, this relationship between DNA, database, and value is made more
concrete in commercial genome databases (such as those offered by Celera or
Incyte), as well as in the U.S. PTO database categories containing patents on
genes and gene-related compounds.
Third, the historical backdrop of information theory (Shannon’s commu-
nications and code-breaking work), cybernetics (Wiener’s research in cyber-
netic artillery systems), and computer science (von Neumann’s consultancy on
many wartime and postwar mainframe computer projects) has a direct effect
on molecular biology and genetics. Not only were biologists aware of their
postwar efforts to “crack the code of life,” but the very introduction of code
and code breaking into genetics reconfigured the study of life as the practice
of command, control, and communication of “life itself.” It is only later, with
the waning of Cold War tensions and the boom of the biotech industry, that
the HGP began to become a “big science” project in its own right. Yet the
war-code-DNA relation can still be witnessed today, not only in the genetic
“war” on cancer or AIDS, but in the pharmaceutical industry’s emphasis on
the discovery of “gene targets” and biomarkers, and in the complicated tension
between health insurance and health security.
Finally, despite the manifold influence of informatics in molecular biology
and genetics, something always escapes. Against the genetic-reductionist
position, we can re-read the work of Jacob, Monod, Quastler, André Lwoff,
Manfred Eigen, and Henri Atlan as implying a high degree of complexity in
the process of gene expression and regulation. In a sense, the antireductionist
position is already there in molecular biology research of the late 1950s and
1960s, with its emphasis on “organization,” circuits, hypercycles, networks,
and pathways. This alternate scientific history has been effectively marginal-
ized in the attention given to DNA and genes, but, again, it is part of the
research of the period, influenced as it was by Shannon’s emphasis on net-
works, Wiener’s emphasis on systems, and von Neumann’s emphasis on com-
binatoric complexity.

Critique II: DNA, DBMS, and Biomaterial Labor

In the previous section, I discussed how Marx’s first critique of political

economy was directed at its universalist assumptions. A second critique Marx
leveled at classical political economists was that writers such as Smith
and Ricardo were unable to account for the development of the most

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fundamental concepts of political economy, concepts such as property, labor,
and capital. Specifically, it was the tension-filled relationship between labor and
capital that occupied much of Marx’s attention in the Grundrisse and in later
writings. The challenge for capital is that it must constantly develop tech-
niques for the incorporation of what Marx calls “living labor” into its basic
relationships of wage labor, commodity production, and the extraction of
surplus value. In Marx’s now-familiar analysis, the worker’s living labor is sep-
arated from his or her means of production by the selling of his or her labor
power to the capitalist, the owner of the modes of production. From this selling
of labor power—a transformation of living labor into labor power—the capi-
talist extracts surplus value, which constitutes, for Marx, the primary mecha-
nism of exploitation. For Marx, living labor is a capacity constitutive of the
individual and social body: “Production is always a particular branch of pro-
duction—e.g. agriculture, cattle-raising, manufactures etc. . . . [P]roduction
also is not only a particular production. Rather, it is always a certain social
body, a social subject, which is active in a greater or sparser totality of branches
of production.”29 Thus, the relations of capital provide the conditions in which
living labor becomes labor power and in which this labor power can be bought
and sold as wage labor, as “the objectivity of living labor.”30
Marx referred to labor as the “living, form-giving fire” of society and in
the “fragment on technology” had contrasted living labor with the “dead
labor” of fixed-capital machinery.31 This means, among other things, that labor
is not simply a passive force inexorably incorporated by capital. In the 1970s,
Italian Marxists associated with the autonomia movement would redefine
Marx’s tension between labor and capital as a potential source for interven-
tion. Reading Marx’s concept of living labor in this light, Antonio Negri
suggests that a certain antagonism exists between labor and capital:

Labor can therefore be transformed into capital only if it assumes the form of exchange,
the form of money. But that means that the relation is one of antagonism. . . . [I]t is
this antagonism which is the specific difference of the exchange between capital and
labor. . . . The opposition takes two forms: first, that of exchange value against use value—
that the only use value of workers is the abstract and undifferentiated capacity to
work—the opposition is also objectified labor against subjective labor.”32

Labor is thus also active—or, put another way, living labor is defined precisely
by the degree to which it cannot help but to escape, evade, or sidestep

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altogether the labor-capital relation. As Nick Dyer-Witheford notes, “labor is
for capital always a problematic ‘other’ that must constantly be controlled and
subdued.”33 Thus, despite Marx’s rather dichotomous characterization of
living versus dead labor, the identification of living labor looks forward to the
biotech industry, in which genetically engineered mammals, microbes, and
cells are literally put to work as biotechnologies. Here Marx’s characterization
of technology-driven production as a “living (active) machinery” and as a
complex, “mighty organism” seems to shed new light on the development of
genomics artifacts such as bacterial plasmid libraries and computer data-
bases.34 “The appropriation of living labor by objectified labor—of the power
of activity which creates value by existing for-itself . . . is posited, in produc-
tion resting on machinery, as the character of the production process itself.”35
Transported into the biotech industry, this view shows us a new kind of labor
power being created within biotech fields such as genomics—a strange,
uncanny, nonsubjective labor that is as far from the living human subject-
worker as it is from the cold, mechanical factory machine. It is different from
the so-called immaterial labor of the information, computer, and network
industries. In effect, this form of biomaterial labor is at once fully technical
and yet fully biological, both living and dead, a process-driven and yet fixed
form of capital.
Previously, we saw how Marx’s first critique of political economy’s tendency
to universalize its terms can thus be seen in contemporary biotech fields such
as genomics, in which the figures of information theory and cybernetics con-
tribute to the increasing naturalization of DNA as a “code” and to the defi-
nition of biology as in some essential way informatic. However, if the influence
of information theory and cybernetics were limited to the conceptual level,
the effect on the practices of genomics might not be as integral as it is today,
for not only are informatic modes of understanding biological life attaining a
certain hegemony, but, more important, they are materialized in a range of
artifacts that reflect this informatic mode of defining and organizing “life
itself.” The database is one such artifact, a mode of organization that at once
orders and produces that which it orders. In the “fragment on technology”
(Notebook VII), Marx describes nineteenth-century innovations in automated
machinery as redefining the relation between worker and commodity, thereby
also changing the nature of labor power itself.36 However, we also need to
remind ourselves that Marx is writing specifically about industrial production

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in the nineteenth century. Many changes have occurred in the shift to the
biotech industry of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
What are these changes? We can begin by taking a basic lesson from Marx’s
critique of political economy: that the categories of production, distribution,
and consumption are determined in part by a scientific and technical infra-
structure for defining what counts as labor, as a commodity, and as capital.
(Recall Marx’s proposition that in production the living labor of the worker
is consumed, thereby making production a consumption.) Certainly, the
biotech industry involves traditional modes of manufacturing, especially in
the production of laboratory technologies (e.g., computers, thermal cyclers,
bioreactors), as does the pharmaceutical industry (e.g., in the factory produc-
tion of drugs). However, what distinguishes the biotech industry from other
industries is the way in which it integrates biotechnologies and information
technologies into a new synthesis. There is no better example to illustrate this
point than the database. In computer science, databases have been used for
decades in all different types of configurations. However, a database in biotech
fields such as genomics can mean a number of things: databases can be stan-
dard computer databases (such as GenBank, the main genome database), but
they can also be “wet” databases composed of microorganisms, racks of test
tubes, or even genetically engineered artificial chromosomes. The way in
which genomics and its related fields correlate these types of databases may
very well structure (or restructure) the way in which “biological information”
is defined in these fields and in drug development.
What is a database? From an archaeological perspective, modes of infor-
mation storage are as old as civilization itself; the need to keep records of
transactions, calendar systems, and valuable objects constitutes a given social
formation. As Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star point out, classification
systems such as the computer database play an integral role in the articula-
tion of knowledge about discrete objects, events, and situations.37 Like its his-
torical precedents—on the one hand, informational systems such as the
dictionary, the encyclopedia, the field of statistics, and, on the other hand,
representation systems such as cartography—the database has as its primary
function the particular organization of a range of heterogeneous material. The
particular manifestation of that organization depends on the technical speci-
ficity of the system; whereas the dictionary and encyclopedia utilize an alpha-
betic system, the anatomical atlas utilizes a diagrammatic logic, and statistics

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utilizes a series of tables, charts, and quantitative graphical elements. By com-
parison, the database can accommodate each of these types of organization,
but can also integrate them depending on the “front-end” interface or search
engine utilized to organize and find material in the database.
But it is specifically with technological modes of storing information that
social formation and technical organization are increasingly separated (and
thus allowed to transform each other). Friedrich Kittler provides an in-depth
analysis of the “media revolution of the 1880s” in the mechanical-inscription
technologies of the gramophone, film, and the typewriter.38 Whereas these
storage technologies tended toward the isolation, separation, and autono-
mization of the senses (sight in film, sound in phonograph, language in type-
writer), Kittler sees the current digital media revolution as providing a
synthesizing phase, in which all media operate through binary code. This stan-
dardization of the language of storage media means an effective reassemblage
of previously incompatible media formats and a greater homogenization of
media themselves.
According to contemporary textbooks and technical manuals, “a database
is a collection of related data that contains information about an enterprise
such as a university or an airline. Data includes facts and figures that can
be represented as numbers, text strings, images, or voices stored in files on
disk or other media. A database management system (DBMS) is a set of pro-
grams (a software package) that allows accessing and/or modification of the
database.”39
For computer databases, three properties characterize its design: first, a
database is not just a randomly generated grouping of information, but a col-
lection of logically related elements grouped into a single structure for a spe-
cific reason (e.g., the online genomic database contains data related to specific
genes). Second, the database is functional; it is more than a knowledge base
or an archive, but it is designed with a set of potential uses and applications
in mind (e.g., the online genomic database is geared toward research in
mapping and sequencing, drug development, and genetic medicine). Finally,
the database always establishes, through its design and implementation, some
direct connection to the “real world.” This connection may occur simply
through representation (e.g., molecular modeling) and bibliographic modes
(e.g., a health network database of medical doctors; a medical library data-
base), or it may occur through more ambiguous means (e.g., cell samples and
high-throughput DNA replication).

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 The database contains, of course, the data files that provide its content;
these data files ostensibly are sets of binary code, which translate into a given
mode of presentation on the output side of the computer. In order to manage
the large groupings of data files within the database structure, a database
management system (DBMS) is required. The DBMS is essentially a software
package that enables the design, creation, regulation, and accessing of a data-
base; it is the production and reception gateway to the data files in the data-
base. Within the DBMS, there are two main components: a database definition
language (DDL), which contains descriptions and definitions of the database
structure, the elements within it, and the kinds of transactions possible; and
a database modification language (DML), a functional language that enables
the updating, deletion, and modification of data files within the database.
A database and a DBMS have four main advantages over more conventional
file-management systems (as in good old-fashioned file cabinets or the later
file-based computer systems):

 The DBMS makes possible what is called “data abstraction,” whereby data
modified on the “back end” (producer) does not modify the representation of
data at the “front end” (user). This means that, for the computer user, the
database can be black-boxed, such that the data representation (say, a file on
a particular gene) will not be modified if a specific part of the data file is mod-
ified (say, a change in the file describing its location in a folder or data com-
pression in data transfers).
 In data-processing lingo, the DBMS can act as a “normalization” system,
dynamically regulating the database as a whole so as to prevent unnecessary
procedures (duplication and redundancy, deletion and insertion of errors, and
other computing anomalies). The general goal of database normalization is to
enable the database to be as efficient as possible, which translates to greater
performance for database users and procedures.
 The DBMS separates the data (or information) from the program applica-
tions that run the database. Earlier file-management systems were composed
of multiple systems, each of which managed its own share of data; thus,
data were inextricably connected to structure and could encounter system-
incompatibility problems. With the DBMS, several databases can act on
a single set of data, resulting in greater efficiency and data consistency.
 The DBMS enables a greater degree of automation of database manage-
ment, as can be seen today by the various Web-based services (including online

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shopping, secure servers, automated listservs, “cookies” and CGI scripts, and
so forth). This is especially convenient in terms of security and the automa-
tion of basic, repetitive procedures (from data entry to backups).

As a way of managing logically grouped sets of information, the database

and the DBMS form an important link between the distribution and trans-
mission of knowledge between computer users and storage systems. Many
computer science and database-management textbooks present this relation-
ship as an interface: between the hardware and software of the database
as a computer system, on the one hand, and the sets of actions affected by
human subjects, on the other, the database and DBMS serve as mediators,
enabling or disabling access, addition, deletion, modification, transfer, and
interactivity:

hardware/software ¨Æ DBMS ¨Æ actions/subject

Each of the properties described earlier are techniques through which the
DBMS interfaces computer users with storage systems. In data abstraction, an
“object” (in computer science terminology, a set that includes the “entity” or
representation, the “attribute” or particular property, and the “relationship”
or links between attributes) is transformed into a certain linear depth of data,
between a source code (which can be modified) and a output modality (which
is not affected); inscription can thus signify without producing any meaning.
In normalization, data are streamlined, pared down, and optimized specifi-
cally for functional efficiency; data become aphoristically inscribed as data
packets. In the separation of data from programs, information becomes a quan-
tity that is not only universal (it can be used by several programs) but also
polyvalent (it can be put to several uses); data become morphological, capable
of being instituted in multiple ways. And with greater automation, the data-
base becomes a stronger actant (to use Bruno Latour’s term), or a stronger
object-participant, in the mediation between the human computer user and
computer storage media.
Of little mention is the fact that the HGP used two types of databases.
One type was the more familiar system of networked computer databases such
as GenBank; these databases were built and managed much like any computer
database today, including database management software, secure networking
protocols, and user accounts. But the other database used in the production

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of the human genome map was the BAC, or “bacterial artificial chromosome,”
a type of wet, biological “library” that has been used in one form or another
since the 1970s. The BAC, as its name indicates, is an extrachromosomal, free-
floating, circular loop of DNA called a “plasmid,” which is found in bacteria
such as E. coli. The free-floating DNA can be spliced with a gene sequence
from any source (human or mouse), and, when cultured, the bacterial colonies
will then contain the inserted gene. The “plasmid library” can be used to store
in vitro samples of any desired gene, thereby forming a kind of living,
biological database. In bacteria such as E. coli, the relatively short length
of plasmids allows for an easily controlled storage of gene sequences of
up to approximately 10 kbp (where one kilobase equals 1,000 bases),
making plasmid libraries excellent storage systems for modest-size gene
sequences.
The use of plasmid libraries (figure 3.1) was actually an off-shoot of the
genetic engineering experiments of the early 1970s. Bacterial plasmids pro-
vided the ideal platform for experimenting with the splicing and editing fea-
tures of certain “restriction endonucleases,” enzymes that form the scissors and
glue of DNA. In 1974, engineered plasmid vectors with obscure names such
as pBR322 or pSC101 were used to demonstrate the effectiveness of recom-
binant DNA techniques—the foundation of the biotech industry. Researchers
discovered that the use of engineered plasmids, when inserted into bacterial
cells, also provided an efficient and stable means of replicating or cloning those
genes through bacterial culturing (thus the name “plasmid cloning vectors”).
In the late 1970s, these basic techniques were used to develop DNA libraries
based on engineered plasmids. These “wet” databases consisted of two com-
ponents: first, the creation of the database using the techniques of genetic
engineering, which resulted in bacterial cultures containing plasmid libraries
with foreign DNA, and, second, a means of “searching” these databases using
a “DNA probe.” The construction of plasmid libraries often makes use of
cDNA, or complementary DNA, a double-stranded DNA produced from a
single-stranded RNA (in effect reversing the normal process in the cell, in
which genomic DNA produces RNA). This use enabled researchers to focus
on the gene-coding segments of the genome, minus the junk DNA of introns.
Once the cDNA is synthesized, it can be inserted into the bacterial plasmid
and then cultured. Indeed, most uses of plasmid libraries contain more than
one inserted gene sequence (just as a computer database’s hard drive contains
more than one file).

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 Cut DNA
molecules
with restriction
enzyme to
generate
complementary
sequences on Chromosomal DNA
the vector and Fragment
Vector DNA the fragment to be Cloned

Join vector and chromosomal

DNA fragment, using
the enzyme DNA ligase

Recombinant DNA Molecule

Introduce into bacterium

Recombinant DNA Molecule

Bacterial Chromosome

Figure 3.1 Constructing plasmid libraries for sequencing. Image courtesy of the U.S. DoE
Genome Program, http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis.

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 However, when researchers need to access this information, a method of
searching these “wet” databases is required. A technique often used is known
as “colony hybridization.” If, for instance, you have a plasmid library with two
or more genes inserted into it, you can search for which cells contain the
desired sequencing using a DNA probe. Let’s say the gene you are after has
the sequence ATTTGC (this is for the sake of simplicity; usually gene
sequences will run anywhere from 1,500 kbp to 200,000 kbp or more). You
can synthesize a single-stranded DNA molecule with the sequence TAAACG,
which is the complement to the gene you are after. This DNA probe can then
be applied to the cell cultures (after the cell membranes have been lysed and
the DNA denatured). In addition, the DNA probe will be radioactively
labeled, so that when it binds it can be detected.
Prior to and alongside the introduction of new computer technologies, the
construction of plasmid libraries has been an essential tool for genomic
studies. In the early years of the HGP, plasmid libraries already existed for
bacteria such as E. coli, the yeast S. cerevisiae, the roundworm C. elegans, and
the Drosophilia fruit fly. The time-consuming and tedious task of genome
mapping at this time consisted in using plasmid libraries to construct over-
lapping clones of DNA fragments, which could then be painstakingly recon-
structed using technologies such as gel electrophoresis. For the IHGSC and
Celera genome projects, newer computer and robotics technologies that auto-
mated the previously manual process of sequencing enabled a faster, more effi-
cient mode of gene mapping using plasmid libraries. The IHGSC, for
instance, made extensive use of BAC plasmid libraries to store and clone the
numerous fragments from the sample human genome. Many of the IHGSC’s
BAC libraries were derived from BAC repositories, such as the Cal Tech or
RPCI “large-insert” genomewide libraries.
Although plasmid libraries are composed of the “wet,” messy “stuff” of
biology, they nevertheless employ a database logic—even prior to the devel-
opment of current microchip-based computer memory. Certainly, the idea of
the database can be traced as far back as the idea of a computing machine
(storage of data was a problem in Babbage’s nineteenth-century calculators
and was not fully theorized until John von Neumann’s draft for a computer
architecture in the early 1950s). Yet what is interesting is that the creation
and use of plasmid libraries show already the degree to which the informatic
paradigm of molecular biology materializes its artifacts. In a sense, the
plasmid library, complete with infrastructure (restriction enzymes, DNA

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complementarity) and a search engine (DNA probes), is a better example
of how biotechnology integrates genetic and computer “codes” than is the
computer databases of GenBank or the Protein Data Bank (PDB).
However, in the past 5 to 10 years (that is, during the period of the devel-
opment of the Web), an equally significant mode of organization has com-
bined with genetics research and mapping endeavors to produce a second,
redoubled mode of organizing the genetic body—that of the online database.40
When the government-funded HGP was launched in 1988–89, its organiz-
ers had already foreseen the problem of large-scale organization and archiving
of vast amounts of genetic information.41 At the time, the Internet was cer-
tainly not the ubiquitous medium it has since become, but the Internet’s
origins in both military-governmental and research-educational institutions
meant that the possibility already existed for the effective computerization of
an entire human genome. Significant changes in this field include the rapid
developments in computer data storage capacities and processor speeds, along
with the maturation of the Internet and Web as the much-hyped media of the
future. Joan Fujimura and Michael Fortun have suggested that the introduc-
tion of computer databases has had the effect of transforming molecular
biology into a mathematically based and theoretical science. Issues of classi-
fication and standardization impact not only the tools of biology, but the very
concepts of nature produced through such artifacts. “We . . . have to question
not simply how these sequence-based technologies will be used, but also what
kind of nature we are constructing with these forms of knowledge.”42
Numerous biotech corporations and research labs have moved from using
the Web as an information network (e.g., Web sites of biotech corporations)
to utilizing the Web as a constituent component of genetics and biotech
research (in online bioinformatics search tools). This shift means that the
computerization of research data can and in most cases does combine
with networking technologies to produce a decentralized and disseminated
data-transfer network that extends from one or more databases. Genomic data-
bases such as GenBank or Ensembl offer examples of such organizational
systems used on a regular basis by researchers at many remote locations
and with many different institutional and industrial affiliations. Despite the
changing perspectives within genetics research as to the actual role of DNA,
such databases still reaffirm and reproduce modern genetics’ narrative of the
genome as the central “source code” and referent point for contemporary bio-
logical science and medicine.43

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 In his essay “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter,” Kittler brings up the ways
in which the media revolution of the late nineteenth century created a linkage
between new technical modes, power, history, and the realm of the dead and
the phantasmic. Transforming sound into acoustics, visual movement into
moving images, and writing into text, these media effected, in their own way,
the arresting and storing of sensory phenomena. They were able to do this
through a process of standardization (an “alphabetism”), which made possible
new modes of communication (new meanings for hearing, seeing, writing).44
The archive gathers, filters, and organizes multiplicities—peoples, cultures,
events, cartographies and so forth. The document is a representational tau-
tology; it always authenticates and verifies only itself as a fact. These storage
media make possible the separation and organization of sensory experience
and, by extension, the world. When it becomes possible to technologically
store something, the capacity to translate time, movement, and vision into
information has been achieved. Once the senses can be translated into infor-
mation, they can be effectively separated and “arrested.” Once that informa-
tion can be stored, it can be organized and made technical through
considerations of data transmission, data access, and encoding-decoding pro-
cedures. In fact, storage media effect a transformation upon the interface
between the body and technology on three levels: they incorporate earlier
media as their content; they subjectify viewers and audiences through an inter-
weaving of machine sense and the experience of the subject; and they objec-
tify the sensory body through a capturing of objective properties as an index
to sensory experience. As Kittler points out, “man becomes physiology on the
one hand and information technology on the other.”45
For Kittler, this capacity is made possible by these media’s ability to
arrest/capture, translate, and store/archive information. Within this capacity
are not only encoding operations, but the potentiality of placing these body-
technology relationships into an archive, or, to use a more current term, the
database. In the same way that the mechanical storage media of the gramo-
phone, film, and typewriter form “partially connected media systems,” so do
they also form the content for a future of totally connected media, based on com-
puter code. “In computers everything becomes number: imageless, soundless,
and wordless quantity . . . a total connection of all media on a digital base
erases the notion of the medium itself.”46 In this way, the archive (the form
of mechanical storage) becomes the database (the form of digital storage and
computer-based memory). For Kittler, this process follows the broad

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transition from mechanical storage media to digital storage media and from
partially connected systems to totally connected systems. Although the archive
is often unable to be modified—as with printed records, gramophone discs,
filmic and photographic plates, and typeset pages—the database is defined by
its flexibility in the handling of information (and thus the supplementary need
for “backup storage,” data encryption, and security). Digital media’s genera-
tive character means not only that computer media can encode themselves
(automated processes, expert systems, and agents), but that through this
recombinant logic information can come to be seen in new, morphological
terms. The implication here is that information, as in the mechanical archive,
is no longer simply a concrete materiality of fact; rather, with the database,
information becomes the highly technical and automated reservoir for the pro-
liferation and production of other media. The database is not only the foun-
dation from which totally connected media systems emerge, but also the very
interstices and linkages that constitute the possibility of connected media.
Such a situation applies directly to the various genome mapping endeav-
ors and the digitization of the molecular and genetic domains. In cultures
where storage media play a central role in the relationships between bodies
and technologies, storage media fulfill a function of accountability. The human
genome databases, SNP databases, population genome databases—all inscribe
the subject in the contexts of health, medical normativity, genetic diagnos-
tics. As a databasing endeavor, the HGP is just one isolated example of a much
more pervasive technocultural trajectory. This trajectory is not the familiar
transcendentalism of moving away from the materiality of the body toward
the purity of disembodied cyberspace. Rather, it involves the concern with
accounting for the materiality of the medical subject and of the molecular-
genetic body. Understanding the broader meanings of genome databases
(whether BACs or Oracle databases) requires a comprehension of the ways in
which a unique type of genomic body is constructed in the extraction of infor-
mation from the bodies of cells, proteins, and DNA. The database makes
possible a series of potential extensions that exceed the mere recording
and preservation of information. With the database, information becomes
productive, generative, morphological. With the database, information also
becomes organized, classified, and taxonomized according to a range of flexi-
ble uses.
According to standard computer science and database theory, the content
of the database is of less importance than its structure and mode of organiza-

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tion and function. That is, the consideration of the content of the database (or
the descriptions of the “data files”) becomes important only in the process of
creating a database, in which logically related data must be gathered and ana-
lyzed. After this design and gathering process, the content or data files are
organized according to “attributes” (descriptive categories along the lines of
natural histories) and “relationships” (differences between attributes); that is,
after the design and gathering phase, the data files become functional nodes
within the larger database structure. They do not lose their specificity as par-
ticular data files different from other data files, but they are nevertheless put
through a process whereby they are partitioned and articulated according to
the logics of a particular type of database (e.g., hierarchical, network, rela-
tional, object oriented, etc.).

Critique III: The Excesses of DNA

A brief review: in considering biotechnology fields such as genomics and

bioinformatics, we can see how the “problem of too much information” is also
a political-economical problem. Marx’s critiques of political economy provide
us with a way of understanding how biotechnology manages—and in manys
produces—its excess. Marx’s first critique is against the naturalization and
universalism of the categories of political economy, and his second critique is
poised on the particular form of the labor-capital relation. Finally, a third cri-
tique against classical political economic thinking is his questioning of the
division between the categories of production, distribution, and consumption.
In his reading of classical political economy, Marx identifies production as the
starting point (human labor upon nature), distribution as the economic allo-
cation of goods to the people, and consumption as the use of those allocated
goods. Whereas writers such as Smith, Ricardo, and Mill tend to treat these
processes as isolated and linear (which nevertheless form a whole), Marx’s
emphasis is on the ways in which each process dialectically determines the
other: production is consumption (in the use of laboring capacity), consump-
tion is production (in the replenishing of labor power), and distribution deter-
mines both production and consumption (in that it is determined by social
class hierarchies). Marx notes, “[t]he conclusion we reach is not that produc-
tion, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they all
form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity.”47 What this really
means, for Marx, is that the traditional categories of production, distribution,

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and consumption are superceded by a different kind of production, a produc-
tion that is immanent to each category and that ties them all together.48 Marx’s
critical point is that the system of liberal, market-driven capitalism produces
its categories: “consumption produces production,” just as “production creates
the consumer”; and, in the same way, “distribution seems to precede produc-
tion and to determine it,” just as “distribution is itself a product of produc-
tion.”49 In this strategic confusion of categories, Marx highlights the ways in
which an economic system such as industrial capitalism continually produces
its own conditions, its own categories of operation. Beyond the specific, ter-
minal problematics within production, distribution, or consumption sepa-
rately, Marx points to the way in which the “process always returns to
production to begin anew,” but a notion of production that is constitutive,
both determining and determined. Negri refers to this method as “determi-
nate abstraction,” for it attempts to highlight the fundamental yet concrete
forces behind specific instances. For our purposes, Marx’s deconstruction of
the categories of political economy is helpful in considering how the HGP
and related technoscience projects conceive of political economy as the man-
agement of biological information and in this way actually produce the excess
data that are subsequently managed via new technologies. Consider the fol-
lowing examples.

Statistical Genetics
The problem of genetic difference has been an issue with the HGP since its
inception. As is known, genomics aims to derive a single genetic map by way
of a statistical averaging.50 Such tactics determine which “letter” or which
gene will be entered into the database at a given locus. Given the claims by
genetics researchers that each individual differs from others by approximately
0.1 percent of its DNA, such an averaging seems to be a sensible, practical
way of working. However, given that there are at least some 30,000 genes and
more than 3 billion base pairs (“letters”) in the human genome, and that a
number of known genetic disorders (such as Parkinson’s or sickle cell anemia)
are in part triggered by a single base-pair mutation, such homogenizing prac-
tices take on a different tone.
At first glance, this massive homogenization (and genetic simulation) of
the human genome seemed to be corrected by the Human Genome Diversity
Project (HGDP) when it was initiated in the early 1990s.51 The HGDP’s con-
tribution to the human genome–mapping project would be to consider the

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ethnically based genetic differences from a range of “other” cultures, especially
those cultures without dense histories of transethnic genetic migration. Its job
would basically be to account for the excess genetic material not within the
Eurocentric field of consideration of the human genome projects (that is, the
genome projects aim above all for universality, but the HGDP would instead
concentrate on the local). It has been only recently, though, that the methods
and practices of the HGDP have come under fire, primarily owing to its ties
with debates surrounding the patenting of genes and cell lines from indige-
nous cultures.52 Certain HGDP practices thus not only constitute literal exam-
ples of genetic colonialism (many of the cell lines representing indigenous
cultures were collected without proper consent and were intended to be
archived—as a type of genetic museum—by the NIH and related government
health organizations), but they also bring up questions about the ways in
which excess is translated into a dominant system involving science, politics,
and juridical-economic structures.
The HGDP epistemologically ends up reduplicating the universal, statis-
tical assumptions of the human genome projects. Although it considers cul-
tural and ethnic specificity, it is too tightly bound to a genetic determinism
to be anything but a messy conflation of the discourse of nature and the
biology of ethnicity. Here genetic difference does not simply account for cul-
tural-ethnic specificity; it demands it. The always dangerous equation between
the discourses of nature and culture formulates the excess of otherness through
genetic reductionism. In producing a series of ethnic gene maps, projects
such as the HGDP intimately forge a bond between genetic difference and
ethnic-cultural difference. When one considers these ethnic gene-mapping
projects alongside the human genome projects, one sees not only the
development of a genetic technology of normativity, but also the situating of
ethnic-cultural excess in relation to the HGP (that is, the mapping out of
“otherness”).

Technologies of Excess
Genomic mapping depends a great deal on a range of specifically designed
laboratory and analysis technologies, most of which are geared toward the
increasing automation, speed, and accuracy of genetic sequencing. Of partic-
ular concern here are two examples of such technologies, the DNA chip (or
microarray) and the automated DNA sequencing machine. Both play key roles
in making efficient genomic mapping possible, but whereas the DNA chip

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has been utilized primarily for the mapping out of minute differences in
genetic sequences, the DNA sequencing machines are used for the mass analy-
sis of DNA samples in general genome mapping endeavors.
In fields such as medical genetics and genetic drug design, when the need
for quick and efficient modes of analyzing minute genetic differences arose, it
was technologies such as the DNA chip that made such analysis possible. The
DNA chip is indeed a hybrid of carbon and silicon—on a microcomputer-size
silicon wafer thousands of cloned DNA samples are attached—but it is also
a product of the biotech and genetics industry, intended to perform the ana-
lytical task of isolating and “reading” genetic difference. For example, one of
the first uses of the DNA chip was in the field of breast and ovarian cancer
research, where researchers were attempting to localize the gene or genes
involved in the triggering and development of these types of cancer. Within
a probable field of localization, researchers could analyze cancerous cells by
using the DNA chip to pinpoint possible minute mutations in a genetic
sequence. Such mutations, or SNPs, have been found in relation to a host of
genetically related disorders. To achieve the results of this type of analysis,
however, a large amount of genetic material must be generated; in other
words, SNPs cannot be analyzed simply by using a single thread of DNA. An
excess of genetic material is required for SNP mapping and analysis, but this
excess does not precede the analytical process. Rather, the genetic material is
synthesized or cloned, or both, on two fronts. First, the DNA chip contains
thousands of identical strands of DNA, and these strands are precisely allo-
cated sequences that correspond to the suspect gene. Thus, a multitude of
DNA fragments must either be generated (“grown” or “assembled”) or cloned
in order that the DNA chip as a whole will have a greater degree of accuracy.
Second, the genetic material to be analyzed (e.g., a sequence or strand of DNA
from a cancerous cell) must be cloned en masse because given the current tech-
nology, a more accurate reading will result from a greater quantity of genetic
sample.
In theory, such indulgence in assuring accuracy is unnecessary, but when
considering the extreme importance of even a single base-pair mutation, and
given the current technological limitations, a need for the production of a par-
ticular type of excess arises. This genetic excess is, above all, the product of a
technique—a reading and inscription technique. It is an indication of the
amount of genetic material (biological material alternately extracted, cloned,
recombined, and regenerated) that must be both expended and produced as

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“useful excess” in order that the genetic body may be instantiated as a dis-
embodied code or information.

The Accursed Share of Introns

According to current assessments among genetics researchers, the amount of
“coding” material in the human DNA accounts for roughly 3 percent of the
total DNA in a human being. As genetic science now tells us, this amount is
primarily owing to the particular mechanism by which DNA relates to the
production of a variety of different proteins in our bodies. Still considered as
the master molecule, DNA is thought to initiate a process in which a given
strand of a chromosome unwinds and makes itself available for a “transcrip-
tion” onto a single-stranded RNA molecule. During this phase, large portions
of DNA are simply excised or cut out, leaving only the coding portions of the
DNA, which snap together, forming a more compact strand of RNA to be
delivered to the ribosomes for “translation” into instructions for the building
of a particular amino acid (which will later be assembled with other amino
acid compounds to form a protein). The parts excised in the transcription
process are called introns, and the coding portion retained on the RNA mol-
ecule are called exons. Genetics researchers have for years ambiguously referred
to the introns (which, again, compose 97 percent of human genetic material)
as “junk DNA,” implying both something in excess but something one cannot
do without (that is, “junk” as differentiated from “trash”).
In addition, because modern genetics discourse and practice is founded on
principles of an informatic teleology (that is, the genetic code as a text that
exists to be decoded), there has been much speculative debate as to the introns’
possible functions. Some evolutionary geneticists claim that the introns are
genetic fossils, remnants of DNA that previously coded for biochemical com-
pounds no longer needed by the species, a position termed the “introns-early”
theory. By predictable contrast, the “introns-late” theory proposes that the
introns are not in fact useless fragments or simply junk, but rather may be
inserted into genes later and possibly involved in complex ways in the bio-
chemical process by which DNA is related to the production of proteins and
to its own reproduction as a molecule.53
What is important here is obviously not which position is correct, but that
there is an explicit need among genetics researchers to reconfigure the introns
as nonexcessive, productive elements in the larger narrative of a master code
saturated with (mostly potential) signification. For this reason, there is debate

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among genome mapping projects as to whether to map out the human genome
completely (as originally intended) or to concentrate exclusively on the coding
portions, adding maps of the introns as supplements (as corporate biotech
projects are doing). Whichever method is used, it is clear that the introns
form a troubling source of anxiety for a discourse such as genetics and for prac-
tices such as genomic mapping. Whether the introns are included as part of
the genomic map out of a concern for totality and universalism (informed by
scientific narratives of totality and completeness), or whether the introns are
appended as a secondary but not irrelevant addition (as Celera has proposed,
mostly informed by economic imperative), the unthinkable for genomics in
general is that the introns are a form of excess that can be understood through
genetic science only by way of a recuperation and refiguration, as potentially
useful. Entertaining such a notion would be the equivalent of stating that the
majority of human genetic material in the body is “pure” or “empty” infor-
mation, or simply “noise.”

Gene Expression Markup Language

In 2001, Rosetta Inpharmatics, a bioinformatics company from the Pacific
Northwest, announced that it had developed a cross-platform standard for
computer-based molecular genetics and biotech research. Called Gene Expres-
sion Markup Language—or GEML—this programming language is designed
to facilitate the current file-format and compatibility problems in computer-
based biotech research. Now researchers in biotech can work, with the ease of
cross-platform standardization, between widely different biological databases,
from Celera’s human genome sequence to the SWISS-PROT protein database
to the Human Gene Mutation database. All online, all digital, and now all in
a standardized backend programming language. GEML is based on Extensi-
ble Markup Language (XML) and operates independent of any particular data-
base file-format schema. GEML manages two types of genetic data: genetic
patterns (gene expression, or analyses of which sets of genes are switched on
or off, and which may include biochemical pathway information or gene-
protein relationships) and genetic profiles (digital scans of microarray chips,
which are used to analyze genetic samples speedily and efficiently). GEML can
keep meticulous track of a given piece of genetic data, noting what the orig-
inal file format was, where the data were retrieved from, the type of database
search method used, and the operations performed with a given data file—

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presumably biotech research, like Photoshop, now includes several levels of
“undo” as well.
All of which is to say that with biotech research the computer is no longer
just a tool. It has become much more, extending its range of operations, bring-
ing in computer science and programming, and transforming the “wet”
biology lab into a networked computer lab. Unfortunately, researchers and
companies still seem to see bioinformatics tools, such as the GEML language,
as a transparent tool, something that will transparently aid in the advance-
ment of science research without fundamentally altering research itself or the
objects of study. When a GEML-based application accesses several genomic
databases, is it also accessing genetic bodies? Or is this process simply just
data acting on data, and if so, where exactly are the points of connection to
material, biological bodies? No one is asking whether such bioinformatics
techniques will fundamentally change our notion of what the body is or
whether the level of complexity that bioinformatics can deal with will fun-
damentally challenge traditional bioscience and genetics research.
This places an “object” such as GEML in a very strange position. On the
one hand, GEML, as a programming language, refers to or points to some-
thing in its tags, the same way that the tag ·IMG SRC=“mycells.jpg”Ò points
to a digital image of my cells on a Web page. In this sense, GEML operates
not only as hypertext markup language (HTML) does (with referring tags and
attributes), but it also operates according to the traditional signifier-sign
relationships that characterize modern linguistics. The “thing” the language
points to, however, is another type of data, a genetic code, itself with its own
set of rules and protocols for functioning. This also means that, as an XML-
based language, GEML is developed from the ground up, so to speak, so that
the types of tags and attributes used, as well as their interrelationships, will
be dictated by the ways in which genetic data operate. Each use of a GEML
implementation needs to be identified by a document type definition (DTD)
file, which lists the types of attributes used. In the case of GEML, this DTD
file will be based on the ways in which genetic code operates in the body—
that is, according to sequences for genes, chromosomal positioning, gene-
protein relationships, promoter-terminator regions, splice variants, gene
polymorphisms, and so on. In other words, the DTD file for GEML is based
on the current state of knowledge in biotech research—how reductive or
complex that knowledge is, how rigid or flexible it is, and so on. What is

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being produced with GEML, then, is a kind of metacode for approaching the
molecular code of the genome. In a sense, GEML does not add or modify any-
thing in the genome; it is not a genetic engineering tool in the traditional
sense of the term.
This interrelationship between molecular genetics and computer science
means that bioinformatics will only be as complex, technically sophisticated,
and potentially transformative as its DTD file—or the types of knowledge
input into bioinformatics code. The conventional truism of molecular genet-
ics—that in a causal, linear fashion “DNA makes RNA makes protein”—will
produce a bioinformatics only to that level of complexity. However, as
researchers and laboratories have been acknowledging, most diseases and phe-
notypic markers are the product of multiple genetic triggers and multiple bio-
chemical pathways, not to mention networked interactions with context or
environment. This is why the most interesting alternative approaches within
biotech research, such as systems biology, have demanded that both molecu-
lar genetics and computer science transform the discourse of genetics and
biotech, moving away from the overdeterminism of single-gene theories and
toward more distributed and networked approaches.

“Curse the Skies While the Ground Slides Away”

Thus far, I have noted how contemporary genomics undertakes a particular

organization of the bioinformatics body, through the incorporation of infor-
matic tropes and in the design of “wet” and “dry” databases.54 If such prac-
tices dictate what will be designed into a genome database, then we can ask
how the political economy of genetic bodies in genomic mapping is also a set
of organizational technologies based on the management of elements of excess.
Georges Bataille’s concept of general economy provides a helpful way of con-
sidering genomics not just as a political economy, but as a general economy
in which excess, not scarcity, is the rule.
For Bataille, writing during the same period in which the structure of
DNA was elucidated, traditional political economy represented a narrow mode
of social analysis that often reduced the range of activity within the social field
to utility, production, accumulation, and conservation.55 Stemming from a
long history of dissatisfaction with Marxism and Hegelianism, Bataille’s
thought outlines a trajectory that explores—in philosophy, in poetry, in polit-
ical activism, in occultism, in pornography, in anthropology—the “negative”

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ways in which given social formations articulate themselves as productive,
homogeneous structures.
Bataille’s almost obsessive interest in the visceral, abject body, what he
often termed “base materialism,” has to do with the various means by which
a tension-filled relationship was established between a potentially threaten-
ing, transgressive body (obscene, grotesque, unstable, dysfunctional) and the
particular mode of social organization within which such bodies were found.56
In other words, Bataille’s base materialism is not about positing the trans-
gressive body at a position of absolute exteriority to the social, but neither
does its complex contingency simply predetermine it to a recuperation by dis-
course. The social formation does not simply repress or forbid the transgres-
sive body; but neither does this body form the core of social hegemony. The
social must—reluctantly, frustratedly, and even hesitantly—engage with this
difficult, “dirty” body through a variety of means. It was central to Bataille’s
project, then, to consider the types of relationships between the productive
dynamics of “homogeneous” society and the troubling excesses of “hetero-
geneous” bodies: “The very term heterogeneous indicates that it concerns
elements that are impossible to assimilate; this impossibility, which has a
fundamental impact on social assimilation, likewise has an impact on scien-
tific assimilation . . . as a rule, science cannot know heterogeneous elements
as such . . . the heterogeneous world includes everything resulting from
unproductive expenditure.”57
A key methodological move in this consideration was a reconfiguration of
the field of political economy. Rather than considering the social from per-
spectives privileging utility, production, and conservation, Bataille attempts
to analyze the social body as a kind of sociological metabolism, or as a waste-
management system. That is, rather than consider political economy from the
vantage point of utility, Bataille instead begins from the vantage point of use-
lessness and excess. For this reason, commodities do not form the center of
modes of exchange for Bataille; instead, objects and instances form a unique
mode of exchange based not on conservation or agglomeration, but on expen-
diture: jewels, poetry, festivals, war, eroticism, sacrifice, flowers. Abundance
comes first, not scarcity. Only in the specific historical instance of capitalism
are abundance and exuberance turned back on themselves. Noting this shift
in perspective in Bataille’s thought, Steven Shaviro suggests that “what needs
to be explained is no longer the fact that spontaneous acts of expenditure, like
sacrifices or gifts, also turn out to serve useful purposes for the people who

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123
perform them, but rather the fact that an economy entirely given over to util-
itarian calculation, or to ‘rational choice,’ still continues to express . . . the
delirious logic of unproductive expenditure.”58
Such a theory must take into account the languages, structures, and socio-
historical contingencies of the organizational tactics of modes of social organ-
ization themselves. This perspective—that of a “general economy”—would
work within but pass between the interstices of a “restricted economy,”
disallowing internal critical perspective.59 Bataille’s premise is at once bio-
logical, ontological, and economic: “The living organism, in a situation
determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily
receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the excess energy
(wealth) can be used for the growth of the system (e.g., an organism); if the
system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in
its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, will-
ingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically.” 60 If a restricted economy—the
political economy of Mill, Ricardo, and Smith—is primarily concerned with
the state’s use of its resources, then a general economy would begin from the
opposite position and consider social activity that implicitly challenges and
goes outside of the state. This general economy thus asks two primary ques-
tions: How does a particular social formation interact with its “accursed share”
(those elements that do not stand in a direct, productive relation to the social
formation), and, To what degree are those elements of excess contingent upon
their being situated within the social formation in which they are found
(is there an element or dynamic to them that is not simply recuperated into
production or affirmation)? The general trajectory of such an approach would
be to question the ways in which both the inclusive and the exclusive are
constitutive of the social formation.
What does Bataille’s general economy mean for contemporary biotech fields
such as genomics? If we approach genomics as an activity that rearticulates
the body at the genetic and informatic levels, then it would seem that
genomics is as much about the management of excess (“junk” or noncoding
DNA) as it is about the organization of scarcity (coding DNA). In one sense,
it goes without saying that the centrality of the mapping of the human
genome constitutes one of the foundational fields within genetics and biotech
research. Gene therapy, new reproductive technologies (NRTs), pharmacoge-
nomics, medical technology, pathology, immunology, and a host of related
fields are to varying degrees dependent on the promises, claims, and current

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implementations of the research performed in genomics. Part of this depend-
ency requires that basic research produce as much data as possible to ensure
accurate results (in the case of genome mapping) and to ensure application (in
the case of drug development or preclinical trials). In a sense, the excess of
genomic data—SNPs, introns, simple sequence repeats (SSRs), and so on—
does not simply exist, but is actually produced by genomics technologies. If we
look at current genomics, not in terms of official science (e.g., the progressive
march toward the complete cataloging of the human genome), but rather in
terms of Bataille’s excess, then our examples demonstrate the degree to which
the political economy of genomics is primarily concerned with the produc-
tion and subsequent technical management of excess. But an excess of what
exactly? If both the technology of genomics and its preliminary findings are
considered, it is clear that the excess that is managed is an excess of biologi-
cal information—though, note, not necessarily an excess of biological “life itself.” As
we have seen, examples of genomics technologies of excess include the statis-
tical management of polymorphisms, or SNPs; the overproduction of DNA
in tools such as oligonucleotide synthesizers; the study of junk DNA, or intron
regions in the genome; and, finally, the challenges of establishing computer
database ontology standards in XML. As a general economy—that is, as a
political economy based on excess—genomics becomes defined according to
a range of practices that involve the ongoing production and management of
the inclusive and exclusive elements in the genomic body.

The Insubordination of Matter

This chapter has considered the ways in which genomics forms a flexible
management of excess DNA (or information) from the perspective of Marx’s
critiques of political economy and from the perspective of Bataille’s notion
of a general economy. Genomics and its related fields perform this manage-
ment not only through positive means (textualizing, universalizing, creating
causality, constructing), but also through negative means (individualizing
and grouping; managing excess) that define further data for genomic
analysis.
Both Marx and Bataille pose a set of challenges to the conceptual under-
pinning of political economy. If we consider political economy in this way
(that is, philosophically), then it is not difficult to understand how the par-
ticular modes of production, distribution, and consumption help to define

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what is or is not valuable or useful in biotechnology fields such as genomics.
As Lev Manovich states with regard to the role of the database in new media,

What we encounter here is an example of the general principle of new media: the pro-
jection of the ontology of a computer onto culture itself. If in physics the world is
made of atoms and in genetics it is made of genes, computer programming encapsu-
lates the world according to its own logic. The world is reduced to two kinds of soft-
ware objects which are complementary to each other: data structures and algorithms.
. . . [A]ny object in the world—be it the population of a city, or the weather over the
course of a century, a chair, a human brain—is modeled as a data structure, i.e. data
organized in a particular way for efficient search and retrieval.61

Fields such as genomics are unique, however, because they do not simply reit-
erate the abstraction of the material world into an immaterial data structure.
In genomics, as noted, a database logic pervades both the wet-lab maintenance
of BAC libraries and the more familiar construction of computer databases
such as GenBank. In other words, an informatic mode of organization—an
informatic mode of “banking”—spans both the material and immaterial
aspects of biology.
This dual aspect of genomics, of being at once material and informatic, is
key for an understanding of how the characteristics of a genetic reductionism
defines the molecular-genetic understanding of “life itself.” The artifacts of
the database, the BAC library, the intron, and GEML contribute to this
general notion that biological “life itself” is in some way identical to “infor-
mation.” And yet, as a number of authors have pointed out, this equivalence
is always inexact, for the genetic “code” is not a language—it has no grammar,
it contains no information, and it transfers no message separate from a
medium. Something always seems to escape: on the one hand, there is the pre-
cision of sequences and structures, where a single base-pair polymorphism can
result in a disease, yet, on the other hand, there is a high degree of “redun-
dancy” in the sequence and a panoply of “error-correcting” mechanisms in the
genetic code.
Whereas Marx, in the Grundrisse, points to the central tension between
labor and capital as the motor of industrial capitalism, Bataille translates this
tension into one between expenditure and accumulation. For Marx, it is
“living labor” that always provides the challenge to capital and to which
capital responds either through technological advances in production (e.g., the

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fixed capital of machinery) or through redefining the relationship between
labor and machinery. Regarding this “appropriation of living labor by objec-
tified labor,”62 Marx points to the transformation of living labor into a tech-
nology of living labor, a transformation of nature into a technology of nature:
“Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs,
self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry.”63 Yet—and this
point is the key to understanding the uniqueness of biotechnology today—
capitalism’s revolutions of production are able to reconceive of biology and of
nature itself as a technology: “In machinery, the appropriation of living labor
by capital achieves a direct reality in this respect as well: It is, firstly, the
analysis and application of mechanical and chemical laws, arising directly out
of science, which enables the machine to perform the same labor as that pre-
viously performed by the worker.”64 Although Marx is speaking here of indus-
trial manufacturing, it is not difficult to expand his comments to the biotech
industry, in which we see the routine manufacture of molecules, enzymes, and
cells. What has changed in the jump from industrial capitalism to the biotech
industry is the role that modern notions of “information” play in relation to
the biological domain. “Living labor” is no longer just the labor appropriated
by workers, but the uncanny biomaterial labor of immortalized cell lines, cul-
tured stem cells, DNA synthesizers, and even transgenic organisms. Marx had
already begun to see this integration of living labor and the “dead labor” of
machinery in biological terms (“the metabolism of capital”), and in the
biotech industry this integration is pushed further still.
However, for Bataille, even Marx’s critique of political economy had not
gone far enough. Marx was able to critique the universalist presuppositions
of political economy, but, for Bataille, political economy had erred in its
understanding of the true nature of the processes of production, distribution,
and consumption. Bataille’s emphasis on a “general economy” based on excess,
expenditure, and luxury is an attempt to invert further the categories of tra-
ditional political economic thought. From this perspective, Marx’s tension
between labor and capital is converted into a tension between expenditure and
accumulation in capitalist societies. Instead of Marx’s living labor in produc-
tion, Bataille gives us the intensive production of a loss in expenditure; instead
of Marx’s general formula for capital, in which commodities are always trans-
formed into money, Bataille gives us a general economy in which the drive
for accumulation takes the form of a reinvestment in production with profit.
The challenge for an economic system is thus not how to produce efficiently

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in order to accrue a surplus value, but rather how to spend or expend effec-
tively in order to maintain the dynamic stability of a system. For Bataille,
excess is the problem, not scarcity (and in this he gives us a position diamet-
rically opposed to Malthus and classical political economy). Put another way,
we might say that for capital the problem is the ongoing management of
excess (pushes toward consumption of immaterial goods and services; con-
spicuous consumption; consumption of affects).
It is tempting to push this idea even further and to suggest that from
Bataille’s perspective of expenditure, the problem for capital is not only managing
excess, but taking over the production of excess in itself. In the biotech industry,
genomics and bioinformatics illustrate this tendency, for in them we see a
twofold tendency. On the one hand, there is a push toward generating an
incredible amount of information, a “tsunami of data” related to genomes,
proteomes, SNPs, spliceosomes, transcriptomes, biopathways, and so forth.
The first phase of the effort to map the human genome (by both Celera and
the IHGSC) is the most well known of such productions of excess. On the
other hand, the production of such excess has as its primary aim the subse-
quent development of mostly computational tools for analyzing and “making
sense” of all this information. The proliferation of bioinformatics software,
DBMSs, genome sequencing computers, and other technologies has largely
followed upon “Big Science” efforts such as the HGP. We have a kind of push-
pull relationship between these tendencies: the tendency toward an excess of
data and a tendency toward the management of that excess (at which time it
no longer becomes excess as such).
Using Marx’s terms, we can say that in fields such as genomics and bioin-
formatics, information technology subsumes the excess information (which it
has produced). There is no such thing as “too much information” for genomics,
bioinformatics, or related fields such as pharmacogenomics. There is never too
much data, only the production of an excess that serves to trigger further
development of tools for the management of this excess. The productive capac-
ity of this excess can be seen in recent patenting activity surrounding genetic
material: up until 2001, patent applications for genetic material were being
granted without a full knowledge of the function or specific application of the
molecule in question. Genes (or rather gene derivatives) could theoretically
be patented without an understanding of what the genes did. Only in the U.S.
PTO’s 2001 Federal Register Report was it finally specified that patent appli-
cants must demonstrate “both utility and application” in their files. Yet an

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ambiguity still remains concerning knowledge of the function of any patented
compound: “The utility of a claimed DNA sequence does not necessarily
depend on the function of the encoded gene product.”
In the network between a laboratory BAC culture, a file in a genome data-
base, and, perhaps, an application to the U.S. PTO, there is both an effort to
regulate the relationship between labor (or biomaterial labor) and capital, as
well as an effort to manage excess information. We can ask Bataille’s question
of the biotech industry: Is there unproductive expenditure in biotechnology?
In one way, the answer is yes, for the production or even overproduction of
information is increasingly being seen as one of the major obstacles for bio-
science research. In a different light, the answer is no, for any excess in biotech-
nology is not only a production of excess (as in genomics), but an eventually
useful or valuable excess. If this is the case, then the general economy of
genomics is one in which excess biological “noise” is constantly managed and
transformed into useful or valuable biological information.
The tension between labor and capital in the biotech industry is therefore
a tension between the biomaterial labor of genes, enzymes, and cells, on the
one hand, and the economic imperatives behind those instances of biotech-
nology research, on the other hand, where profit is the primary motivating
force. Clearly, this is not the case with each and every instance of research in
fields such as genomics, proteomics, or bioinformatics. And just as the mere
existence of private-sector funding for research does not immediately imply a
problematic relation between labor and capital, the mere existence of public
or federal funding also does not immediately absolve those funding bodies of
economic imperatives. The difficulty is initially in understanding how the
tension between labor and capital (or between biomaterial labor and the
biotech industry) takes formation in the so-called biotech century. From this
understanding, the next step is to identify those elements that tip the deli-
cate, fragile balance between medical and economic interests to one side or
the other. These tensions are often played out at the technical level of BAC
libraries, gene-finding algorithms, and XML standards. Sometimes the prior-
itization of economic interests create blockages in bioscience research, as in
the case of proprietary data formats, databases, and software tools in bioin-
formatics. At other times, efforts toward the creation of flexible standards and
open source environments can effectively aid in the research process.
We might wonder whether in this biomaterial labor that is transformed
into capital there is still something that escapes, evades, or bypasses altogether

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the political economy of genomics. If fields such as genomics and bioin-
formatics are involved in the production of an excess, that excess is in turn
transformed into useful information, and that information is also valuable
information that can be exchanged. Use and exchange values are coordinated
at this level, but use values also diverge into the potential medical benefits of
drugs or therapies. Yet even drugs and therapies require further information
and the development of technologies for diagnostics. As discussed in chapter
2, this vision of a future, genomics-based medicine means that the body of
the patient is touched only minimally, configured in a way commensurate with
the informatic systems that sample, scan, and profile.
To be fair, however, this overview is far from being the whole of genomics
and bioinformatics research. A number of so-called alternative approaches have
been pursuing the distributed, networked properties of gene expression,
protein-protein interactions, cellular signaling, and metabolic pathways. This
“systems biology” also shows some overlap in spirit with research in biocom-
plexity at the Santa Fe Institute, for instance.65 Although the technologies and
methodologies are new, the basic idea is not: as Evelyn Fox Keller reminds
us, the history of molecular biology and biochemistry already pointed to the
inherently “complex” and networked property of “life itself” at the molecular
and genetic levels.66 Alternative approaches merely remind us of what is
implicit in the history of biological thought itself: relationality, flexibility,
robustness, adaptation. Even the “official” HGP cannot help but to acknowl-
edge certain excessive elements in the genome: a relatively modest number of
genes (some 3 percent of the genome), an extremely small difference between
the genomes of one individual and another (approximately 0.1 percent), an
incredibly large number of “short tandem repeat” sequences, and entire “con-
tinents” that seem to have no known function at all (more than 50 percent of
the total genome). In a sense, despite the biotech industry’s efforts to manage
the genome, the genome itself (like “life itself”) appears to be nothing but
excess information, with all the contradictions that the phrase implies. Bataille
proposes that an organism always produces more than it needs and that, from
a systemswide ecological perspective, abundance, not scarcity, is the rule of
life. With regard to fields such as genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics,
it is not difficult to begin to wonder whether the human genome is a
noneconomic relation between labor and capital, between expenditure and
accumulation.

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 II

Recoding / Distribution

In all these cases, and they are all historical, it seems that distri-
bution is not structured and determined by production, but rather
the opposite, production by distribution.
—karl marx, GRUNDRISSE
 4

Biocolonialism, Genomics, and the

Databasing of the Population

The Map, the Territory, and the Population

When in the early 1990s the U.S. government–funded Human Genome

Diversity Project (HGDP) drafted plans for a large genetic database of
distinct ethnic populations, it was met with a great deal of controversy
and criticism.1 Led by scientists such as Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Allan
Wilson—both pioneers in the field of population genetics—the HGDP’s
original aim was to collect DNA from individuals of genetically isolated
populations around the world in order to reconstruct the evolutionary
path of humankind.2 But the initial planning sessions, which were funded
by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Human Genome
Research Center, the National Institute for General Medical Sciences, and
the DoE, quickly became mired in disagreements over which populations to
choose for sampling and the best way to define what population means in this
context, a context that is as much cultural and anthropological as it is scien-
tific. In addition, groups such as the Rural Advancement Foundation Inter-
national (RAFI) and Third World Network voiced their concern over the
possible implications of such research for those largely indigenous com-
munities who would have their genetic material housed in cell lines in U.S.
institutes. Although HGDP committee members denied that there is any
economic motive behind their proposal, critics expressed concern over the way
in which indigenous communities were effectively cut out of the planning
process.
 The controversy was further fueled in 1993 by related but independent
incidents. U.S. scientists, with NIH funding, had applied for patents on the
genetic material of a Guyami woman from Panama, only with the woman’s
“verbal consent.” A similar case was found with a cell line derived from a
Hagahai man from New Guinea. Such instances seemed to RAFI and other
groups as an explicit example of colonialism, but now practiced on human
genetic material instead of on territories or on natural resources. Native
American groups in the United States accused the HGDP of practicing bio-
colonialism, a term that has been used frequently in describing the practice of
sampling genetic material for potential genes of value (be it medical or eco-
nomic value).3 The governments of Panama and the Solomon Islands sepa-
rately protested to the international community over the patents (one of which
was subsequently dropped), and indigenous communities, nongovernmental
organizations, and South Pacific governments lobbied for a “lifeforms patent
protection treaty.”4
At the same time, in the midst of mounting tensions over the HGDP, the
World Council of Indigenous Peoples publicly criticized the HGDP, dubbing
it the “Vampire Project.” Such concern and dissent forced the HGDP com-
mittee to draft up a set of “model ethical protocols” (MEPs), and in 1993 the
HGDP formed the North American Regional Committee, whose aim was to
come up with acceptable criteria for the collection of genetic material from
human populations.5 Written in consultation with leaders from indigenous
communities in the United States (because Native American tribes were one
major target of the HGDP), the MEPs stressed “informed consent” and the
importance of cultural as well as scientific understanding. Since that time,
however, the HGDP has been conspicuously silent, and despite the flurry
of news items and press releases relating to the various genome mapping
endeavors around the world—both government and corporate sponsored—
there has been relatively no news or updates on the HGDP’s progress.6
Much of the HGDP’s curious disappearing act has to do, certainly, with
the bioethical ties in which the HGDP has been involved and with the com-
bination of criticism being voiced by groups such as RAFI and the HGDP’s
having been “marked” by the media.7 However, although the HGDP as an
organization may have slipped from science headlines, the issues and prob-
lems associated with it have not. Parallel developments within biotech and
genetics have emerged, more or less taking up the “diversity problem” that
the HGDP dealt with in the 1990s: bioinformatics and genomics. As we have

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seen, bioinformatics involves the use of computer and networking technolo-
gies in the organization of updated, networked, and interactive genomic
databases being used by research institutions, the biotech industry, medical
genetics, and the pharmaceutical industry.8 Bioinformatics politically signals
an important development in the increasing computerization of “wet” biotech
research, creating an abstract level where new information technologies can
establish the foundation for a new research paradigm of “in silico biology.”
One of this chapter’s arguments is that these two trends—the decrease in
the HGDP’s visibility, and the rise of bioinformatics—are inextricably con-
nected. In fact, this twofold trend is striking: on the one hand, the relative
disappearance of the HGDP and, on the other, a string of “population
genomics” projects, the most visible being the IHSD managed by deCODE
Genetics, and the government-sponsored U.K. BioBank. Such projects draw
our attention to the ways in which race, genomes, and economics are medi-
ated in complex ways by information technologies. Genomics—the techno-
logically assisted study of the total DNA, or genome, of organisms—currently
commands a significant part of the biotech industry’s attention. In economic
as well as scientific terms, genomics has for some years promised to become
the foundation on which a future medical genetics and pharmacogenomics
will be based.9 This chapter attempts to draw out some of the linkages
between the biotech industry and the emphasis within genomics programs on
diversification and the collection of particular populations’ genomes into
computer databases. Such research programs, which highlight “genetic dif-
ference,” demonstrate the extent to which culture and biology are often at
odds with each other and the extent to which both ethnicity and race are
compelled to accommodate the structures of informatics and information.

Blood, Sex, Data

With the sheer quantity of material being generated by such globalized

science endeavors as the human genome projects, the need for a biotech-
infotech science has become the more prominent, if only for organizational
and managerial reasons. Biotech corporations such as Affymetrix, Incyte, and
Perkin-Elmer not only specialize in research and development, but also
emphasize product development.10 Bioinformatics promises to deliver the
tools that will make genomic science an information science and propel the
human genome projects into the next phase of “post-genomic science.”11 With

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135
the aid of bioinformatics technologies, the “public” genome project, originally
cast by the NIH as a 15-year endeavor, was shortened to a 3-year effort, with
a “working draft” presented—not without a great deal of fanfare—during the
summer of 2000.12 Biotech corporations such as Celera and Incyte have initi-
ated their own corporate-framed and privately run human genome mapping
projects, claiming the ability to outdo the international consortium (IHGSC)
in providing a more “medical” approach (i.e., mergers providing direct
biotech-to-pharmaceutical access of information). The link between biotech
and infotech is no longer a supplementary one; it is, for contemporary
genomics, a current necessity.
The recent rise in genomics projects, especially those geared toward unique
gene pools and genetic difference, has implied the hybridization of a new
practice of statistics and medicine, combining studies in population genetics
and new techniques in genomic mapping. This application of the genetic
study of the genomes of specific populations—what has been called population
genomics—brings together a lengthy tradition in the study of populations,
hereditary patterns, and inherited characteristics with the contemporary
development of large-scale genomic sequencing and analysis for clinical
medicine.13 Such endeavors stand in contrast to the more universal “human”
genome projects, which attempt to construct “the” human genome, a univer-
sal signifier that will contain the average of all specificity. For instance, Celera’s
human genome database contains sequences from DNA sampled from approx-
imately seven individuals, all anonymous, but taken from a range of genders,
racial backgrounds, and ages. Where differences exist between individuals, the
most common sequence or base pair, statistically speaking, is taken, and the
alternatives become part of a different type of dataset comprising minute
genetic differences. The field of population genomics thus contrasts itself to
the universal human genome projects. Its focus is an entity whose definition
is still in some dispute—the “population.” Its emphasis is on those genetic
elements that make a human population distinct from “the human” itself:
genetic markers, STSs, haplotypes (HAPs), and SNPs (figure 4.1).14
Biotech companies such as deCODE, Myriad Genetics, and Gemini
Genomics are focusing on the genomes of populations with histories of a low
degree of migration and a low frequency of hybridity (Icelandic, Mormon, and
Newfoundland communities, respectively).15 Other companies, such as DNA
Sciences Inc., are focusing on building a volunteer-based genetic health data-
base to aid in the fight against disease. DNA Science’s Gene Trust databank

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 —Familial hypercholesterolemia (LDLR)
—Insulin-resistant diabetes (INSR)

—Malignant hyperthermia (RYR1)

—Pseudoachondroplasia (COMP)

—Myotonic dystrophy (DM)

—Hemolytic anemia (GPI)
Low-resolution physical
map of chromosome 19
DI9S179
DI9S432
DI9S429

DI9S433
DI9S191

DI9S200

DI9S601
DI9S254
APOC2

DI9S22
DI9S7

RYR1
INSR

Ordered markers

DM
Genetic linkage map
21.5

10.8
9.9
10.5

17.9

18.0
Distances in centimorgans

Overlapping clones

Restriction map

Base sequence

Figure 4.1 Map or territory? “Genomic geography” of chromosome 19. Image courtesy of
the U.S. DoE Genome Program, http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis.

Biocolonialism, Genomics, and the Databasing of the Population

137
uses the GenBank model to archive medical, genetic, and health-related
data (GenBank holds the IHGSC’s human genome data).16 A number of
government-sponsored projects are also under way, the most noteworthy
being the U.K. BioBank, which aims to collect DNA samples, medical his-
tories, and medically relevant “lifestyle information” from more than half
a million individuals. Still other companies and research labs are focusing
on the minute genetic sequence differences between individuals—
polymorphisms, SNPs, and HAPs—which may be the keys to individual
genetic susceptibility to disease and, by extension, to pharmacogenomic
approaches to drug development.17 In most cases, such projects include
genetic sampling (DNA extracted from blood samples), analysis (sequencing
using plasmid libraries and sequencing machines), and the construction and
maintenance of computer databases (including data analysis and search tools,
as well as utilities for networking databases with other types of data such as
medical records).
These and other population genomics projects (see table 4.1) have met with
a great deal of controversy, most notably from the populations that are the
object of study and data agglomeration. For instance, in Iceland a group of
scientists, physicians, and citizens called Mannvernd continues to contest the
ethical implications behind the IHSD.18 Contentious ethical issues have also
arisen in relation to the Tonganese genome (where Autogen had aimed to
begin a genomics project), the government-sponsored Estonian genome, and
efforts to establish a Korean genome (headed by Macrogen).19 Critics of
population genomics projects often raise concerns over issues of consent,
information privacy, and the ethics of transforming a nation’s health into a
commodity for sale. Such concerns have prompted many population genomics
projects to take on responsibility for ethical issues. For instance, the U.K.
BioBank has established an independent ethics and governance council to
oversee ethical, policy, and legal issues that will inevitably arise with such
broad genetic sampling endeavors.20 In addition, the issue of population
genome databases has attracted the attention of the international health com-
munity. In 2002, the World Medical Association (WMA), along with the
WHO, announced the “Declaration on Ethical Considerations Regarding
Health Databases,” which would, among other things, give priority to the
individual patient’s right in such databasing ventures.21
This emphasis on genomic differences is also, then, an emphasis on biotech-
nologies’ ability to drive the diversification of databases, drug-development

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Table 4.1 Population Genome Projects

Institute Subjects

Estonian National Gene Bank Project Estonian volunteers

(Estonian Genome Foundation, Estonian
government)
The Gene Trust (DNA Sciences, Inc.) More than 100,000 U.S. volunteers
via the Internet
Genomic Research in African-American African American volunteers
Pedigrees (G-RAP; Howard University)
Icelandic Health Sector Database (IHSD, More than 280,000 Icelanders
deCODE Genomics)
Korean Gene Bank (Macrogen) Korean volunteers
Mormon Gene Bank (Myriad Genetics) Mormon communities (United States)
Newfoundland Gene Bank (Newfound Half a million Newfoundlander
Genomics, a spin-off of Gemini Genomics) volunteers
P3G (Public Population Program in Includes U.K. BioBank,
Genomics) CARTaGENE (Quebec), Estonian
National GeneBank Project, and
GenomEUtwin Project (Finland)
Swedish Gene Bank (UmanGenomics) More than 250,000 Swedes from
Väterbotten
Tonga Gene Bank (Autogen) More than 180,000 Tonganese in
Australia
U.K. BioBank (Wellcome Trust, Medical Half a million U.K. volunteers
Research Council, and the U.K. Department
of Health)

programs, and, it is hoped, the biotech industry itself. But we should also
be careful to note distinctions between population genomics projects. For
instance, some projects are funded with government money and for this reason
are often represented in terms of national heritage. Other projects, by con-
trast, result from government partnerships with the private sector or have
simply been undertaken with a community’s consent. But perhaps the most
noteworthy distinction is not between population genomics projects, but
between recent projects that emphasize finding specific-population genomes
and the earlier “biocolonialist” projects such as the HGDP. Whereas the
HGDP proposal was an example of Western scientists gathering or appropri-
ating genetic material from mostly indigenous populations around the world,

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the newer population genomics projects are by and large in-house operations.
Population genomics projects such as the IHSD or the U.K. BioBank are
examples of “national” genomics programs exercised reflexively: Icelandic
scientists sampling Icelandic citizens to gain knowledge about the Icelandic
genome and, perhaps, to aid in the health of common diseases affecting the
Icelandic body politic (or so the story goes). If this is biocolonialism, it is
arguably a very different sort of exploitation: government sanctioned, driven
by national industry, and completely voluntary. As Michael Fortun notes, the
study of such projects must therefore “trace how these rhetorics of exoticism
and national difference are deployed not only by ‘foreign’ commentators and
media outlets, but also have more ‘domestic’ origins.”22 What is produced in
such projects is not only a database, but, in a sense, a new concept of what
population may come to mean in the context of a genetics-based medicine and
health-care paradigm. Fortun adds that such population databases “are like
value-added export products designed to circulate in a global rhetorical
economy.”23
Indeed, in spite of the differences between specific population genome proj-
ects, one common thread runs through all of them: the central role of infor-
mation technologies and the artifact of the computer database. In one sense,
population genomics is a novel redefinition of population through the lens of
the computer database. Yet, in another sense, this process is itself very old and
can be traced back to the early-twentieth-century debates between Mendelian
and population genetics, or even to the emergence of demographics and sta-
tistics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this sense, popula-
tion genomics is part of a much broader process constituting what Michel
Foucault calls “bio-history,” or “the entry of life into history.” For Foucault,
new scientific techniques, along with specific governmental modes of inter-
vention and regulation, culminate in the inclusion of “phenomena peculiar to
the life of the human species into the order of knowledge and power, into the
sphere of political techniques.”24
How is the bio-history of population genomics constituted? Foucault, as
is well known, argues that the nineteenth century saw a passage from a bio-
history centered around blood (kinship) to one centrally concerned with sex
and sexuality. As Foucault notes, the blood relation was closely tied to “a
society in which the systems of alliance, the political form of the sovereign,
the differentiation into orders and castes, and the value of descent lines
were predominant.” Although many of these elements did not disappear

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completely, the nineteenth century marks, for Foucault, a shift in emphasis:
“Through the themes of health, progeny, race, the future of the species, the
vitality of the social body, power spoke of sexuality and to sexuality.” The
emergence of new scientific disciplines (psychopathology, germ theory, evolu-
tionary biology) as well as a set of new social concerns (deviancy, hygiene,
poverty, homosexuality) culminated in this shift “from a symbolics of blood
to an analytics of sexuality.”25
In the case of population genomics, it is clear that the concerns of “health,
progeny, race” within a national context are still relevant. The particular chal-
lenge to population genomics endeavors—a challenge that marks them out as
being unique—is that they must redefine the genomic “population” in ways
that are congruent with the technical paradigm of the computer database. This
redefinition requires, among other things, a prior understanding of a genomic
population in informatic, or at least statistical, terms. And, indeed, the popu-
lation genetics work by Cavalli-Sforza and others can be seen as an attempt
to do exactly this: to utilize mathematical and statistical methods to study
the genetic and evolutionary effects on particular human populations. Does
population genomics, in its novel integration of biology and informatics, put
forth another transition, from Foucault’s “analytics of sexuality” to what
we might call a “biopolitics of information”? If this is the case, then the
governmental and medical concern over the health of the population will shift
emphasis from sex and sexuality to a notion of population defined in genetic
and informatic terms: blood, sex, data.
In order to investigate these claims, it will be helpful to consider
how population is defined within population genetics, paying particular
attention to the biohistorical and biopolitical aspects of which Foucault
speaks.

The Genome Race

Many of the discomforts with population genomics and DNA sampling

become clearer when we look at how race and population are articulated accord-
ing to modern population genetics.26
In order to begin to isolate an object of study, a set of assumptions are
needed to define what counts as a population for genetic study. In population
genetics, these assumptions revolve around a predicable pattern of distribu-
tion within the population at a given time; in other words, the genetic

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stability of a group is a key defining factor of a population. Within this genetic
stability, a profile of the population’s gene pool can be assessed. The gene pool
contains the totality of that population’s genetic parameters and polymor-
phisms; it thus delineates the differences within a collectivity.
Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who originally headed the HGDP and is a leading
researcher in population genetics, provides us with the following statement
concerning race: “A race is a group of individuals that we can recognize as
biologically different from others. To be scientifically ‘recognized,’ the differ-
ences between a population that we would like to call a race and neighboring
populations must be statistically significant according to some defined
criteria.”27
Consider this definition in light of a similar one given by early population
geneticists such as Theodosius Dobzhansky: “Races may be defined as
Mendelian populations of a species which differ in the frequencies of one or
more genetic variants, gene alleles, or chromosomal structures.”28 As histori-
ans of biology note, part of the debate in the early twentieth century between
American Mendelians and British population geneticists lay in the dis-
agreement over how to define a population.29 Were observable patterns of
phenotype in a given group the result of genetic variation, and, if so, did such
patterns constitute or define a group as a particular “race”? These questions
are still being debated today in the domain of genomics, but several aspects
of these definitions highlight the way in which race is defined for modern
genetics. When race can be approached from the perspective of genetics, dif-
ference becomes bifurcated along genotypic (genetic code), phenotypic (visible
characteristics), and informatic (statistical) lines.
The first thing to note is that in this formulation race is, implicitly, bio-
logically determined: as Cavalli-Sforza indicates, a race is a human collectiv-
ity defined by biological properties (be those phenotypic or genotypic).
Race, for population geneticists, is biological, the substrate from which social
customs, ethics, and culture emerges (and, indeed, Cavalli-Sforza speculates
about applying the techniques used in population genetics to linguistics). It
would seem that for anthropology to begin, population genetics or archaeol-
ogy has to take the first analytical steps.
On the phenotypic, or visible, level, the concept of race has long been tied
to a biological determinism that initially grew out of early colonial travel nar-
ratives to Africa and the Americas. The development of modern biology and
natural history classificatory systems further contributed to the need to discuss

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ethnicity and cultural difference under the rubric of biological race. In some
instances, the biological study of races and populations only bolstered racial
stereotypes, providing legitimized, authoritative research to back up social
and cultural presuppositions. Nineteenth-century sciences such as phrenology,
Darwinism, hereditary studies, and eugenics contributed to the social mar-
ginalization of certain human types, from the criminal to the pervert to the
primitive.
In many ways, it is difficult to discuss the concept of race without some
reference to the role that modern science has played in the legitimizing
articulation of racial and ethnic difference. Many early modern travel narra-
tives depicted bizarre natives and races from Africa or the Americas and often
relied on the discourse of the fantastic or the monstrous, describing others
who were both debased and repulsive.30 Darwinism and natural history during
the nineteenth century helped to give such fantastic accounts a certain basis
in scientific fact.31 They also helped to explain, through evolutionism and
classificatory biology, the basis and reasons for such differences. This basis in
visible characteristics is such a core element of our everyday notions of race
that it is difficult to think otherwise. Through the sciences, elements such as
skin color became the set of characterizing morphologies that defined a given
race and that explained that race’s evolutionary development according to such
factors as natural habitat and climate.32
The biological basis for defining race has several consequences. It makes
race a biological substrate upon which all other formations depend, including
the social and cultural dimensions that define ethnicity. This explanatory
power not only links race to the natural environment, but also serves as a
delegitimizing tool between colonizing and colonized collectives. Especially
in First World contexts of colonization, it serves ironically to remove any
accountability for difference from the colonized race because difference is bio-
logical and not socially contextualized or culturally chosen. A biological def-
inition of race makes use of an abstracting biological science to explain away
the social and cultural dimensions of race.
This also means that race must be scientifically defined, which is my second
point. That race is something recognized is in itself significant; that race is
scientifically defined, or recognized through science, means that the possibil-
ities of other forms of communal recognition are excluded. Cavalli-Sforza’s
statement about race not only proposes that race is biological, but adds to this
that race is not something self-evident to everyone; though we may see plenty

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of differences among and between human collectivities, race can be defined,
in the final instance, only through scientific methodology.
On the genotypic level, or the contemporary level of genetic codes and
sequences, race has been further articulated along its biological determinist
lines. This articulation has not only added further scientific “truth” to the
difference of races, but also brought to light differences that are exclusively
genetic (that is, which are not seen but exist only as differences in genetic
code). Early systems for blood-type detection are an example of this, and more
current methods focus on population genetics and SNPs.
In one sense, the genetic basis for racial identification further extends the
explanatory power of Darwinism and modern biology, but it also initiates a
new type of biological determinism with regard to race. If, in projects such
as population genome databases, race can be identified genetically—that is,
according to sequences of genetic code—then the urgency of clear phenotypic
markers between races is simply displaced by an emphasis on genetic markers.
These genetic markers of difference can be visible and nonvisible (expressed
and unexpressed), but with this unique mode of racial identification race
becomes not only biologically determined but informatically determined.
Without a doubt, this approach is still biological determinism; the empha-
sis on abstract genetic code in no way liquidates the role that race and racism
play in modern science’s study and classification of populations. If anything,
a genetic-based approach to race provides a mathematical proof (an informatic
proof, as in DNA fingerprinting) of racial identification. It also provides a new
means of quantifying racial hybridity, according to varying gene frequencies
(a method used in population genetics but also applicable to individuals). A
genetic-based approach to race thus informs the biological definitions of
race already established by modern biology, and it does so through a basis in
genetics (a basis in differential units of DNA) and informatics (a basis in new
methods of quantifying and analyzing DNA patterns). It is, in many ways, a
biological determinist conception of race that can be computed, mapped, and
even, in the right conditions, predicted.
This scientific approach implies a methodological approach, which is that
race is articulated through numbers. That scientific recognition is a bioscience
of mathematics. More traditional population genetics approaches focus on fre-
quencies of traits, demographic distribution of traits, and probability of gene
migrations or inheritance of traits. But, as Cavalli-Sforza shows, the rise of
genomics, new mathematical methods, and computer technology means that

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populations and races become informatic objects of analysis: “Within genet-
ics itself, we want to collect as much information about as many genes as
possible, which would allow us to use the ‘law of large numbers’ in the cal-
culation of probabilities.”33 Calculation of gene frequencies, correlation of
large datasets, multiple gene-factor probability analysis, and other techniques
allow for a more statistical, more informatic approach to the recognition of
visible and invisible differences on the genetic level.
From the population genetics perspective, particular populations—be they
objects of archaeological study or of the study of Third World collectivities—
are tied to nationality not only through social and political linkages, but also
through biological ones. According to the biological determinism of early race
theories and the discourses of monstrosity, if one was born into a certain
nation, one was also born into a certain race and even into a certain culture
extending from that race.34 This connection between biological race and the
geopolitics of nationality can become the opportunity for a range of situations,
from colonial expansion to First World aid to economic globalization.

From Population Genetics to Population Genomics

A number of constraints are thus placed on a defined population because most

collectivities we can think of accommodate a range of circumstances that mit-
igate against absolute purity, absolute isolation. Population geneticists tradi-
tionally look to a theory called the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium to assess the
degree to which a population can be defined as such, and the degree to which
knowledge about that population will be minimally affected by the noise of
other influences. The Hardy-Weinberg theory, first developed in 1908, makes
the broad claim that although genes may shuffle and recombine within a
population, the total genetic makeup of the population remains the same.35
It also goes on to posit five basic assumptions:

 The population should be infinite and evenly distributed, which

creates the conditions for a large enough group to be studied for patterned
characteristics, as well as for an even distribution of possible mating
matches.
 There should be little or no mutation within the population—that is,
no error mutations that would cause epidemic or a radical decline in the
birth rate.

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 There should be little or no genetic migration in or out of the population;
that is, the gene pool may display internal dynamics, but there should be no
new input of genetic material.
 All mating and reproduction within the population should be random;
that is, reproduction should not be constrained by genotype.
 The totality of genotypes should be equal; despite genetic reshuffling, the
genetic frequencies within the population remain stable.

In short, the Hardy-Weinberg theory isolates all those elements that deter a
population from maintaining a homeostasis with its overall gene pool or
genetic frequency. A population thus defined is not only entirely removed
from environment, external influence, or context, but such a definition also
recuperates biological dynamics within an overarching static framework. This
emphasis on information sciences such as statistics gives rise to specific tech-
niques, a few of which can be mentioned here.
Population geneticists use the concept of “genetic distance” to study
human collectivities and their evolutionary histories.36 For modern evolu-
tionary biology, genetic alterations happen for one of four reasons: mutation,
or a random alteration in the genetic sequence, which is passed on to subse-
quent generations (and which may or may not affect the organism); natural
selection, or changes in the organism (genetic and otherwise), usually in
response to environmental conditions; genetic drift, or the complex fluctua-
tions of particular genetic traits or genes within a stable population; and
genetic migration, or the geographical movement of peoples out of one
collectivity and into another.
Because evolutionary biologists and population geneticists take popula-
tions and races as biologically determined, they consider changes in the organ-
ism to be always either responses to the natural environment (in which there
is strong teleological factor, form fits function) or the result of randomness (in
which there is a strong probability factor). Again, this assumption implies
that societies, cultures, and ethnicities form because, first and foremost,
populations and races form. Although this emphasis on the contingency of
the biological body can operate as a critical tool, it can also “explain away”
other cultural formations equally connected to the body, but not necessarily
within the paradigm of evolutionary biology. The lack of this distinction has
led scientists such as Cavalli-Sforza to assume that geographical distance is
equal to the degree of genetic change; genetic distance would thus be the

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statistical analysis of these two correlative changes, and wherever one sees
a rift in the gene pool, one can assume a significant moment of genetic and
geographical diversification.
Within the concept of genetic distance is a strong linkage between terri-
tory, population, and biology. Scientists such as Cavalli-Sforza explain race in
terms of biological determinism and biological necessity. The reasons Cavalli-
Sforza gives for migration—overpopulation, food shortages, low reproductive
rates—are based on a biological pragmatism. But can this teleological, deter-
minist framework adequately explain genetic variation, especially when at the
genetic level many variations appear to have no connection to biological
survival?
With this in mind, we can see that the field of population genetics has left
several areas unconsidered, areas that at first glance are nonbiological, but that
on closer inspection are intimately related to the concerns of population genet-
ics. For instance, if a great deal of genetic change occurs via unexplained or
random processes, do not these warrant some radically new approaches to the
study of population, instead of accounting for random variation simply by
mathematical analysis? If a great deal of our polymorphisms in SNPs reside
in “junk DNA,” does this not this suggest a more complex network of genetic
differences, working to produce a wide range of qualitatively different
polymorphisms?
Furthermore, if for a moment we accept Cavalli-Sforza’s biological deter-
minism, changes within populations would be the result of a response to
environmental changes (climate changes for instance). This conclusion sug-
gests that the human organism has a great deal of adaptability at the genetic
level, and, indeed, much of evolutionary biology supports the idea (though
through a long-term, gradualist approach). But what about horizontal
biological adaptability, not through generations, but between individuals and
collectivities? To some extent, we adapt all the time in new contexts, new
environments. Are these adaptations simply elements of synchronic genetic
adaptability?
In this perspective, genetic variation, biodiversity, and gene recombina-
tions may occur; indeed, they even define the internal character of a popula-
tion. But they are constrained by the fact that they should maintain the
population’s overall genomic makeup. From a biosocial perspective, a pure
population, or a healthy population, is one that maintains a regularity in its
genetic makeup (and assumedly in its phenotypic makeup), allows for

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conservative internal recombination, and can be studied using statistical and
probabilistic means—isolated, static, and ahistorical.
But the important thing to note about the Hardy-Weinberg theory and
population genetics is that they are part of a statistical science—or, in more
contemporary terms, an information science. The question that traditional
population geneticists and contemporary population genomics ask is how
a heterogeneous, dynamic, adaptive collective of people can be measured
through information science. This use of information science is not in
itself necessary; early studies on hereditary patterns, evolution, and species
dynamics did not rely extensively on statistical methods. But we also need
to remember that population genetics in its modern form has developed out
of modern molecular genetics, in which the central importance is the genetic
code, the kinds of sequences that make up genes, their gene-protein relation-
ships, and their different types of polymorphisms.

Each and Every

Thus far, we have seen how the controversies surrounding biocolonialism stem
in part from the way in which genetic science inscribes race biologically
and from the way in which population genetics and genomics reinscribes
population mathematically. If these fields view their object of study—the
“population”—through genetic and informatic lenses, then what social and
political effects might such approaches have?
One result is that population genomics, in the way it stitches together
genomes, governments, and corporations, forms a novel type of biopolitical
power, one in which the biological—and social—population is reconstituted
through the high technologies of genomics and bioinformatics. This bio-
political dimension to population genomics is not simply the exercise of
sovereign power, as if genome projects are an attempt to instill top-down
apparatuses of power. Rather, what is at stake is “the biological existence
of a population,” the point at which the health of a population becomes
isomorphic with the health of a nation and the wealth of the nation.37
For Foucault, biopolitics was this technoscientific incorporation of the “life”
of a population into a set of political and economic concerns. In its most
assertive forms, biopolitics was not a negative, repressive power, but a power
that “exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, opti-
mize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive

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regulations.” At the very least, biopolitics was a political relation in which
state and economic forces took up the “task of administering life.”38 In his
analyses of the politics of medicine and health care during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, Foucault cites a number of key instances of biopolitical
power: the “medical police” plans active in eighteenth-century Prussia, birth-
control programs in England and France, urban hygiene efforts in Paris,
hospital reforms in London and Paris, the English Poor Laws, inoculation and
vaccination efforts in Europe, and the emergence of a science of statistics,
demographics, and “political economy.”
Biopolitics, then, implies some political and economic incorporation of sci-
entific and technological notions of the “life of the population.” Foucault dis-
tinguishes biopolitics from “anatomo-politics,” the latter that type of power
relation that dealt primarily with individuated bodies of subjects, which were
rendered docile within a range of social institutions. Whereas anatomo-
politics worked through institutional disciplinarization (in the prison, the
military barracks, the school, the hospital), biopolitics “focused on the species
body, the body imbued with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of
the biological processes: propagation, births and mortality, the level of health,
life expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these to
vary.”39 Whereas the disciplinary mechanisms of anatomopolitics were
addressed to the individual, anatomical body, the regulatory mechanisms of
biopolitics were addressed to the species body, or to the population. “Their
supervision was effected through an entire series of interventions and regula-
tory controls: a biopolitics of the population.”40 The difference between these two
types of power relations—anatomo-politics and biopolitics—is thus also a
difference in two approaches to the “power over life.” For Foucault, they are
historically overlapping, rather than opposed to each other: “After the
anatomo-politics of the human body established in the course of the eigh-
teenth century, we have, at the end of that century, the emergence of
something that is no longer an anatomo-politics of the human body, but what
I would call a ‘biopolitics’ of the human race.”41
This shift in power relations had a number of consequences. One is that a
biological and medical notion of “population” became the primary concern
for state and economic interests.42 Though the “life” of a body politic is an
implicit concern in all political thinking, the emergence of biopolitics, for
Foucault, is a specific concern with the population as a biological entity, such
that “biological existence was reflected in political existence.”43 The notion of

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a biologically defined population gained much currency in the eighteenth
century from political economists such as Thomas Malthus and, later, Adam
Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. Malthus’s Essay on the Principle
of Population (first published in 1798, then modified in 1803) put forth the
famous and largely discounted argument that a population grows at a geo-
metrical rate (1, 2, 4, 8), but the resources to sustain that population grow
only at an arithmetical rate (1, 2, 3, 4). If this argument is accepted, then the
population, if unchecked, will outgrow the resources that can sustain it. For
Malthus, the concern was that this discrepancy would lead not only to over-
population, but potentially to an increase in poverty and subsequently moral
degradation.44 For this reason, Malthus acknowledged the negative controls
of nature (e.g., famine), while also promoting the positive controls of “moral
restraint” (e.g., birth control). In combining mathematical analyses of popu-
lation growth with a social and moral concern for the health of a population,
he formulated a biopolitical concern of political economy. The population is
not only biological at its basis, but, as a social entity, it is constantly threat-
ened by “misery and vice,” or by overpopulation, unchecked reproduction, and
promiscuity.45 Furthermore, the population is not just a biological or social
entity, but, more important, a political and economic one. In his Principles of
Political Economy, Malthus acknowledged a relation between population and
wealth, but that “population alone cannot create an effective demand for
wealth.”46 For Malthus, production is not always the same as reproduction;
the practical application of political economy in this period was thus to reg-
ulate, modulate, and control the population, rather than simply to promote
its growth as a source of production itself. “The question really is, whether
encouragements to population, or even the natural tendency of population to
increase beyond the funds destined for its maintenance, will, or will not, alone
furnish an adequate stimulus to the increase of wealth.”47
In addition to this biological—but also political—definition of population,
a second consequence follows from biopolitics: the emphasis on mathemati-
cal and informatic-based approaches to studying the population. In his dis-
cussion of biopolitics, Foucault makes frequent reference to the fields of
statistics, demographics, and other mathematical methods used in political
economy to account for birth and death rates, the spread of epidemics, and
the monitoring of citizens’ well-being by health officers. Ian Hacking, in his
history of statistics during the nineteenth century, suggests that the rise of
such mathematical fields occurred in conjunction with a medical view of

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human norms as regulated by “laws of dispersion” rather than with a deter-
ministic view of “human nature.” The development of statistics and proba-
bilistic methods to measure risks, dangers, and tendencies was part of the long
process whereby “society became statistical.”48 The statistical assessment of
the health of a population was among the first areas to be affected by these
methods. Hacking argues that statistical and probabilistic methods played a
central role in the expansion of information regarding populations. Whereas
such information for much of Great Britain prior to 1815 had been limited
largely to births, deaths, and marriages, by the mid–nineteenth century a
number of professional committees and societies dedicated themselves to artic-
ulating the “statistics of sickness”: that biological processes such as health or
illness could be accounted for through mathematical techniques. “Statistical
law was on the march, conquering new territory,” such as the role of occupa-
tion, poverty, age, and frequency of illness.49 As Hacking notes, “a new type
of law came into being, analogous to the laws of nature, but pertaining to
people.”50 In this process, the indeterminacy of natural selection, combined
with strict laws of biological selection, would produce a tension-filled zone in
which statistical and informatics-based methods reconfigured the population
as a nondeterministic yet regulatory entity. Hacking’s historical context is
nineteenth-century industrialism, but his comments resonate with contem-
porary population genomics: “The avalanche of numbers, the erosion of deter-
minism, and the invention of normalcy are embedded in the grander topics
of the Industrial Revolution. The acquisition of numbers by the populace, and
the professional lust for precision in measurement, were driven by familiar
themes of manufacture, mining, trade, health, railways, war, empire.”51
Finally, a third consequence of biopolitics is that this combination of a
biological definition of a “population” and a set of statistical and informatic
approaches for studying (indeed, producing) the “population” culminates in
a flexible, variable, differentiated body politic. On the one hand, Foucault’s
description of biopolitics places emphasis on the mass quality of population,
the result of “collective phenomena which have their economic and political
effects, and that they become pertinent only at the mass level.”52 Yet—and
this is equally important for Foucault—this massification of the population
also implies a set of techniques for differentiating within the population. This
“biologization of the state” involves approaching the population on the bio-
logical level as a particular kind of species with defined characteristics, for
Foucault a significant move away from earlier notions of the state grounded

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in territory.53 As a defined unit, the population-species can not only be studied
and analyzed (for health/medical reasons), but also be extrapolated, its char-
acteristic behaviors projected into plausible futures (birth/death rates, etc.).
The proto–information sciences of demographics and statistics provided a
technical ground for a more refined, mathematically based regulation and
monitoring of the population (and thus of the state’s prime resources). The
sciences of statistics and demographics are tools “to intervene at the level at
which these general phenomena are determined,” to inscribe a specificity
within a generality.54 More important, this internal differentiation is the point
at which biological notions of race become relevant: by folding biological
notions of race (difference) onto biological notions of population (sameness),
biopolitics treats “the population as a mixture of races, or to be more accu-
rate, to treat the species, to subdivide the species it controls, into the sub-
species known, precisely, as races.” In its most extreme cases, this biopolitics
of race results in forms of “race war.” Thus, “racism makes it possible to estab-
lish a relationship between my life and the death of the other that is
not a military or warlike relationship of confrontation, but a biological
relationship.”55
Foucault is clearly thinking of the use of medicine in the service of racial
purity and of ethnic-cleansing programs, and, as such, his statements may
seem extreme in the case of population genomics projects. But there is also a
more “liberal” (or, perhaps, neoliberal) side to biopolitics in this regard: by
creating internal differentiations within the population, biopolitics opens up
new ways of monitoring and regulating the political and economic health of
the population. David Arnold notes this tendency in the nexus between colo-
nialism and biomedicine when he states that “colonial rule built up an enor-
mous battery of texts and discursive practices that concerned themselves with
the physical being of the colonized,” attempting to use this medicalized body
“as a site for the construction of its own authority, legitimacy, and control.”56
This hegemonic position is also, importantly, in attune with an all-
encompassing, even diversifying approach to the body, for this modern form
of governmentality, far from a reductionist homogenizing strategy, is predi-
cated on a dual approach, which both universalizes and individualizes the
population. In this gradated approach, populations can exist in a variety of
contexts (defined by territory, but also by economic or class groupings, ethnic
groupings, or social institutions)—all within a biomedical framework that
analyzes the fluxes of biological activity characteristic of the population. Such

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groupings do not make sense, however, without a means of defining the unit
of grouping—not just the individual subject (and in Foucault’s terminologies
subject is also a verb), but a subject that can be defined in a variety of ways,
marking out the definitional boundaries of each grouping.
This dual character of governmentality directly applies to current
approaches to genetic difference in the biotech industry, especially in fields
such as genomics, bioinformatics, and population genomics. Although the
various efforts to map the human genome have been concerned with con-
structing a universal, representative genome (in which specifics as to race are
left out of its description), genomics has also become a thriving business in
terms of genetic differences, population genomes, or polymorphisms. Accord-
ing to some reports, pharmaceutical companies are realizing that the real
money to be made and the most powerful discoveries to be made are not
within the universal, single human genome, but in the minute markers that
distinguish different human genomes from each other. This pharmacoge-
nomics, or “personalized medicine,” promises a tailor-fit drug program in
place of the “one size fits all” methods traditionally used.
Thus, to summarize, Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, although histori-
cally situated in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, can reveal a
great deal about the larger political questions that population genomics raises.
As a novel form of biopolitics, population genomics redefines (and arguably
produces) a notion of “population” that is genetic in its basis. It does this
through a set of informatic techniques and technologies, including genome
sequencing and bioinformatics analysis. Finally, this combination of genetics
and informatics makes possible a simultaneous massification and internal dif-
ferentiation of the population, which is, it may be argued, a redefinition of
biological “race.”

Decoding the Population

If population genetics is an extension of the informatic and biological aspects

of Foucauldian biopolitics, then how might this connection change the defi-
nition of population in genomics projects such as those in the United Kingdom
or Iceland? In most cases, what population genome databases promise to
provide is an extensive, computer-driven, data-mining analysis of the genetic
basis of disease as well as the development of treatments, cures, and preven-
tive practices. A database such as deCODE’s IHSD has become a paradigmatic

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example from a scientific point of view in that it brings together three types
of data: phenotypic data and health-care information, genotypic data (genomic
sequence information), and genealogical and hereditary data (gene pool and
statistical information).57 In 1998, the Icelandic parliament approved
deCODE Genomics’s proposal for the development of the IHSD, an agree-
ment that would give deCODE exclusive rights to control the access privi-
leges to the IHSD for up to twelve years. Under this agreement, even Icelandic
physicians would be forced to pay a fee to access health data that was previ-
ously freely available. At the same time, deCODE also established a multi-
million-dollar alliance with pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-LaRoche for
carrying out basic drug R&D on the IHSD.
The IHSD provides us with a situation in which a widespread sampling-,
sequencing-, analysis-, and research-based product and services development
takes place. The IHSD is both highly specified in its object (a genetically iso-
lated population) and widespread in its coverage (containing national health
records, genealogical records, and genetic information). In addition, the
IHSD, as part of deCODE, is a business endeavor as well as a health-care one,
and deCODE uses this product—here the product is information or database
access—to forge productive relationships with governments (Icelandic
national genealogical records) and other business (database services, drug
partnerships).
However, it is precisely this combination of medicine, privacy issues, and
economics that has many scientists, activists, and citizens worried about the
implications of such population genome projects. At the same time that
deCODE’s proposal was approved, a collection of concerned scientists,
activists, and citizens gathered together to voice dissent over many of the
ethical questions raised by the IHSD. This group, known as Mannvernd, and
the Icelandic Medical Association continue to emphasize the importance of
ongoing, truly democratic debate, not just on the IHSD, but on the trend of
genomics databases generally.58
The main criticisms of the IHSD are fourfold. First, there is the issue of
the commodification of health-care data. That deCODE has exclusive rights
to control database access means that individual patients’ rights might be
pushed to the background in the interests of economics. Second, there are also
concerns over information privacy and the confidentiality of medical data;
although deCODE controls database access, it does not claim any responsi-
bility for how patient information would be used by third parties. Confiden-

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tiality—the cornerstone of trust in the medical encounter—would be com-
promised by the unregulated distribution of genetic sequence, medical history,
and lifestyle information. Third, there is the more scientific controversy over
the efficacy of such population genome projects: many scientists claim that
they are of benefit only regarding direct disease-causing genes (e.g., in cystic
fibrosis or Huntington’s disease), where single-point mutations or variations
in a population can be targeted for the development of drugs. Other so-called
complex diseases—polygenic diseases, with each gene expressing itself in vari-
able degrees, along with environmental factors—would not be so easily
detectable in a population genome (or indeed in “the” human genome).
Fourth, a central area of dispute is deCODE’s notion of “presumed consent”:
that, by default, Icelanders will be included in the database unless they
voluntarily opted out. The assumption is that a visit to the doctor is as good
as signing a consent form, an assumption that groups such as Mannvernd
strongly contravene. Population genome projects thus offer four central chal-
lenges: commodification, privacy, consent, and surveillance. We can examine
each briefly.
In any science-based project where human biological materials are being
taken by a corporation, the issue of commodification is foremost in the social
debate and ethical considerations. Although it is true that projects such as the
IHSD are ostensibly aimed at providing positive models for the future of
health care, the organizations that run them, such as deCODE, are also, when
it comes down to it, businesses. This connection thus involves a consideration
of what a particular biotech company’s product is. In genomics, the product
is most often, not surprisingly, information. But in genomics and in biotech
generally, the rise of informatics has shown that many types of valuable
information are available on the biotech market—universal genome data, gene
pool data, disease profiling, SNP databases, and so on. A company’s success
depends on “having” not only the most valuable data, but also the most accu-
rate (this is Celera’s claim over the public consortium), the most technically
sophisticated (thus the importance of tech companies), and the most articu-
late, or data that are shown to have a direct, immediate impact on health care
and the fight against disease (the search for pragmatic genetic data). The
challenge put forth by those critical of corporations and businesses handling
health-related issues is that the research conducted and the projects under-
taken be in the best interests of public health and not be determined by
commercial concerns.

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 However, even when public projects attempt to assemble biological data-
bases, there is still discomfort over the very process of sampling, extraction,
and utilization of one’s own body for medical research. In the case of genomics,
this is a very abstract process, but also a very simple one, moving from a blood
sample to a DNA archive in a computer. Contemporary issues of privacy have
such a resonance in biotech, however, because of the central importance of new
computing technologies in the biotech and biomedical lab. There have been
disputes concerning the ownership of one’s own DNA, in which, for instance,
a company such as deCODE develops novel patents based on research done
on individual human DNA samples. For this reason, many companies require
complex disclaimers, and they also make an important further distinction
between a person’s own lived body and health-related data generated from a
person’s body. This reduction of the debate to a distinction between blood and
data may solve the patenting and ownership issue, but it still does not address
that fundamental gap: the ontological difference between one’s own, proper
body and the genetic data extracted from one’s body. Many of the debates
concern the handling of genetic data (for some projects, such as Celera’s, indi-
vidual donors are anonymous, and for others, such as deCODE’s, individual
identification is required to correlate genealogical with medical data).
Because these two issues of privacy and commodification are present in vir-
tually every endeavor to create a genetic database, it is common for differing
levels of informed consent to be an imperative for the research carried out.
Informed consent mandates became especially important in so-called biopiracy
cases, either involving the appropriation of Third World natural resources or
the sampling of genetic material from indigenous populations around the
world by First World science organizations. Similar issues apply to genetic
sampling within a nation or community. Although there are different
levels of consent, ranging from individual informed consent to the broadly
applicable “presumed consent,” they all contain clauses that permit certain
types of activities and enable others. The IHSD, for instance, requires three
levels of consent because there are three basic levels of appropriation of genetic
material: consent for the blood/DNA sample extraction, consent for the
genotyping, and consent for the analysis and diagnosis of the sequence and
of its potential range of uses in research and clinical practice. As may be
guessed, the ambiguities in different consent clauses have led to disputes
over issues such as patentability, the buying and selling of genetic data, and
so on.

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 As a unique technoscientific approach to race and ethnicity, population
genomics also undertakes a unique type of biological or genetic surveillance.
First World big science projects (such as the HGP) that harvest biological
materials from Third World communities are an explicit form of biocolonial-
ism in the more common usage of the term. The HGDP’s controversy sur-
rounding the extraction of cell lines from a New Guinea community is an
example. Even with the now-mandatory clause of informed consent (again,
there are many, often ambiguous levels of informed consent, including “pre-
sumed consent”), the appropriation of biological materials by First World
science more often than not feeds into First World health-care economies
(principally drugs). This situation, it should be said, becomes more complex
when we consider the level of involvement or compromise of those who are
the object of biocolonialism. Whereas some instances do involve the veritable
plunder of biological materials, with little or highly falsified information
given, other instances, in which the colonized community demands some eco-
nomic reimbursement, are more complicated because such negotiations play
into the commodification of the body.
But biocolonialism is also a phenomenon within First World countries,
where the pharmaceutical industry stands to gain the most returns. This
“endocolonization”—not only of the body but of medical practice itself—
focuses on the ways in which the biological body can be turned into a value
generator, either in drug development or through novel medical techniques
such as gene therapy.59 With a very straightforward pipeline of capital invest-
ment, R&D, products and services, and finally medical application, the
biotech industry has transformed the First World into a giant molecular lab-
oratory. The human genome database is only the most explicit manifestation
of this literal data mining of precious, valuable genes. The patenting of
biological materials and new technologies feeds back into an economy that
operates largely at the level of finance capital.
What these four issues illustrate is that the question of genomics has much
to do with institutional control and the level of biopolitical practices within
societies, be those practices handled by governments or corporations. Some
projects, such as DNA Science’s Gene Trust, operate on a volunteer-only basis,
using the rhetoric of altruistic humanism as the primary motivation
(although, incidentally, DNA Sciences accrues immediate monetary gains).
Other projects, such as Celera’s human genome database, are exclusive, selling
access only to major pharmaceutical companies for drug development. And

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still others, such as the IHGSC databases, are technically public-access
databases, but are used almost exclusively by research institutions and
universities.
The scope and ambition of projects such as Celera’s or deCODE’s are, of
course, made possible by advances in computing technologies, most of which
are exorbitantly expensive and inaccessible to nonspecialists, and which have
a high learning curve. These restrictions, combined with the illegibility of
genetic sequence data to nonspecialists, makes the potentials of genomics
extensively out of the reach of the general health-care public and makes any
informed critique or public debate challenging as well. Reasons for this dif-
ficulty includes the facts that current molecular biotech research builds on
previous and equally opaque research and that the revolution in computer
technologies challenges traditional modes of research and scientific practice.
For instance, in articles written by Kari Stefansson, CEO of deCODE, the
potentials of informatics technologies transform science research from a linear,
hypothesis-driven approach to a semiautomated data mining agent that com-
pletes computations far beyond what was possible prior to the use of parallel
processing computers and data mining algorithms.60 Companies such as
deCODE and Human Genome Sciences have stated that they are in the busi-
ness of information and discovery. The intersection of business approaches to
genomics and the use of informatics-based tools means that science research
is based on combinatorial techniques; the best pattern-recognition combina-
tions will be of the highest value, the greatest assets.
In considering this complex of life science business models, new computer
tools, and a genomics-based approach to populations and disease, we can actu-
ally differentiate several strategies within contemporary genomics. One strat-
egy has to do with the utilization of a universal reference in genomics.
Generalized human genome projects, such as that undertaken and first com-
pleted by Celera, emphasize their universality as models for the study of
disease, for treatment, and for a greater understanding of life at the molecu-
lar level. They also highlight the backdrop against which all genetic differ-
ence and deviations from a norm will be assessed. Indeed, part of the reason
why genomic projects by Celera, Incyte, and the public consortium have
received so much attention is that they are in the process of establishing the
very norms of genetic medicine. Their practices and techniques themselves
are the processes of establishing a genomic norm, what will or will not exist
within the domain of consideration for genetic medicine, and what will or

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will not be identified as anomalous, excessive, or central to genetic knowledge
and pharmacogenomic drug design. A company such as Celera, though it
assembles its sequences from a number of anonymous individuals, constructs
one single, universal human genome database. That database becomes the
model for all sorts of research emerging from genomics—proteomics, genetic
drug design, functional genomics, population genetics, gene therapy, and
genetic profiling.
The utilization of a universal reference also implies a high degree of indi-
vidualization within targeted population groups. At the opposite pole of
Celera’s universal model of the human genome is a field of research that deals
with the minute, highly specific base-pair changes that differ from one indi-
vidual to another.61 However, many SNPs are phenotypically nonexpressive;
that is, they are base-pair changes that do not effect the organism in any way—
they are simply differences in code sequence. Many large-scale genome proj-
ects, such as Celera’s, also contain information on polymorphisms, and many
bioinformatics applications are designed to provide analysis of polymor-
phisms. But specific projects, such as Genaissance Pharmaceutical’s HAP
series of database tools and the Whitehead Institute’s SNP database, focus
exclusively on these minute base-pair changes.62 For Genaissance in particu-
lar, the study of single-case base-pair changes in themselves are less produc-
tive than a total chromosomal perspective of SNP positioning. Genaissance
uses its proprietary bioinformatics tools to assemble the given SNPs within a
given chromosome or gene, thus offering a more distributed map sample of
the interrelationships of SNPs. These databases of individual point changes
form linkages between variations within a gene pool and a flexible drug-
development industry that operates at the genetic, molecular level.
From the combination of a universal reference and minute differences
within the universal, population genomics, specific modes of integrating
biology and race are woven. Whereas Celera’s human genome database
attempts to establish itself as a general, universal model for genetic research,
other genomics projects are focusing on collectivities within a universal gene
pool. The projects from deCODE, Genaissance, Myriad, and others focusing
on genetically isolated populations move somewhere between the universality
of Celera and the individuality of the SNP databases. Often combining the
usual genotypic data with data from demographics, statistics, genealogy, and
health care, these projects are both new forms of health-care management
and paths toward understanding the effects of disease within genetically

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homogenous groupings. This is perhaps the main discomfort with projects
such as deCODE’s IHSD; they promise the ability to perform large-scale com-
putational analysis on entire genomes, but in this they also threaten to abstract
genetic data from real, physical communities. They take a genetics-based, or
genotypic, view of race and make connections to the functioning of norms
within medicine and health care. In doing this, they establish an intermedi-
ary space of negotiation between the universality of a human genome project
(which claims a uniformity under the umbrella of a distinct species) and the
high-specificity of SNP or HAP databases (which claim difference within a
general category). This intermediary space is precisely the space of racial
(mis)identification and ethnic boundary marking; it is the space where
collectivities form, composed of individuals united under a common species
categorization. These population genomics projects, with their primary aim
as medical (specifically in drug development and genetic diagnosis), are
involved in the rearticulation of race and ethnicity through the lens of bio-
science research and corporate biotechnology.
In this schematic of different types of genomics projects, we can see an
approach toward biological information that is far from a simplistic mono-
cultural model in which difference is marginalized, silenced, or pushed out of
the domain of serious consideration. From a scientific perspective, of course,
difference—or diversity—is the cornerstone of traditional evolutionary theory,
be it random or directed environmental influence. But in this scientific nar-
rative, these mutations or evolutionary changes always have some end and are
directed toward the establishment of a new and more adaptable phenotype,
maintaining the same hierarchical dynamics. Likewise, from a business per-
spective, diversity not only is the key to creating more custom-tailored prod-
ucts (as in genetic drug design), but also enables a more thorough production
of knowledge about the population. This is a kind of niche biomarketing,
in which information is extracted from a heterogeneous population, then
selectively organized and rerouted into research and product development.
Projects such as deCODE’s IHSD are prototypes for scientific-business
practices that are not separate from a consideration of race and ethnicity, which
are themselves considered from a molecular and informatic perspective. They
do two things: they work toward establishing new, more flexible sets of norms,
both within biomedicine and in business strategies, and in doing so they form
new methods of population management and regulation.

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 “On the Surface of Life, to Be All Open Wounds”

In the specific context of molecular biotechnology and biomedicine,63 bio-

colonialism brings together the discourses and practices of contemporary bio-
science with a colonialist approach to specific bodies and populations.64 This
approach involves the application of the ideologies of expansion, technologi-
cal development, and appropriation of natural resources to modern medicine.
It also brings in the critical perspectives of postcolonial theory, especially
as it pertains to the complexities of the relationships between colonizer and
colonized, of hybridity, and of the relationship between conceptions of race
and the body.65
However, a stance critical of biocolonialism is not, it should be said, simply
an antiscience perspective. Biotechnology is too diverse and complex a field
to be simply denounced wholesale, and it promises to affect materially too
many bodies to be dismissed as ineffectual. We should recognize several things
about biotech in relation to biocolonialism. To begin with, biotech is founded
on Western bioscience research and Western medical practice. As a technical
practice, it emerges from a discontinuous tradition of Western science. This
also means that it has a more or less defined position on what counts as legit-
imate scientific research (that is, which kinds of research will form linkages
to medical practice).
But as is well known, biotech is as much a business as it is science research.
Along with its growth in the finance capital sector and its use of government
funding, biotech is partaking in the broad processes of economic and techno-
logical globalism. The result is that the gap between the knowledge of the
patient and the black-boxing of biomedicine becomes greater and greater.
This global perspective has meant a series of problematic scientific and
political relationships between First World and Third World countries. The
expansion of “Big Pharma” to other countries, the sampling and patenting
of biological materials from Third World populations, and the influence
of Western medical practices are all instances of an asymmetrical conflict of
interests.
This appropriationist approach to Western medicine is applied equally
within technologically advanced sectors of the First World, especially in the
United States. The globalization process of biotech means, first and foremost,
an expansion and reconfiguration of the (mainly U.S. and British) medical and

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health-care landscape. The agglomeration of genetic databases, high-tech drug
development, and high-pressure clinical trials combine to transform the
United States into a biotech-infotech laboratory.
If, generally speaking, colonialism refers to the process whereby one collec-
tivity (usually geographically and nationally defined) forcibly or coercively
appropriates the land and resources of another collectivity, then some impor-
tant issues can be brought up concerning the current influence of global
biotechnology. However it is not exactly accurate to speak of biotech as a colo-
nial instance, despite explicit examples of biological sampling and patenting.
Rather, we should ask how biotech, as a technology-driven practice networked
into a globalizing economy, approaches, transforms, and encodes different
kinds of culturally specific bodies. In particular, we need to consider the
relationships between the science of biotechnology and the concept of race as
manifested within the biosciences.
Bearing in mind Foucault’s emphasis on the population as a biologically
defined entity and on the proto-informatic forms of regulation of the popula-
tion, we can discern three primary issues with respect to biocolonialism and
population genomics: informatics, biodiversification, and the notion of
“genethnicities.”
First, informatics is a key factor in considering contemporary power rela-
tionships in biotech because it works as a medium for transforming bodies
and biologies into data. But those data are understood in many different ways,
not simply as the liquidation or the dematerialization of the body. The case
of population genomics suggests that databases are anything but “just data.”
Networked into drug development, medical records, and health-care services
(including health insurance), genome databases are literally information that
“matters.” Genomic, population, and SNP databases are just some examples
of this variability of biological data that are both digital and material. As a
technical mode of analysis, knowledge production, and application in medi-
cine, informatics at its roots brings up philosophical questions (What is the
body if it is essentially information?), but preceding these questions at every
point are political questions.
Second, and in a similar vein, biodiversity is a term most often reserved for
debates concerning the preservation, conservation, or sustainability of natural
resources, which depends a great deal of natural diversity, as opposed to the
advantage of natural diversity that transnational corporations take to produce
monocultures as product.66 In the context of genomics, biodiversity becomes

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a signifier for genetic difference and for the ways in which genetic difference
gets translated into cultural difference. Biopiracy (the attack on biodiversity)
is not simply about the destruction of natural resources; it is about a complex
reframing of “nature” and the use of diversity toward commercial ends. As
Vandana Shiva argues, the discourse of biodiversity is actually less about
sustainability than it is about the conservation of biodiversity as a “raw
material” for the production of monocultures.67 The same can be said of
biotechnology, especially in the case of genome projects, genome databases,
cell and tissue banks, DNA sample collections, and other instances of
accumulating biological information.
A third point of controversy regarding many such projects is the issue of
genetic discrimination, which is, in the case of bioinformatics and genomics,
a kind of data-based discrimination. With molecular genetics, a unique type
of identification and differentiation has come about in which individuals and
populations can be uniquely analyzed and regulated. Discussing recent genetic
screening of African Americans in the United States for sickle-cell anemia,
Troy Duster observes how the argument for genetic screening changes when
dealing with specific racial or ethnic groups. Whereas general medical tests
can be proposed as being “transparently in the general public interest,” this
“ceases to be the case when screening is aimed at a specific population with
its ‘own’ health problem, and when the cost effectiveness of such screening is
assessed by those not in the screened population.”68 This twofold process of
molecular genetics (genetic essentialism) and informatics (population data-
bases) paves the way for a new type of data filtering, or, in some cases, dis-
crimination. Such discrimination is based not on race, gender, or sexuality,
but rather on information (genetic information). Bioinformatics—an appar-
ently neutral technical tool—thus becomes manifestly political, negotiating
how race and ethnicity will be configured through the filter of biotech,
constituting a unique type of genethnicity.
These biopolitical features of population genomics—informatics, diversifi-
cation, genethnicities—point to the ways in which the object of such prac-
tices is the molecular body itself. If colonialism historically involved the forced
or coerced appropriation of people, land, and economy, biocolonialism pres-
ents us with a situation in which the bodies of the colonized are the land
and economy. In this case, “population” morphs into territory and resource,
and in some of the more economically motivated ventures, these things in
turn translate into biological value. The appropriation of land meant the

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acquisition of territory for expansion, and the acquisition of this territory
intersected with a like expansion of the colonial economy. So far the biotech
industry has displayed little interest in the kinds of colonial expansionism his-
torically demonstrated by European nation-states. Despite the millions of
dollars flowing into corporate biotech, the majority of companies, excepting
the large pharmaceutical corporations, are smaller upstarts in the process of
making large promises and taking significant financial risks in R&D. What
then justifies the “colonialism” of biocolonialism?
Biocolonialism takes the molecular body and biological processes as the
territory or the property to be acquired, but insofar as this body can be modulated
at the level of informatics. When governmental regulations so stipulate (as in
the case of the U.K. BioBank), this acquisition is made through some type of
informed consent, so that the individuals and community whose biological
materials are being acquired are informed about the reasons and future uses
of their bodies. At other times, this acquisition is handled without such
formalities, resulting in either biopiracy (simple appropriation without any
consent from or reimbursement to the community) or patenting (based on cell
lines or genes that are minimally modified). In order to conduct successful
research and possibly to turn over a profit, the first thing needed is a large
resource pool, which in this context means a biological sample suited for the
particular type of research being conducted. If we are to take seriously the
concept of biocoloniaism, then we will have to understand the ways in which
the territory appropriated by the population genomics project is the biomol-
ecular body of a “population.”

Postgenomic Collectivities

Given the controversy that the HGDP caused in the early 1990s, the work of
population geneticists is also, Cavalli-Sforza states, a statement against racism,
through the disciplines of population studies and evolutionary biology.
Although this defense of Western science is an interesting political move, the
logic behind it is deeply problematic.
Cavalli-Sforza takes race as a biologically determined entity, but he dis-
cusses racism as a cultural manifestation with biological roots. He traces this
connection to the inclusivity of an exoticized, prehistoric tribalism threatened
by a rampant xenophobia. For Cavalli-Sforza, racism uses the biological dif-
ferences that science studies, but for antagonistic reasons. In other words, he

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acquits science of any involvement in racism—the problem is in the use of
science’s results, not in science itself.
But many of these issues dealing with racism, culture, and biology are
left fundamentally truncated in Cavalli-Sforza’s textbooks as he explains
the science of population genetics. It is not clear whether racism can be
approached on a cultural level or if the way in which “race” itself is defined
by Western science is problematic. Although he does point to the complexi-
ties in visible and nonvisible genetic variations, he does not connect these
complexities to his initial comments against racism.
The justifications Cavalli-Sforza gives for population genetics and projects
such as the HGDP follow a common universalist logic: “we” all are descended
from a common race; thus, this science and this knowledge are for everyone’s
benefit in understanding the lineage of Homo sapiens; and in the more near
term, such knowledge promises to contribute to the improvement of Western
medicine, especially in fields such as pharmacogenomics. It goes without
saying that Cavalli-Sforza does not take up the issues of patentability, profit
making, and the rigidity of Western medicine, and the same can be said of
related science articles and textbooks.
The most important issue brought up by population genetics and related
fields is the future of genetic difference. Is this a new form of racism for the
“biotech century”? With the widespread use in science of informatics and com-
puters, will biotechnical forms of racism also become informatic forms of
discrimination?
As a way of addressing this question, we can point to three possible direc-
tions that a biocolonial critique might initiate. A starting point would be a
consideration of the population within a temporal—and not just spatial or
statistical—framework. A population should be taken as dynamic. Although
traditional population genetics aims to study an “ideal” population—static,
closed, predictable—human collectivities of all sorts are embedded in het-
erogeneous, fluctuating, and dynamic environments. As such, they cannot
help but also be dynamic and, above all, adaptive. Bioscience has yet to con-
sider seriously this notion of an adaptive, flexible population. Doing so would
mean integrating, in a transdisciplinary manner, other perspectives—distrib-
uted pattern-recognition systems, autopoietic theories, systems biology, non-
linear dynamics, and molecular epidemiology.
A second guideline would take into account the way in which populations
are dynamic; that is, a population should be taken as a hybrid. Again, the ideal

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population for study is coherent; it forms a closed system in a vacuum, with
no new genetic material coming in and the overall gene frequency remaining
stable, though internal fluctuations may occur. But—as this guideline points
more directly to the notion of race—populations not only are dynamic, but
can be incredibly diverse, even to the point of internal fragmentation. This
hybridity is not a deviation from a biologically pure ideal; it is the very sub-
stance that composes the population. A mode of articulating and under-
standing difference at the biological and genetic level is needed, one that does
not define difference as deviation, but, in a more constitutive manner, as some-
thing without which a population cannot form.
Finally, although there are a number of problematic points concerning the
conception of race and ethnicity in population genomics, a critique of such
points should not be taken as antiscience. The biological should be integrated
into the cultural, the social, and the political. Population genetics—and
biotech generally—cordons off the biological determinism of bioscience from
cultural processes, but we might question, from the point of view of the bio-
sciences, whether the biological is all that containable. Our definitions of the
biological domain also need to be more flexible and more articulate. The bio-
logical should not simply determine or explain race; it should be a core part
of the cultural experience of race. This quasi-dialectical move would also
require that cultural issues be a central part of science projects such as the
HGDP. It is through this perspective that non-Western viewpoints on race
and population can be seriously considered.

Given these starting points, we can reconsider now the apparent contradic-
tion with which we began. Recall that I noted the simultaneous disappear-
ance of the issues associated with the HGDP and the rapid rise of
bioinformatics and the use of computer technologies in genomics generally.
So, then, what has become of the original issue put forth by the critics of the
HGDP? Part of the problem is that the issues dealt with in this criticism have
been handled in the same way that criticism of genomic mapping and human
embryonic cloning have been handled: they have been filed under the worri-
some category of “bioethics” (which commands a mere 3 percent of the HGP’s
budget). As postcolonial critiques have pointed out, the HGDP came to a rel-
ative standstill because it could not reconcile Western scientific assumptions
and intentions with non-Western perspectives toward agriculture, population,
medicine, culture, and so forth. The sheer gap between the HGDP’s bioin-

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formatic colonialism and those predominantly non-Western cultures who were
to be the source of biomaterial for the HGDP database illustrates the degree
to which global once again means “Western” (and, increasingly, “economic”).
One of the meanings of the decrease in the presence of the HGDP and the rise in bioin-
formatics developments and applications is that the issues of ethnicity and cultural het-
erogeneity have been sublimated into a paradigm in which they simply do not appear
as issues. That paradigm is, of course, one based on the predominance of infor-
mation in understanding the genetic makeup of an individual, population, or
disease. When, as geneticists repeatedly state, genetic information is taken as
one of the keys to a greater understanding of the individual and the species
(along with protein structure and biochemical pathways), the issue is not eth-
nicity but rather how to translate ethnicity into information. In such propo-
sitions, ethnicity becomes split between its direct translation into genetic
information (a specific gene linked to a specific disease) and its marginaliza-
tion into the category of “environmental influence” (updated modifications of
the sociobiological imperative).
The biopolitics of genomics is that of an informatics of the population in
which cultural issues (ethnicity, cultural diversity) are translated into informa-
tional issues (via either a universal, generalized map of the human genome or
individualized maps of genetic diversity). As with numerous other science-
technology disciplines, the apparent neutrality of abstract systems and purified
information needs to be questioned. As Evelyn Fox Keller, Donna Haraway, and
others have pointed out, information is not an innocent concept with regards
to issues of gender and race.69 The question that needs to be asked of bioinfor-
matics, online genomic databases, and genome mapping projects, is not just
“Where is culture?” but rather “How, by what tactics, and by what techniques
is bioinformatics reinterpreting and incorporating cultural difference?”

Coda: Fanon’s Database

As a closing note, I should point out that despite the increasing visibility of
the more “neutral” technical fields of genomics, bioinformatics, and popula-
tion genomics, the HGDP’s broad initiative has not disappeared. In fact, it
can be observed alongside the high-tech fields of genomics in contemporary
media culture. For instance, consider the 2003 Nova documentary The Journey
of Man. Narrated by population geneticist Spencer Wells, The Journey of
Man attempts to show how all races—no matter how different culturally,

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economically, or politically—are united by a common genetic heritage. This
heritage is, of course, “the” human genome, which genetic archaeologists
claim can be traced back to the earliest human beings on the African conti-
nent. Using both high-tech genomics and “old-fashioned” ethnography, The
Journey of Man shows us cultural difference at the same time that it posits
genomic unification. The Journey of Man, in its ethnographic representation of
Wells visiting a range of cultures, even purports that this common genetic
heritage can be the basis for a greater cultural understanding. The question
is, of course, Understanding for whom and dictated by what criteria? The
Journey of Man makes a number of alarming claims, such as Wells’s closing
comments that “we are all literally ‘African’ under the skin.” And the docu-
mentary is made more volatile by the fact that Wells is a former student of
Cavalli-Sforza.
Frantz Fanon’s essay “Medicine and Colonialism” offers a counterpoint to
what may be the new face of population genomics. Fanon’s text situates the
tensions between colonizer and colonized within the framework of medicine.
Although more recent developments in postcolonial studies have complicated
and tempered Fanon’s position—one thinks of Homi Bhabha’s work on the
colonial encounter, or Gayatri Spivak’s work on the subaltern—Fanon’s essay
still has great import in thinking about the problem of biocolonialism.
Writing in the midst of the Algerian revolution, Fanon’s essay is instructive
for colonialisms of all kinds, for it attempts to do two things: remain deci-
sive in a critique of colonialism and, at the same time, remain open to the
transformative and empowering aspects of a science and technology that serve
the people or “the population.” Fanon is adamant about the impermeable
barrier between a colonized society and the colonizing one, “the impossibil-
ity of finding a meeting ground in any colonial situation.” In addition, the
biopolitical concerns of a population’s health make the colonial imperative
immune to critique: “When the discipline considered concerns man’s health,
when its very principle is to ease pain, it is clear that no negative reaction can
be justified.”70 For Fanon, the introduction of European medicine into the
colonies is part and parcel of the colonial program. Not only are local knowl-
edges and practices delegitimized, but, in the case of colonial medicine, the
gift of health care always leads to an indebtedness.71 The figure of the colo-
nial doctor is, for Fanon, a figure that represents the most insidious form of
colonialism because it is precisely “life itself” and bodily health that cannot
be questioned. At the end of the day, Fanon sees political and economic inter-

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ests behind this imperative of health. As he notes, “in the colonies, the doctor
is an integral part of colonization, of domination, of exploitation.” Further-
more, “in the colonial situation, going to see the doctor, the administrator,
the constable or the mayor are identical moves.”72 Thus, “this good faith is
immediately taken advantage of by the occupier and transformed into a jus-
tification of the occupation.”73
Despite his militant position, Fanon also notes a number of complexities
that arise in the colonial encounter as a medical encounter between doctor and
patient. For one, he notes a fissure within Algerian culture in the figure of the
native Algerian doctor. On the one hand, the native doctor understands
the people and culture much better than does the colonial French doctor; on
the other hand, the native doctor has been trained and schooled in Western
medicine—the colonizer’s medicine—and is therefore a subject of mistrust.
Not only this, but the native doctor has denounced all other modes of medical
treatment as superstition, as primitive, or as irrelevant to the domain of
rational scientific inquiry. The native doctor is thus put into a difficult posi-
tion, at once taking on the burden of cultural understanding and yet facing
resistance and mistrust from patients precisely because of this burden.
If in colonial medicine the native doctor is effectively alienated, this situ-
ation is reversed by the condition of revolutionary conflict. Fanon notes how
in the context of Algeria’s war of liberation the native doctor, nurse, and
technician went from being an ostracized third party to becoming a consti-
tutive part of the anticolonization movement. Certain key events served as
the impetus for this transition, such as the French government’s decision,
throughout 1954–55, to place an embargo on all medicines entering Algeria
for the Algerian people. Although the people were barred not only from seeing
the European doctors, but also from receiving vaccines and medicines, the
native medical professionals, occupying an intermediary position, were able
to create an infrastructure for the flow of medicines and medical knowledge
into Algeria. Fanon describes the Algerian National Liberation Front’s con-
troversial medical program:

These medications which were taken for granted before the struggle for liberation,
were transformed into weapons. And the urban revolutionary cells having the respon-
sibility for supplying medications were as important as those assigned to obtain infor-
mation as to the plans and movements of the adversary. . . . It [the National Liberation
Front] found itself faced with the necessity of setting up a system of public health

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capable of replacing the periodic visit of the colonial doctor. This is how the local cell
member responsible for health became an important member of the revolutionary
apparatus.74

The preventive practices, hygiene plans, and routine examinations that were
shunned by the Algerian people were suddenly now put into place with great
fluency. Native medical professionals, previously alienated as constituting part
of the problem rather than a solution, were now brought into the fray of colo-
nial struggle. “The war of liberation introduced medical technique and the
native technician into the life of the innumerable regions of Africa.”75 There
are many examples like these, but what Fanon shows us in the case of Algeria
is the degree to which politics is biopolitics and how colonialism is never far
from biocolonialism.
Of course, Fanon’s largely oppositional account sidesteps a number of frus-
trating compromises. For instance, the relationship between medicine and
politics is complicated in the colonial situation, to say the least. Medicine may
ideologically be seen to constitute a part of the colonial apparatus, but the
experience on the ground may be quite different, where a mere guilt by asso-
ciation may in fact prevent much needed medical treatment to colonized
peoples. In addition, although Fanon psychologizes large social groups—the
colonizing nation, the colonized people—he does not consider the ways in
which resistance emerges from specific individuals, such as colonial French
doctors sympathetic to anticolonial sentiment. Finally, Fanon’s injunction of
medicine as part of colonialism really points to a larger issue, which he leaves
unmentioned: the relationships between medicine and poverty in the colonial
context. A wide range of factors—from diet to urban planning to labor con-
ditions—affect the “health of the population” of which Foucault speaks. These
and other issues further complicate Fanon’s oppositional stance regarding colo-
nial medicine.
Thus, although Fanon’s generalizations may be questioned on particular
historical grounds, the general lesson he points to is worth thinking about
in the context of biopiracy and biocolonialism. Fanon is militant about the
irresolvable conflict between colonizer and colonized, but he adopts a more
complex approach on the issue of biopolitics—the “health of the population,”
of the body politic. The example of the native Algerian doctor, nurse, and
medical technician is an example of reappropriating the benefits of medical
practice and knowledge, but without the political and economic imperatives

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set on them by colonial interests. Political, economic, and cultural issues will
certainly come up in such situations, and, indeed, we are seeing such issues
play themselves out in the ongoing efforts to offer American governmental
and corporate financial aid to combating AIDS and tuberculosis in Africa
(most notably, from the Gates Foundation). Writing in the midst of Algeria’s
colonial struggle, Fanon offers the possibility of a deeply committed critique
of colonialisms of all kinds, along with an equal commitment to the social
and political empowerment of medical knowledge and practice. However,
Fanon’s overall point still retains a degree of ambiguity, despite his vehement
voice against colonialism. As he notes, “science depoliticized, science in the
service of man, is often non-existent in the colonies.”76 The trick, or course,
is knowing how to separate the benefits of medical knowledge and practice
from its political and economic motivations—or, indeed, if such a separation
is possible at all. It may be that the immediate and future contestations in
developing nations over agriculture, health care, and genetics will decide on
this point.
In the case of contemporary biocolonialism and biopiracy, we see a situa-
tion significantly different from the examples of Algeria, India, and other sites
of colonial struggle. As I have noted, it is not the territory that is at stake,
but rather the biological population—the population is the territory in bio-
colonialism. Moreover, this population is configured as a biological and a
genetic entity, and in this sense the body of the population is separated from
the body of a culture. Blood, protein, and DNA samples do not contest their
status as items of property, especially when they are extracted and abstracted
from the particular bodies of individuals. This biological-genetic definition of
the population is coupled with an informatic approach to the population, as
we see in the discipline of population genetics and in the techniques of pop-
ulation genomics. Both approaches—the genetic and the informatic—are
approaches that Foucault implicitly points to in his discussions on biopoli-
tics.77 Finally, biocolonialism is also unique in that, by shifting the emphasis
from territory to population, it makes possible layered forms of “endocolo-
nization”: population genomics and prospecting within a given population or
nation (for example the U.K. BioBank, or the Gene Trust in the United
States). Thus, biocolonialism raises not only cultural issues (as in the case of
the HGDP), but also, in its endocolonial form, issues pertaining to medical
surveillance, the privacy of health-related information, and economically
driven health-care practices in technologically advanced countries.

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 Although the potential medical benefits from fields such as population
genomics are still being debated, the economic and civil liberties issues have
prompted many individuals and groups (such as RAFI) to speak out against
biocolonial practices. Is there a space, within the biocolonial encounter, for
negotiation? As Fanon notes,

Specialists in basic health education should give careful thought to the new situations
that develop in the course of a struggle for national liberation on the part of an under-
developed people. Once the body of the nation begins to live again in a coherent and
dynamic way, everything becomes possible. The notions about “native psychology” or
of the “basic personality” are shown to be in vain. The people who take their destiny
into their own hands assimilate the most modern forms of technology at an extraor-
dinary rate.78

For Fanon, the political and military program of occupation is also a medical
program of occupation. But his twofold position—a critique of colonial
imperatives and an openness to tactical innovation—can be seen as one
example of how to avoid simply demonizing science and medicine en masse.
This model—difficult as it may be to carry out—can be of great benefit for
confronting the issues raised by, for example, population genomics. In fact,
such biobanking efforts demand at the minimum a sort of “critical genomic
consciousness,” or, as Fortun notes, a “genomic solidarity”: “experimenting
with the idea of genomic solidarity and working to imagine and invent its
social practice seems increasingly necessary to me. One way or another, we are
going to find ourselves grouped into some kind of population that has some
kind of value, commercial or otherwise. . . . So why should any of us become
scientifically and commercially consolidated, but remain socially and politi-
cally isolated?”79 In the colonial context of Algeria, Fanon notes that “the Rev-
olution and medicine manifested their presence simultaneously.”80 Perhaps, in
the genome era, we can complicate Fanon’s terms without losing his critical
acuity: revolution and biotechnology manifest their presence simultaneously,
as that which is always about to arrive.

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 5

The Incorporate Bodies of Recombinant

Capital

Cut-and-Paste Bodies

In 1973, biochemist Herbert Boyer and molecular biologist Stanley Cohen

published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, outlin-
ing their procedures for producing “recombinant DNA.”1 Working at the
University of California, San Francisco, Boyer had developed a method for
using “molecular scissors”—an enzyme known as a restriction endonuclease—
to snip bacterial DNA at precise locations. Cohen, working separately at Stan-
ford University, was simultaneously experimenting on the use of bacterial
plasmids—short loops of DNA in bacteria such as E. coli—as a kind of deliv-
ery system for novel segments of DNA. Together, Boyer and Cohen, along
with other researchers, were central to the development of what became
known as genetic engineering. Put simply, genetic engineering is based on
the premise that the DNA of an organism can be reshuffled and engineered;
the tools of genetic engineering are the organism’s own biology, and its tech-
niques are based on the logic of cutting (restriction enzymes), pasting (DNA
ligase enzymes), and replicating (in the cellular divisions of the bacterial plas-
mids). Boyer and Cohen had demonstrated not only that DNA could be arti-
ficially “collaged” into new hybrids, but also that this cut-and-paste logic
could operate across species. They had provided a technical logic for engi-
neering at the molecular and genetic levels, and they had provided a set of
powerful tools—many of which are still used—for carrying out genetic engi-
neering research.
 This research had a number of consequences. Several years after Boyer and
Cohen published their recombinant DNA findings, both researchers patented
their techniques for producing recombinant DNA, and they put together a
business plan for a company to market these techniques. That company, called
Genentech, garnered some $35 million from its IPO in 1980 and is often
cited as the first true biotech company. Genentech—its name an abbreviation
for “genetic engineering technology”—would focus on the production of
unique drugs and therapeutics through recombinant DNA techniques. It went
on to produce a number of highly valuable products, including human insulin
and human growth hormone, and many industry analysts point to the
emergence of Genentech as the beginning of the first wave of the biotech
industry.2
But beneath this apparent success story are some important intersections
between bodies, technologies, and systems of value. Boyer and Cohen’s recom-
binant DNA experiments signified an important scientific shift within molec-
ular biology research. Whereas postwar developments in molecular biology
were geared primarily toward producing knowledge about the organism on
the genetic level, the Boyer-Cohen experiments were focused on the develop-
ment of techniques for working on and intervening in the organism. In a sense,
such genetic engineering experiments were the first explicit examples of a
“bio-technology”: the technical design, engineering, and application of bio-
logical life. Although there is a long history of selective animal breeding, food
preparation (e.g., fermentation), and agricultural techniques (e.g., ecological
optimization of crops), the Boyer-Cohen experiments were the first such
instances effectively to combine modern life science research with an engi-
neering perspective, a paradigmatic look toward the technological control over
the body as nature.
However, the steps in this narrative of genetic engineering also illustrate
the degree to which “pure” research is never pure, but always networked
through economic, institutional, and disciplinary zones: research and discov-
ery, publishing and patenting, business start-up and IPO, product develop-
ment and medical application. These intersections are what Bruno Latour has
described as “translation,” or the production of cultural, scientific, social, and
technological mixtures and hybrids.3 The networks produced from such trans-
lations are often condensed into hybrid objects such as, in our case, recombi-
nant DNA or transgenic organisms. Such hybrid articulations between
organisms and technologies come to reflect and eventually to express the

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adaptability of the biotech economy, in turn affecting technology develop-
ment and science research itself. In other words, if we consider the scientific
implications of recombinant DNA research—that the body can be “repro-
grammed” on the molecular level—we must also consider the ways in which
that capability to reprogram is spliced with a business plan and an emerging
industry. The dual events of recombinant DNA techniques and the founding
of Genentech are indicative of the ways in which the biotech industry has been
keenly aware of the ability to engineer biological matter so that it can gen-
erate both medical and economic value. In such an instance, a “cut-and-paste”
body is less a cause for bioethical alarmism and more an example of the ways
in which bodies and economic value systems can accommodate each other.4
The cut-and-paste body of recombinant DNA technologies is a mode of flex-
ible accumulation, the transformation of certain biomolecules into “wet” fac-
tories for the generation of a range of custom-tailored proteins. Recombinant
DNA can not only surpass nature by providing the molecules nature does not,
but also forms a novel technological infrastructure in which the body’s
“natural” processes (for instance, the production of insulin) can be recontex-
tualized in a kind of upgraded, biomolecular black box.
These connections between bodies, technologies, and economies are the
driving force of the current “biotech century.” The example of Genentech not
only points to the complex interrelationships between science, industry, and
society, but also serves as a moment that illustrates the “encoding” of an eco-
nomic logic directly into the biotechnological organism. As the new millen-
nium gets underway, the biotech industry maintains many of the elements it
did during the 1970s and 1980s, but new factors have also transformed it into
something quite different. This chapter aims to explore these factors. In par-
ticular, of interest is the possible transformations of the notion of “labor” as
an expressly biological notion in the biotech industry. Affecting not only life
science research, but drug development, medical diagnostics, and the health-
care sector, the redefinition of “life itself” at the core of the biotech industry
is key for understanding how the industry balances the imperatives of medical
and economic value. The relation between life, labor, and capital is thus key
for the success of the biotech industry in medicine; or, put another way, the
biotech industry aims to insert “life” into the relation between labor and
capital in a way that purports to provide gains in both medicine and
economics.

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 Industrial, Postindustrial, Biotech Industry

Since the 1970s and the founding of Genentech, the term biotech industry has
taken hold as a descriptor of a large and diverse set of practices and subindus-
tries. The qualifier industry seems to imply that biotechnology is related to
industrialism in some way. In the same way that industrialism utilized
advances in science and technology to transform the production process (in
the familiar examples of textile factories or automation), the biotech industry
utilizes advances in molecular biology and genetics to transform the way that
drugs, therapies, and diagnostics are produced. Although this comparison is
not untrue, it is also important to note the differences that mark biotechnol-
ogy apart from industrial or, indeed, postindustrial modes of production.
Industrialism, for sociologists such as Daniel Bell, is marked by the pro-
duction of material goods, most often through developments in technologies
in which “energy has replaced raw muscle and provides the power that is the
basis of productivity—and art of making more with less—and is responsible
for the mass output of goods.”5 Industrial societies are centered around the
way that “energy and machines transform the nature of work,” necessitating
new modes of hierarchical and bureaucratic organization. The challenge for
industrial production is, “[H]ow does one extract the greatest amount of
energy from a given unit of embedded nature (coal, oil, gas, water power) with
the best machine at what comparative price?”6 From the steam engine to
automated “large-scale industry,” from the nineteenth-century textile factory
to the twentieth-century automobile plant, industrialism implies a sort of
physics, an economics of force, motion, power, and energy.
By contrast, what Bell famously termed “postindustrial society” was
formed, in part, by global political changes and by developments in new tech-
nologies, such as information and communications media. “If an industrial
society is defined by the quantity of goods as marking a standard of living,
the postindustrial society is defined by the quality of life as measured by the
services and amenities.”7 What Bell designates as “services” include a range
of activities that, strictly speaking, produce no goods: transportation, tourism,
entertainment and media, insurance, education, real estate, and health care.
Bell—along with David Harvey, Scott Lash, and others—has traced these
shifts into a postindustrial or postmodernized social structure in the West
during the 1970s. The shift from products to services, from class to status,
from practical to theoretical knowledge, from planning to development, and

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so forth can be seen to revolve around the emergence of new modes of cul-
tural, social, political valuation based on information, knowledge, and signs.
As Bell notes, “what counts is not raw muscle, power, or energy, but infor-
mation.” Furthermore, “information becomes a central resource, and within
organizations a source of power.”8 Information is, therefore, not only a new
kind of production, but also what is produced. Manuel Castells concurs when
he notes that the “emergence of a new technological paradigm organized
around new, more powerful, and more flexible information technologies makes
it possible for information itself to become the product of the production
process.”9 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri more recently have described
this sort of work as “immaterial labor,” a concept to which I return later.
Where does biotechnology fit in such scenarios? On the one hand, biotech
companies and pharmaceutical corporations still employ many aspects that
would characterize them as industrial (e.g., assembly-line plants for bottling
drugs). On the other hand, the biotech industry—at all levels—is becoming
increasingly integrated with new information technologies (e.g., online
genome databases, global operations, sophisticated public-relations cam-
paigns). In addition, most accounts of the so-called postindustrial society
rarely mention biotechnology, an industry that has, as we have seen, been in
existence since the 1970s.10 All technology is arguably a form of biotechnol-
ogy, at least in the sense that each technological system demonstrates some
type of interrelation between human beings and their environment. Dis-
cussing the particular qualities of industrial technologies such as the spinning
machine, Marx notes how Darwin’s theory of evolution had already laid the
groundwork for understanding biology as a technology:

A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the
eighteenth century are the work of a single individual. As yet such a book does not
exist. Darwin had directed attention to the history of natural technology, i.e. the for-
mation of the organs of plants and animals, which serve as the instruments of pro-
duction for sustaining their life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man
in society, of organs that are the material basis of every particular organization of
society, deserve equal attention?11

This comment comes in chapter 15 of the first volume of Capital, in which

Marx discusses the emergence of industrial technologies and the differentia-
tions between tools, machines, and “large-scale industry.” Many things can be

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deduced from this brief observation, especially in light of the then-current
fields in natural history, germ theory, and evolution. Marx’s observation sug-
gests, among other things, that the newly emerging biological sciences can
be considered from the perspective of political economy. That is, biology can
be understood not only as the adaptation of organisms to their environment,
but also as the complex means through which organisms use their bodies
and their productive capacity continually to ensure their survival and their
existence. In this sense, the organism and its organs continually work on the
environment and other organisms; organisms continually produce themselves
and their modes of existence, and their bodies become indistinguishable
from technologies that ensure the continuation of their biological being.
When this happens, the sciences of life or of the human body also become
engineering sciences, or technologies of production, the “productive organs of
society.”
Marx was not the first to wonder whether the sciences of biology could also
be understood as a technology, but his later writings on labor commonly make
use of biological metaphors, from the description of the labor process as a
“metabolism” between the human being and nature to his description of the
raw material of production as “one of the organs of his activity, which he [the
laborer] annexes to his own bodily organs,” to his description of automated
large-scale industry as an “objective organism.”12 In addition, in the often-
referenced “fragment on machines” in the Grundrisse, Marx configures indus-
trial technology in organic terms, speaking of “mechanical and intellectual
organs,” “living (active) machinery,” and the general “social metabolism” of
industrial capitalism.13 This intersection between nature and artifice, biology
and technology, takes on a particular flavor in Marx’s analysis of industrial
modes of production. However, despite the fact that Marx was looking specif-
ically at the shift from manufacture to large-scale industry in the nineteenth-
century, his points also have much to say about the kind of labor specific to
biotechnology. Thus, it may be helpful to consider briefly Marx’s analysis on
industrial technologies before going on to consider the equally unique aspects
of the biotech industry.
In Capital, Marx describes a machine as having three parts: a “motor mech-
anism,” or that part that provides the driving energy or motive force; a “trans-
mitting mechanism,” or that part that performs the harnessing of energy or
processing of force; and a “working machine or tool,” or that part that actu-
ally performs modifications on an object of labor.14 Marx notes that it is in

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this third part, the working machine or tool, that human labor power is trans-
formed by the introduction of technology into the production process.
Marx begins by addressing the issue of what happens when machines enter
the production process in industrial capitalism. At first, the labor power of
the human body may be augmented by tools (“simple machines”), in which
case the tool serves to facilitate the labor power inherent in the human body
of the worker. Marx mentions spades, hammers, chisels, but also the early
weaving machines as examples of tools of this type. According to Marx, a key
transformation occurs when we pass from tools (“simple machines”) to
machines (“complex tools”). The weaving machines and machines driven by
steam or by electromagnetic or hydroelectric force are all examples of a new
level of production, a shift from mere “manufacture” to the development of
organized factories and “large-scale industry.” Machines now derive their
motive force not from the human body’s labor power, but from some force of
nature that has been artificially harnessed (e.g., water, air, electricity).15
The key element in this shift is that the labor power of the human body
goes from being a primary motive force to being a supplementary and man-
agerial force. As Marx notes, “as soon as man, instead of working on the object
of labor with a tool, becomes merely the motive power of a machine, it is
purely accidental that the motive power happens to be clothed in the form of
human muscles; wind, water or steam could just as well take man’s place.”16
The result is that the role of human labor power becomes inverted. Instead of
technologies extending the labor of the body, the body now acts in a more
regulatory, managerial mode: setting the machines on and off, maintaining
and repairing, and so forth. When this happens, “labor no longer appears so
much to be included in the production process; rather, the human being comes
to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself.”17
A new mode of cooperation and further division of labor results in human
bodies surrounding the labor power of machines in the factory. Instead of the
earlier manufacture model, in which the labor power of the human body
appropriates natural resources and tools, now, with industrial production, “the
worker has been appropriated by the process; but the process had previously
to be adapted to the worker.”18
This appropriation results in the familiar image of the oppressive,
dystopian industrial factory, which haunts much nineteenth-century British
fiction, but also a great deal of twentieth-century science fiction.19 The threat
becomes not only the disenfranchisement of human labor power, but, more

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specifically, a technologically driven mode of production that exhibits a
strange kind of vitalism: “But, once adopted into the production process of
capital, the means of labor passes through different metamorphoses, whose
culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery . . .
set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this
automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that
the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.”20 Despite
such dramatic passages, Marx did not quite announce the end of human labor
power, nor did he ever forecast the coming end of human labor in the face of
technological advance. The condition that results from this shift is a complex
relation between technological and scientific advance, on the one hand, and
the varying roles that human labor power plays in the production process, on
the other. Thus, instead of simply reading Marx’s analysis in antitechnologi-
cal terms, we would be more accurate to say that, in his analyses of new tech-
nologies of production, he notes how the very notion of labor undergoes a
qualitative change. In the case of increasingly automated industrial modes of
production, this change is, for Marx, a shift from human labor power based
on direct physical work to one based on the monitoring, regulating, and con-
troling of sophisticated machinery. As he notes, one of the results of this
process is a move from the collective living labor of workers to a new inte-
gration of living labor into technology, a “living (active) machinery” or
“organism.”21 The machine becomes alive or vital, a kind of living labor of
technology.
Thus, in discussing industrial production, Marx points to several ways that
transformations in technology are connected to transformations in human
labor power. First, human labor power is configured as both biological and
economical. Marx begins with a consideration of labor as a productive mode
of existence, in which labor produces direct use values. Labor power in this
guise is described as “the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities
existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capa-
bilities which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use-value of any
kind.” Labor power in this sense is corporeal, physiological, biological—a bio-
logical capacity for performing certain activities over a certain span of time.
“Labor power exists only as a capacity of the living individual.”22 Second, the
biologically inflected labor power is not an essence of labor, but is always
bound up with modes of technical production. Labor power is as much tech-
nological as it is biological. It is a medium. In this process, it is also a means,

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a tool that can be applied to a range of tasks in return for a wage. In order
for this to happen, the human subject must fulfill two conditions: “He must
constantly treat his labor power as his own property, his own commodity”;
and “the possessor of labor power, instead of being able to sell commodities
in which his labor has been objectified, must rather be compelled to offer for
sale as a commodity that very labor power which exists only in his living
body.”23 The result is an ambivalent intersection of labor as simultaneously
biological, technological, and, of course, economic: “In machinery, objectified
labor confronts living labor within the labor process itself as the power which
rules it; a power which, as the appropriation of living labor, is the form of
capital. The transformation of the means of labor into machinery, and of living
labor into a mere living accessory of this machinery, as the means of its action,
also posits the absorption of the labor process in its material character as a
mere moment of the realization process of capital.”24
In this and other passages, Marx makes a distinction between “living labor”
and “dead labor,” the former being akin to labor as the “living, form-giving
fire” of human activity and the latter best represented by the fixed capital of
technology. Labor power is described in Capital as the “capacity of the living
individual.”25 But Marx also notes that this definition does not necessarily pre-
suppose a notion of labor power outside of capital—a presupposition that is,
at best, conjecture. Thus, living labor comes to mean a number of things in
Marx’s writing, and therefore the term harbors an ambiguity to it. Sometimes
living labor is indeed a notion of labor outside of capital, which is then appro-
priated by the labor-capital relationship.26 In this guise, living labor is always
a potential for labor, labor that is living because it is the constant potential
of the worker’s living body. Wage labor is thus a demand placed on living
labor to become labor power, or a potential for labor that can be rendered
quantifiable in money terms and that can be sold and purchased as a com-
modity itself. At other times, living labor is that which capital seeks to extract
through the use of technology, or fixed capital.27 If living labor is circulating
capital, it is vulnerable to any number of changes (changes in the worker’s
living conditions, changes in wages, changes in worker demands, etc.). With
the introduction of new technologies, living labor can be redefined and sta-
bilized, while the bulk of labor can be performed by the fixed capital of
machinery. In this guise, living labor stands directly opposite dead labor.
Conventional readings of Marx’s distinction between living labor and dead
labor have understood the former as the human labor of workers and the latter

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as the technological labor of machines. Tensions arise when capitalism
attempts to replace the former with the latter (hence the neo-Luddite inter-
pretations of the information society). But in doing so, capitalism not only
indirectly loses its capacity to sell (because workers are unemployed), but it
also loses the ability to extract surplus value from wage labor (because labor
is performed by machines). But, as we have seen, Marx moves beyond this
simple dichotomy in the organicist, vitalist metaphors he deploys in describ-
ing the way that labor is redefined in the context of technology: the human-
machine interface forms a complex “social metabolism” for capital, as “living
(active) machinery.”
This is where Marx’s more ambiguous comments on living labor come into
play. At points, Marx seems to refer to living labor as an essence of human
subjectivity, as something that exists outside of and prior to capital, which is
then appropriated and turned into labor power.28 But I would take a more
nuanced view and suggest that living labor is the fissure that exists between labor
and capital. In a sense, living labor is the surplus of the biology of labor power.
As Antonio Negri and others in the autonomist tradition note, labor is that
which capital is forever striving to subsume totally, a process from “formal to
the real subsumption—this passage entails the effective, functional and
organic subjugation of all the social conditions of production and, concomi-
tantly, of labor as an associated force.”29 But, by definition, capital cannot
totally achieve this subsumption, for if it could, then there would be no labor
power, no replenishment of labor in the relationship between capital and labor.
Living labor is akin to what Negri calls an “antagonistic tendency,” that which
is defined by its resistance to capital—at the same time that it is incorporated
into capital.
In this sense, living labor is not an essence of labor, but rather an immanence to
labor power. Living labor—”the form-giving fire”—does not disappear in labor
power, nor does it disappear in the “dead labor” of machinery or fixed capital.
Living labor is that which is immanent to every instance of labor, dead or alive
(or both, as Marx’s hybrid organicist and mechanist language suggests).
Keeping in mind our own context—that of the biotech industry—I suggest
that Marx’s distinction between living labor and dead labor be taken quite
literally. Living labor in the biotech industry is, quite simply, “life itself.” But
this “life itself” is not life in general, but a biological notion of “life itself”
that is supported by developments in fields such as molecular genetics and
biochemistry, genomics, bioinformatics, drug development, diagnostics, and

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other fields. This does not, of course, say that genetics and its related fields
are capitalist endeavors, but it does note the key role that science plays in the
development of modes of production in the biotech industry.

Biology: The New Dotcom

In Italian autonomist thought and practice, the shift from an industrial to a

postindustrial society is concurrent with transformations not only in capital,
but also in the composition of labor and the working class.30 For every trans-
formation in the mode of production (from products to services, from goods
to information), a set of corresponding changes occur in the way human labor
defines itself and is defined by capital. Capital struggles to encompass the
totality of labor (both in its actuality and in its potential as future labor),
whereas labor continually struggles to define its own needs and to survive
vis-à-vis capital. As Marx points out in the Grundrisse, “capital stands on
one side and labor on the other.”31 Autonomist writers often highlight
the dynamic relationship between labor and capital, as noted by Nick
Dyer-Witheford:

Far from being a passive object of capitalist designs, the worker is in fact the active
subject of production, the wellspring of the skills, innovation, and cooperation on
which capital depends. Capital attempts to incorporate labor as an object, a compo-
nent in its cycle of value extraction, so much labor power. But this inclusion is always
partial, never fully achieved. . . . Labor is for capital always a problematic “other” that
must constantly be controlled and subdued.32

In fact, as Antonio Negri suggests, labor is always antagonistic with respect

to capital. “Labor can therefore be transformed into capital only if it assumes
the form of exchange, the form of money. But that means that the relation is
one of antagonism, that labor and capital are present only at the moment of
exchange which constitutes their productive synthesis, as autonomous, inde-
pendent entities.”33 Far from presupposing an ideal state of labor outside of
capital, Negri argues that any potential politics of living labor must come
only from the labor-capital relation itself. Living labor is at once that which
is always escaping from capital and that which is always being subsumed
under capital. He posits antagonism, but also autonomy. The autonomy of
living labor—of “life” as living labor—stems from the fact that it is bound

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up in a complex with capital. At stake is the very subjectivity of individuals
in their laboring capacity, inasmuch as “the opposition determines subjectiv-
ity.” This subjectivity bears the marks of the exploitative difference between
labor and capital, it is also the potential for a kind of “general intellect” (to
use Marx’s phrase). “Here use value is nothing other than the radicality of the
labor opposition . . . the source of all human possibility.”34
Science and technology play a significant role in this ongoing, tension-filled
relation. I should be careful, however, to say that despite this role, science and
technology do not necessarily determine the labor-capital relationship.
Raniero Panzieri notes in his critique of “objectivist” accounts of new tech-
nologies that “technological development presents itself as a development of
capitalism: as capital.”35 As he observes, this presentation does not mean that
the development of science and technology are themselves completely deter-
mined by purely economic forces; new patterns of consumption, the redefin-
ition of the work-leisure boundary, and new modes of cultural production all
play a part in complicating the labor-capital relation. Panzieri echoes Marx,
however, in noting how forms of “life” or living labor are often positioned
between labor and capital, a “more and more complex and sophisticated
attempt to adapt the planning of living labor to the stages [of capitalist devel-
opment] progressively attained.”36 In the relation between labor and capital,
there is, then, also a tension between living and dead labor. Or, put another
way, it is “life” that is situated between labor and capital—in particular, the “life”
of living labor.
But this relation is not, at I have noted, a static one. One of the signifi-
cant changes brought on by so-called postindustrial societies has been a shift
from labor-producing material goods to labor-producing services, communi-
cation, and information. Maurizio Lazzarato refers to this postindustrial, post-
modernized form of labor as immaterial labor. Lazzarato defines immaterial
labor as “the labor that produces the informational and cultural content of the
commodity.”37 Immaterial labor is a qualitative change, both in the nature of
what is produced (services, communication, information) and in the nature of
the labor process itself (cultural-, entertainment-, or communications-based
labor). Examples include “audiovisual production, advertising, fashion, soft-
ware,” and so on, as well as labor linked to networks, the “interactive labor”
of problem solving and analysis, and the cultural labor of “the production and
manipulation of affects.”38 For Lazzarato, “immaterial labor forces us to ques-
tion the classical definitions of work and workforce, because it results from a

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synthesis of different types of know-how: intellectual skills, manual skills, and
entrepreneurial skills.”39
Furthermore, immaterial labor is two sided in its effects. On the one hand,
it serves as an ongoing expansion of capital into media, culture, entertain-
ment, and the “production of affects.” In this guise, immaterial labor is the
urgency for communication (“always connected, always on”) in the service of
more complex forms of commodification. Lazzarato is direct is his critique:
“The communicational relationship . . . is thus completely predetermined
in both form and content; it is subordinated to the ‘circulation of informa-
tion.’ ”40 However, this “opening” of immaterial labor also demands a new
level of cooperation and coordination between multiple points and many
subjects. In a sense, immaterial labor already bears within itself the seeds of
its own form of “self-valorization” in the political uses of technologies. Hardt
and Negri highlight this aspect of immaterial labor: “The novelty of the new
information infrastructure is the fact that it is embedded within and com-
pletely immanent to the new production processes.”41 Thus, immaterial labor,
as Lazzarato defines it, “constitutes itself in immediately collective forms that
exist as networks and flows,” which create the conditions for productive
“antagonisms and contradictions.”42
Although autonomist Marxism has not dealt explicitly with the biotech
industry, the terms it uses—immaterial labor, living labor, and the tension
between labor and capital—are helpful for beginning to understand the biotech
industry and all its complications. I can start by providing a general overview
of the biotech industry, paying particular attention to those sectors related to
medicine and health care (genomics, proteomics, drug development, bioinfor-
matics). As I do this, it is worth keeping in mind a number of points put forth
by autonomist thinkers. First, inasmuch as the labor-capital relation changes
historically, it follows that biotechnology, with its emphasis on “life itself,” will
constitute another qualitative change to the notion of living labor as “life itself.”
Second, as Negri notes, new relations between capital and labor, especially those
driven by new technoscientific advances, force us toward an “ontological broad-
ening” of the very notion of labor itself.43 Given that the biotech industry
employs both new informational technologies and engineered life forms (from
microbes to transgenic mammals), it may be that what we are witnessing in
biotechnology is, in a sense, the production of a new type of labor.
Thus, when we speak about the biotech “industry,” this description is, in
some ways, misleading. Though biotech in many ways certainly is an

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industry, it has rarely been about industrial modes of production; even the
early developments in chemical engineering and food biotechnology have been
built on modifications of preexisting forms of life, not on products (that is,
in contrast to standard production models, biotech foods are “genetically
modified”).44
Research in molecular biotechnology is more explicit on this point.
Although on the research end there is no shortage of ideas, experiments, and
novel techniques, on the production end “Big Pharma” has yet to deliver on
this potential of biotechnology to spark a genetic medicine “revolution.”
Obstacles such as the excessive amount of clinical data that must be analyzed
and correlated before products can be developed are in part responsible for
this lag between research and product development. Research labs and bio-
logical supply companies are able to output large quantities of needed cells,
genes, DNA segments, sequence clones, and other tools of research, but large
bottlenecks have occurred at the product development and consumer ends.
But if biotech is not an “industry” proper, if it is not based in the develop-
ment of products and services utilized in medical practice, if it is not about
the development of novel pharmaceuticals—if biotech does not overtly
“produce” anything for medical practice—what then is it? I can begin an
answer to this question by outlining three main kinds of companies within
the biotech industry.
First, there are the “pick-and-shovel” companies, mostly in the technology
and laboratory supply sector, which provide the tools for research. Like the
original pick-and-shovel business during the California gold rush, such com-
panies implicitly believe that although the actual genome may not yield any
profits, the need for research technologies on it will. These companies are gen-
erally the lowest risk takers, though radical new tools such as microarrays can
be risky, unless they quickly take off (as has happened with microarrays). An
example of such a company is Affymetrix, which is one of the leading sup-
pliers of microarrays, or DNA chips for large-scale, efficient sequencing.
Second, there are the software and service companies, which operate mostly
on the level of computer technology, software, and network applications.
These companies often provide a counterpart to the pick-and-shovel compa-
nies by providing the software tools necessary to complete the work done by
pick-and-shovel hardware. Such companies can offer software packages (such
as Incyte’s “LifeSeq” sequencing and analysis software package), data analysis
services (mostly computer and network business), or access to a database on a

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subscription-only basis (as the private genome companies such as Celera are
doing).
Third, there are what we might call the product makers, those companies,
usually large pharmaceutical corporations, that take the information gener-
ated by the second group (say, the information generated by Celera on the
human genome) and transform it into an array of products, services, and prac-
tical techniques. The most prevalent among these are Big Pharma and the
emphasis in such companies on drug development and gene therapy–based
drug treatments (or “pharmacogenomics”).
A consideration of these types of companies not only illustrates the degree
to which biotech has become infotech, but also suggests that the future success
of the biotech industry is dependent on the ability to generate value out of
the data collected from biological material. All of this is predicated on the
assumption that biological bodies—tissues, cells, molecules, chromosomes,
genes—can be unproblematically translated into data. Such a move indicates
the degree to which biotech relies on the notion of a stable “content” in the
genome, irrespective of its material instantiation (be it in cells or in computer
databases).45 Recombinant capital demands that everything within biotech has
an informatic equivalent; it does not, like biotech research, demand that every-
thing be translated into information, but it does demand a direct link between
genetic bodies and relevant data.
Recombinant capital touches the population, not through direct genomic
database management, but more indirectly through the commodification of
such databases. As biotech becomes increasingly privatized, the database cor-
porations such as Celera or Incyte will become the main biocommerce brokers.
At issue is not the buying or selling of databases, but the generative poten-
tial of genetic data; in such a case, ethnic population genome databases, indi-
vidualized SNP or genetic screening databases, and various animal genome
databases important for human medicine will become sources of a biopoliti-
cal management.

“Of Living, Breathing, Yea Ev’rie Move”

One of the major dynamics that characterizes the biotech industry presently
is the privatization of molecular biology research, encapsulated in the biotech
start-up company.46 This so-called corporatization of biotech is illustrated by
looking at the HGP. Originally a 15-year endeavor, the HGP was initiated in

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1988 and is currently headed by various research institutions in the United
States and abroad.47 It was and still is a “public-domain” research project. It
is supported by two large governmental bodies: the National Human Genome
Research Institute (NHGRI, part of the NIH) and the DoE, in partnership
with the Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom.
This publicly funded genome project was joined in 1998 by a small
group of privately funded genome projects, which positioned themselves in
direct contrast to the publicly funded HGP. Celera Genomics (which at the
time became involved as the Institute for Genomic Research [TIGR]) burst
onto the biotech scene by claiming that it was initiating its own human
genome project and that it would complete the map of the human genome
for less money and in less time than the HGP. Celera was followed by Incyte
Genomics, which also claimed to be initiating its own human genome
project. In constructing their own genomes, both companies are adopting a
subscription-only access model to their data, most of which is accessed by
pharmaceutical companies for drug development. In addition, Human
Genome Sciences, although not taking on the sequencing of the entire human
genome, has instigated a series of patent claims for techniques and products
based on genes sequenced within the human genome. Each corporation and
its strategy—Celera’s “whole genome shotgun sequencing,” Incyte’s use of
in-house microarray technologies, and Human Genome Sciences’ short-cut
strategy of gene patenting—offers a different approach to the molecular
biology research that we have seen with the HGP; research does not happen
without a business infrastructure.48
We might differentiate the biotech industry further by pointing to several
trends. As is evident by looking at corporations such as Perkin-Elmer, Pfizer,
Genzyme, or Millennium Pharmaceuticals, both biotech start-ups and Big
Pharma are participating in the development of complex corporate bodies
within the economic framework of global capitalism. A driving economic
force is finance capital, bolstered from within by a wide range of “future prom-
ises” from biotech research (gene therapies, genetic drugs, and so on). What
we are witnessing now in “digital capitalism,” to use Dan Schiller’s term, is
an intersection of economic systems with information technology.49 As
Michael Dawson and John Bellamy Foster show, this trend leads to an empha-
sis on a “total marketing strategy” that is highly diversified: consumer pro-
filing, individualized marketing, “narrowcasting,” “push-media,” and so on.50
Such trends are transforming medical research as well. More often than not,

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a research field within biotech can flourish or perish in the future depending
on the tides of stock values. In turn, those stock values are directly tied to the
proclaimed successes or failures of clinical trials or research results. Most of
the stock value of the biotech industry is an example of what Catherine
Waldby calls “biovalue”: with companies either being able to produce valu-
able research results that can be transformed into products (such as genetic-
based drugs or therapies) or being able to take research and mobilize it within
a product-development pipeline (mostly within the domain of the pharma-
ceutical industry).51
However, the most significant factor for our concerns here is that the
biotech industry, along with biotech research itself, is becoming an informa-
tion science, an informatics. As Ben Rosen, chairman of Compaq has stated,
“Biology is becoming an information science . . . and it will take increasingly
powerful computers and software to gather, store, analyze, model and dis-
tribute that information.”52 The advent of advanced computer-based tools, the
Web, and, soon after, a proliferation of e-commerce models has meant that
computer technology offers the exemplary site for the continued extension of
biotechnology as a model for future research and as a model for business.
Within biotech research such as the HGP, the generation of endless
amounts of genetic sequence data and of genes to be analyzed has necessitated
the incorporation of computer science into scientific analysis in the field of
bioinformatics. As we have seen, the most prevalent example of bioinformat-
ics has been databasing—where, for instance, up-to-the-minute information
on the HGP can be accessed by researchers worldwide via a Web site and a
central database. Bioinformatics also includes complex analysis systems,
molecular and protein modeling applications, “gene discovery systems,” data
mining tools, and the development of simulation environments in order to
study further the function of genes and pathways.53
In biotechnology, the bioinformatics of database access is inextricably con-
nected, to software and subscription models for research, which is where bioin-
formatics intersects with biocapitalism, or genetic bodies are integrated into
an advanced capitalist framework. Discussing the free-floating dynamics of
late capital, Fredric Jameson notes that the self-referential feedback loops of
finance capital propel it into a zone of “autonomization,” a viruslike epidemic
that forms a speculation on speculations.54 For Jameson, this autonomization
has resulted in “the cybernetic ‘revolution,’ the intensification of communi-
cations technology to the point at which capital transfers today abolishes [sic]

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space and time and can be virtually instantaneously effectuated from one
national zone to another.” It is this instantaneousness and total connectivity
that has driven many labs to incorporate advanced computing and network-
ing technologies (such as Celera), and it is this integration of biotech with
infotech that has brought companies such as IBM, Compaq, and Sun Microsys-
tems into the life sciences. If, in the biotech industry, finance capital and
laboratory research are interconnected, how does this connection transform
the “wet,” biological materials in the lab, the molecular bodies of life science
research?
One response is to suggest that it is in the unique, hybrid objects of the biotech
industry—genomic databases, DNA chips, automated protein analysis computers—
that genetic bodies and an immaterial labor intersect. In other words, the correla-
tions between bodies and capital, which enable a biotech industry to exist at
all, are currently mediated by computer and information technologies. The
use of such technologies is predicated on the assumption that a range of equiv-
alencies can be established between, say, a patented genetic sequence and the
marketing of that sequence through genetic-based drugs.
The opening example of Genentech illustrates this point in the correlation
between the molecular “tools” of the cell (the enzymes for cutting and pasting
genes) and the novel molecules produced through those tools (Genentech’s
human insulin product). The example of Genentech and recombinant DNA
technology is also helpful for another reason. The science behind Genentech—
recombinant DNA technologies—is based on the ability to insert, reinsert,
and recombine genetic sequences strategically to attain a desired end (for
instance, the production of a novel protein). Genentech is an example of a con-
stant modulation of the generative potentials of both science research and
capital accumulation; it is hypermarketing and product management infused
with laboratory technique. Boyer and Cohen’s challenge in forming Genen-
tech was not about making “health” or health care marketable; it was about
creating a context in which both science research and capital accumulation
would be reciprocally sensitive to each other, with a common goal of maxi-
mizing profits (medical and economic). Current biotech companies have real-
ized this connection, which is one explanation why the biotech industry is
focusing so heavily on the production of “silver bullet” drugs and is side-
stepping more complex, “messy” approaches such as systems biology.
Because this logic of correlating bodies and value inserts itself at multiple
sites within the biotech industry (just as a recombinant gene can insert itself

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in multiple ways within a strand of DNA), we might do better to refer to this
fusion of corporate biotechnology and information technology as recombinant
capital. Recombinant capital is not just the prevalence of online stock fluctu-
ations, speculations, and losses; it is a diverse business model that deals with
the informatics of biotechnology. At their roots, both recombinant capital and
bioinformatics begin with the worldview that everything is information—or,
to be more specific, that the world can be reduced to informational pattern,
a pattern that identifies the “essence” of, in this case, the human body. Such
a process involves a level of technical sophistication (for example, in convert-
ing DNA samples into computer databases), but, more than that, it requires
a constant process of correlation between medical value and economic value.
In an example such as the genome databases of Celera or Incyte, the process
of converting DNA samples into databases is also a process of creating a rela-
tionship between medical value (a possible gene target for a cancer drug) and
economic value (the profit potential of such a gene when it is patented).
Whether involving a sequence of DNA in the lab or a computer-generated
stock profile of a gene, medical value or stock value, information and infor-
mation technologies enable genetic sequences to be decoded and enable online
interactions within the market to fluctuate and interact. Thus, we might say
that the balancing act in the biotech industry between medical and economic
value is mediated by information technologies, which can establish modes of
correlating different value systems by converting everything into data.
This mode of informatic abstraction means that, technically speaking, both
recombinant capital and bioinformatics operate according to an encoding-
processing-decoding protocol. For example, a bioinformatics approach to
database management for one of the research centers in the HGP proceeds by
developing a way to translate genetic information into computer information.
Once that genetic body is encoded as computer information, it can then be
reconfigured and organized into a database structure.
Likewise, recombinant capital also encodes the genetic body, but in a much
more diluted manner. Many online hubs for the biotech industry list side by
side a daily update of research results or discoveries and stock quotes.55 As
may be expected, glowing reports on Phase III clinical trials for a gene-based
drug will show significant rises in stocks, whereas a failed merger between
two companies might show a decline. For example, the announcement in
March 2000 by President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair that geno-
mic sequence data should be “freely available to all” triggered a panicky

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downward slide in biotech stocks, especially in those companies such as Celera
and Incyte, which have built their entire stock portfolio on a genomic data-
base subscription model.56 The Clinton-Blair announcement is important not
for what it said (it said nothing new, of course), but for what it demonstrated
politically: a certain point of crisis in the discourse of biotech in the correla-
tions between medical and economic value systems.
This is one level of recombinant capital—that of online stock fluctuations,
which is often in direct correlation with either laboratory research results or
offline scientific discourse. But stock value must first be developed, or cul-
tured, so that an influx of stock investment can occur in the first place, and
this is the level where laboratory research becomes more fully integrated with
economic interest. For a biotech start-up, there must of course be something
to “sell,” something to garner potential investors’ attention and competitor
companies’ envy. This something can be a product—“owning” the genome
will certainly be an asset—but it can also be a service or technique—such as
genetic analysis or genetic profiling. It can also be related to technology devel-
opment, such as silicon-based microarrays or DNA chips. Bioinformatics
carries this next step, as the traditional biological “wet” labs become more
computerized, with the advent of “labs on a chip.” That is, once genetics
is successfully translated into a problem of informatics, programming, and
digital encoding, working with biological materials in the lab becomes
abstracted into working with code on a monitor.
As with other restricted-access e-commerce models, the most in-demand
data will be the most valuable and even the most costly to access and down-
load. This will create a real-time value-assessment model in which each click
by a researcher will correspond in some way to the fluctuations of value in the
data accessed and of the overall value of the company hosting the database.
In this situation, the database-subscription business model is simultaneously
research and real-time stock and pricing adjustment. The end result is that
the most expensive and most costly research will be dictated first by economic
negotiations, second by data-access privileges, and last by a consideration of
the disease or gene being studied. The trend clearly foreseeable here is that
research done on certain genes or gene-based drugs will prosper, only because
they yield from the beginning a low-risk, cost-effective guarantee of success
in clinical trials, U.S. FDA approval, and market utility. Research of more
complex diseases such as AIDS or the study of more complex biochemical
pathways (in which genes are not the central component) will be assessed as

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high-risk endeavors, highly unpredictable, and unlikely to turn any returns
in the near future. A shift in research will then be encouraged, from knowl-
edge-based medical models of healing to the full-fledged investment in tem-
porary, genetically specific drugs that have their own built-in obsolescence.
Does the biotech industry really have anything to sell to begin with?

A Biovalorization of All Values

As a way of looking at this network between bodies, data, and value, consider
the recent strategy employed by some biotech companies to develop partici-
patory models for DNA sampling. During the summer of 2000, DNA Solu-
tions, Inc., announced the creation of the Gene Trust, the first large-scale,
organized DNA sample bank.57 It is based on a volunteer model, and inter-
ested individuals can register and send in blood samples for DNA analysis and
archiving. As an information business, the Gene Trust will gather genetic
samples from a range of individuals with a range of medical conditions. Such
information will help pharmaceutical companies and research laboratories to
speed up the process of therapeutics, drug development, and clinical trials.
Although on the research and development side the Gene Trust is exem-
plary of many biotech endeavors, on the consumer-patient side it is at the fore-
front of producing a new type of relationship between medical practice and
the biomedical patient. In short, the patient or consumer—who supposedly
takes part in and ultimately benefits from the Gene Trust—enters into a
unique relationship with his or her own information. The medical patient
becomes a data patient.
The data patient is characterized by several constraints, all of which relate
to the relationship between patient body and the medical use of computer
technology. First, the physical, biological body of the medical patient must
be translatable into computer-based information. Anything that cannot be
encoded will be either designated as supplemental or fully excised from the
data patient’s profile. All medical diagnosis, treatment, and communication
in the telemedical context will then take place via information and informa-
tion technology. This means that even personal consultation may involve
remote physicians or technicians. One of the top priorities of medical treat-
ment will therefore be the dataset relating to the patient. In addition, the data
patient will constantly be mirrored by an electronic double, his or her digital
profile. In a sense, the real patient will have to negotiate constantly with this

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data double, so that they correspond to each other. This means changing the
data in computers, especially when those data are used to make important
health-related decisions.
The cycle starts when the medical patient’s genetic body is sampled and
encoded. From there, a loop is initiated in which the patient’s biological body
must always first answer to his or her telemedical profile. The types of drugs
needed or the types of therapy best suited to this patient will be decided at
the level of informatics first and foremost (this is the basic logic of pharma-
cogenomics). The patient’s biological body will have been diagnosed and
treated with no mention of the phenomenal condition of embodiment, the
blatant gap that currently exists between “wet” genetic molecules and digital
codes, or the dynamic and flexible quality of the body.
The point here is not simply to go back to those precomputer days of
Galenic bedside medicine, endlessly listening to the patient’s testimonies. But
we should also be very astute in assessing the ways in which this complex of
biological science and information technology structures a certain narrative of
progress. The data patient in genetic therapeutics and telemedicine presents
us with a classical case of Baudrillardian simulation, where the simulacrum
not only verifies the real (what is real comes to be what can be perfectly sim-
ulated), but also threatens to blur the real/simulated distinction.58 Because
patient data cycle back on and ultimately affect the physical, real patient, there
is a confusion of where to locate the object of medical attention; in a sense,
the real patient is preceded by the data patient.
As its name indicates, the Gene Trust represents itself as a form of volun-
tary, altruistic investment. As a long-standing legal concept, a “trust” involves
a relationship between a property owner and a property manager, where the
latter is entrusted with the property of the former, with benefits going pri-
marily to the property owner (in the same way that one entrusts one’s finances
or one’s business to someone else).
An investment trust (also called a closed-end trust) involves a financial
organization that gathers the funds of its shareholders and then invests them
in a diversified securities portfolio. Simply put, securities (such as stocks)
confer ownership of something that is not in the owner’s immediate posses-
sion; it is a means of rendering property and materiality virtual. The owner
of a stock can, theoretically, demand the right to receive the property desig-
nated in the stock, or, of course, the stock can be traded. As such, stocks can
take on a free-floating fluidity, as informational value units, which signifi-

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cantly, if only momentarily, detaches them from any material substantiation.
Most investment trusts hand over the majority of the management and control
of the funds to the financial organization. With a fixed number of shares, the
value of the portfolio will depend on the status of the supply and demand for
certain types of shares in the market.
We are already witnessing a massive virtualization of finance capital (the
actual technological implementation in e-trading is perhaps only its latest
phase). What happens when we consider an investment trust based on the
body? As patenting debates in the past have illustrated, one of the first trans-
formations is that the body becomes, more specifically, biological property.
Bodies as objects certainly have their own convoluted history (in labor, sexu-
ality, cultural stereotyping, etc.), but in the case of the Gene Trust the body
is simultaneously genetic and informatic. It is genetic because what the Gene
Trust is interested in is not personal testimony, patient-described symptoms,
or even past medical records. The Gene Trust is centrally interested in a molec-
ular pattern that is commonly “read” as a sequence of letters. In contempo-
rary biotech research, this reading of molecules also means that DNA is
translated into information, for computer-based analysis and diagnostics. This
translation is a kind of body, framed by informatic and economic concerns,
which we might call a “bioinformatic body.” As the basic logic of the legal
trust indicates, the ownership of this biological property is defined by its
absence (the stock holder does not actually have the property designated in
the stock).
The Gene Trust’s central asset will be its databases and the diagnostic and
medical information it can tease out of that genetic data. What the Gene Trust
volunteer donates is less his or her body and more bioinformatic value. Under
a broad category of medical altruism, the Gene Trust promises a future of
humanistic returns (the DNA sample you supply now could save a life in the
future). In the meanwhile, the more short-term circulation of biodata enables
the Gene Trust, as a privately funded venture, to gain immediate economic
returns.
The Gene Trust, though it may communicate the best of intentions, actu-
ally has a twofold agenda, in that it uses investment in two different ways. First
and foremost, the Gene Trust presents itself through a rhetoric of an altruis-
tic, biomedical humanism. The investment alluded to here is made possible
by the overarching category of collective human well-being. At its basis
is a biological essentialism, which implies that because we all are the same

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genetically, volunteering for the Gene Trust is an investment in the future of
human health. In fact, the sound-bite advertising phrases on the Web site
push forth micronarratives (the young woman whose aunt has Alzheimer’s and
who is thus gaining a sense of “participating in history” by helping researchers
combat disease). All of us have had some experience with the often traumatic
effects of disease and the death of those close to us. Despite this, however,
neither the human genome projects nor their spin-offs such as the Gene Trust
have mentioned the fact that scientific research still does not know for sure
whether genes “cause” devastating diseases such as cancer. And researchers
have yet to consider both the complex effects of biological networks and envi-
ronmental influences in a serious manner.
What are the dynamics of change when a novel technology is introduced,
via recombinant capital, into biotech research? The introduction of biologic-
informatic hybrids as part and parcel of biotech research has meant something
different; it has meant that the data produced through biotech research always
have a direct, linear, and causal relationship to the development of systems
for generating biovalue (mostly with pharmaceutical corporations and genetic
drug development). We can see this not only in the primary interests of DNA
chips (efficiency, cost-effectiveness, instantaneous results), but in the kinds of
data they produce, suited for their adaptive utilization in genetic drugs and
preventive medicine.59 In this sense, the data produced by DNA chip and
related technologies resemble demographics or statistics: a selected range of
analytical categories (gene sequence, gene frequency, iterative patterns) com-
poses a genetic profile of a DNA sample. Once a greater number of genes are
“discovered” to have direct and indirect relationships to a wide range of
“disorders,” it is only a step toward seeing something such as DNA chips as
sociobiological surveillance systems—biopolitical modes of regulating and
accounting for individuals and populations.
Thus, one of the primary issues in projects such as the Gene Trust, is the
ways in which recombinant capital can adaptively insert itself into a range of
contexts, from hard lab research to the highest ethers of finance capital. In
doing so, it scans, cuts, and recombines the resources inherent in fields such
as genomics, articulating them as information-based solutions to an ideology
whereby disease is fully accounted for through genes. In recombinant capital,
sociobiological perspectives allow for the quick development of commercial
health-care models based on a simple model of mechanical addition or block-
age through genetic drugs.

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 Biomaterial Labor, or Living Dead Labor

It will be helpful to summarize some of my main points thus far. In the biotech
industry, we see—in instances such as genetic engineering (e.g., Genentech),
patenting, genetic testing, and gene banking (e.g., the Gene Trust)—a con-
tinual negotiation between economic and medical value. How is “life itself”
positioned in this tension-filled zone? In the case of banking endeavors such
as the Gene Trust or Celera’s high-tech genome project, we see biological “life
itself” inserted at multiple points: in biological samples from patient volun-
teers, in extracted DNA in test tubes or plasmid libraries, in digital DNA in
computer databases, in bioinformatics software analyzing DNA, in molecular
modeling applications, in genetic screens utilizing DNA chips, and so forth.
It seems, then, that “life itself” is constantly positioned between medical
and economic value: life situated between labor and capital. Again, I want to
note the twofold tendency of biotechnology in this regard: on the one hand a
thoroughly informatic view of biology and on the other hand an informatic
view of biology that is nevertheless not immaterial. If we take all this into
consideration, what is the role of “life itself” in the nexus of life, labor, and
capital?
We can now begin to address this question by considering Marx’s notion
of living labor elaborated earlier and the notion of immaterial labor in the
Italian autonomist tradition in relation to contemporary biotechnology. As
seen previously, Marx makes a number of important contributions to our
general understanding of the role of technological development in the rela-
tion between labor and capital. In particular, he sets up two relationships that
take on new meaning in the context of biotechnology. The first relationship
is that between living labor and dead labor, with the latter represented by
machinery. Although this relationship certainly can take the more familiar
Luddite form of a replacement of humans by machines, Marx also notes how
it qualitatively changes human labor, in effect opening onto activities defined
by control, regulation, and intellectual labor.
However, Marx also generates some ambiguity in his distinctions between
living labor and labor power as well. On the one hand, living labor is always
conceived of by capital as potential labor power, labor that is a commodity,
labor that is made amenable to a quantitative exchange in wages. Yet, on
the other hand, capital never totally subsumes labor, if only because labor
is defined temporally and is always potential. This tension, highlighted by

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Italian autonomist Marxism, is a tension between labor and capital. In the
context of the biotech industry, we can see how living labor as “life itself” is
inserted in between labor and capital.
Marx’s formulation has taken on new dimensions in the wake of discus-
sions over postindustrialism, globalization, and empire. We have seen how
Maurizio Lazzarato has used the term immaterial labor to describe these qual-
itative changes in labor focused on the communications, computational, and
service-based industries. Immaterial labor involves not just the transforma-
tion of corporeal, living labor into labor power, but the transformation of
living, intellectual labor into terms set by capital. It is for this reason that
Hardt and Negri describe immaterial labor as biopolitical.
However, the biotech industry shows us yet a further transformation in the
nature of labor (living labor, labor power, and dead labor). Consider a range
of technologies in the biotech industry, all of which make use of some bio-
logical process as the core of their mode of production:

 PCR (polymerase chain reaction), a technology developed in the early

1980s at the Cetus Corporation for efficiently and rapidly copying any desired
DNA sequence (see figure 5.1). PCR makes use of simple DNA base-pair com-
plementarity to replicate thousands of copies of any desired segment of DNA
for laboratory research. PCR is common in any molecular biology lab today
(and requires a license, depending on the type of cycler purchased).
 Bioreactors, laboratory devices that re-create the internal conditions of cells
(temperature, moisture, growth medium, etc.). By simulating the biological
conditions of a cell, bioreactors enable various molecular interactions to take
place in the lab that would “naturally” take place in the body.
 Cell lines, or the use of molecular biology techniques to create a viable cell
culture from a single cell sample. The use of cell lines is common in the
construction of biological banks or libraries of cells (e.g., the American
Type Culture Collection), and is a common resource for laboratory research.
Cell lines that are able to replicate indefinitely through the modification of
chromosomal telomeres are often called “immortal” cell lines.
 The burgeoning field of regenerative medicine, which has attracted atten-
tion for the most part from research into stem cells, or those cells that exist
in an undifferentiated state and that can, with the right prompting, be con-
trolled in a way that directs their differentiation process so that they become
bone, cartilage, or muscle cells.

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 DNA Amplification Using Polymerase Chain Reaction

Reaction mixture contains target TARGET DNA

DNA sequence to be amplified,
two primers (P1, P2) and
heat-stable Taq polymerase
P1 Taq P2
Reaction mixture is heated
to 95C to denature target
DNA. Subsequent cooling
to 37C allows primers to
hybridize to complementary
sequences in target DNA
FIRST CYCLE

When heated to 72C, Taq polymerase extends

complementary strands from primers
First synthesis cycle results
in two copies of
target DNA sequence

DENATURE
DNA

HYBRIDIZE
PRIMERS
SECOND CYCLE

EXTEND
NEW DNA
STRANDS

Second synthesis cycle

results in four copies of
target DNA sequence

Figure 5.1 The “labor” of DNA in PCR. Image courtesy of the U.S. DOE Genome Program,
http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis.

In each of these cases, we see plenty of technology at work—thermal cyclers,

incubators, computers, and so forth. But more important, we also see a range
of technologies that have some biological process at their center—cellular
replication, cellular differentiation, DNA annealing and ligating. In other
words, without these core, biological processes—processes that occur routinely
in the living body—there would be no biotechnologies, no regenerative
medicine without cellular differentiation, no PCR without DNA base pair
bonding, no bioreactors without cellular metabolism. In the short history of
the biotech industry, the well-known examples of the production of human

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insulin, HGH, and other genetic engineering feats are a demonstration of the
ways in which “naturally occurring” biological processes are harnessed and
made to work in the context of a biotechnology industry. Transgenics, GM
foods, and regenerative medicine are currently following suit.
But this is certainly not the only kind of activity that takes place in
the biotechnology lab. Within the biotech industry, we can identify several
different kinds of labor. There is, first, modern factory labor involving the
production of either goods such as prescription drugs or tools such as gene
sequencing computers (intersecting with the information technology indus-
try). The worker who performs this labor might formally correspond to what
Negri calls the “mass worker.”60 Second, there is the immaterial labor
surrounding the marketing, promotion, design, and public-relations factors
of the pharmaceutical industry, focusing mostly on drugs and diagnostics.
However, the role of information technologies is increasingly becoming a key
part of this labor as well (e.g., databases, software design, data services, pro-
gramming), as the fields of genomics, proteomics, and pharmacogenomics are
attempting to show. Along with these two types of labor, there is also the
more highly skilled labor that takes place in labs, be they at universities,
research institutes, or biotech companies. These jobs include principal inves-
tigators, administrators, professors, lab technicians, student assistants, work
studies, and so forth, formally akin to Negri’s “professional worker.” Both in
the lab (research) and outside of the lab (grant writing, affiliations, patent
applications), these jobs require a combination of education and skilled expe-
rience. Finally, as a special category, we might also mention those workers in
the medicine and health-care sectors who are often the endpoint of biotech
research (e.g., prescribing new drugs, requiring tests, analyzing biological
samples, nursing, and coordinating health insurance). Although these jobs
are also skilled jobs, they exist apart from the basic lab research we see in
genomics, proteomics, or bioinformatics. However, in the case of the medical
application of biotechnology, they are connected because they serve as the
point of contact between a biotechnology and an individual patient.
Clearly, there are many types of labor involved in the biotech industry.
However, in some sense, none of this is new, for every industry arguably
has this sort of breakdown—a combination of conventional and contemporary
forms of labor. What is it, then, that makes the biotech industry unique? One
possible answer is that all these types of labor in the biotech industry revolve

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around a more fundamental type of labor: the specific type of labor performed
routinely by cells, proteins, and DNA. In other words, biotechnology is
unique in that it bypasses altogether the division between humans and
machines, or between human living labor and the dead labor of machinery of
which Marx spoke. Certainly, in any molecular biology or genetics lab, one
will find an array of technologies, including familiar tools such as pipettes,
the centrifuge, or cell cultures, as well as more modern tools such as thermal
cyclers, oligonucleotide synthesizers, and entire labs full of networked per-
sonal computers. Therefore, to state simply that the biotech industry ignores
technology is inaccurate. What is important to note is that each of these tech-
nologies is predicated on a deceptively simple principle: that the “naturally
occurring” processes of biology at the molecular and genetic levels can be
recontextualized in such a way so as to transform them into an instrument, a
technology.
If we accept Marx’s points concerning the labor-capital relationship and the
more contemporary formulation of “immaterial labor,” then we might ask
how the situation has changed in the current biotech industry, an industry
that produces novel artifacts—biotechnologies—that seem to fulfill Marx’s
description of a mechanical “organism” and yet at the same time frustrate any
clear division between living and dead labor. Right away we can note a number
of differences between Marx’s characterization of industrialism and the biotech
industry. In the biotech industry,

 Biology is the motive force, the method, the medium. Biology is what
drives production. Biology is the source material.
 Biology is the process of production. Biology is not replaced by machin-
ery, but it replaces machines. Biology is the technology.
 Biology is the product, the endpoint, and the aim. Biology does not aim
to produce a material good or a service, but, above all, more biology.

The result is a vision of biotechnology in which biology is the technology.

What characterizes the current biotech industry is that the technology that
biology is, is seen to be informatic. In the biotech industry, biology is the
technology, and that technology is informatic, without ever becoming purely
immaterial. Instead of an immaterial labor that is concentrated in the com-
puter and information industries, we see a biomaterial labor that brings together

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the emphasis on informatization with the novel ways in which biological
“life itself” is radically recontextualized in genetic engineering, genomics,
and bioinformatics.
Within the biotech industry, the existence of this uncanny, “living” labor
of cells, enzymes, and genes is an indicator that the relationship between life,
labor, and capital is undergoing some significant changes. In biotechnology,
labor power is produced through cells lines, transgenics, recombinant DNA,
PCR, and genome databases. The results appear to be products and services
like any other: prescription drugs, genetic diagnostics, cell- or gene-based
therapies, and novel in vitro and in vivo means of producing antibodies and
other compounds for medical use. The notion of biomaterial labor is meant
to indicate these significant shifts in the labor-capital relation within the
biotech industry (which does not exclude government-funded or university-
based research).
What does this literal biotechnology produce? On one level, it produces
information—test results, experiment results, assay results—which is then used
to perform more experiments, leading (it is hoped) to the development of an
application such as a biomarker for drug targeting. On another level, however,
this biotechnology simply produces biology—it produces itself, or, rather, it
generates the conditions for the subsequent instrumentalization of biology.
The interest in biotechnology from a scientific view is that it is not simply “used
up” in one experiment, but forms a whole panoply of techniques and experi-
mental systems for research. The development of cell cultures is one example,
in which specific foreign DNA can be maintained in culture indefinitely.
The biotech industry produces not just products or services (though it does
produce both, certainly), but above all biology: drugs, therapies, cells, tissues,
organs, and information. The core of the production process in the biotech
industry is that it is fully constituted by biology: biology is what produces, it
is how production occurs, and it is what is produced. Biology is the technology in
biotech, but that technology is, at its core, biological.
The core of the biotech industry is biological “life itself,” or, put another
way, the economic uses of “life itself.” As an industry, biotechnology is
markedly different from nineteenth-century industrialism or early-twentieth-
century automation, but it is nevertheless an industry, one built around the
ability to harness biology (see table 5.1). The key to understanding the biotech
industry as an economic endeavor is this basic approach of providing the con-
ditions in which “life itself” can become productive, living labor. In the case

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Table 5.1 Biomaterial Labor

Period Industrialism Postindustrialism Biotech

industry
Type Material labor Immaterial labor Biomaterial
labor
Modality Dead labor Vital labor Living dead
labor
Products Material goods Information; services “life itself”
Resources Raw materials Information Bioinformation
Science Physics; Computer science; Biology;
thermodynamics informatics genetics
Affect Alienation Signification; Life as
communication technology;
life as
instrumental
Aim Surplus value Informational valorization; Biological
circulation of information valorization
Level Economic base Culture industry Medicalization
Examples Weaving and Internet Service Providers; Drug R&D;
textiles; computer and software database
automobile industry; management; services;
factory design patents
Form Physical, Intellectual, Biological,
corporeal, communicational, cellular,
manual labor affective labor enzymatic,
genetic labor
Extreme Robot Intelligent computers Clone army
cases workforce (Colossus; Tron) (Brave New
(science (R.U.R.; World; Blade
fiction) Metropolis) Runner)

of biotechnology, living labor actually means the work performed by biology:

mammalian bioreactors, transgenic lab animals, immortalized cell lines, lab-
grown tissues and organs, and the bioinformatic labor of cells, enzymes, and
DNA. But if this is the case, then what is the difference between contempo-
rary genomics and ancient practices of agriculture and fermentation? The
history of molecular genetics provides us with one important difference: the
role played by information in relation to “life itself.” If one of the primary
innovations of molecular biology was the emphasis on sequences, codes, and

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messages in DNA, then it follows that this informatic understanding of
biology can be further expanded in plasmid libraries, genome databases, and
genetically engineered animals. What differentiates the living labor of the
biotech industry from earlier forms of classical biotechnology is the emphasis
on an informatic—but not immaterial—understanding of biological “life itself.”
This emphasis is historically accompanied by the way in which the biotech
industry combines the “immaterial labor” of the computer and information
technology industries with the newly emerging biomaterial labor of cells,
enzymes, and DNA.
At the same time, biomaterial labor raises a set of complicated questions.
For instance, in biomaterial labor, biology performs work, and yet there is no
worker, no subject; biomaterial labor is strangely nonhuman. Who sells the
labor power of biomaterial labor? We have a situation in which there is living
labor without subjectivity. If biomaterial labor is a labor power in the biotech
industry, and if there is no human subject or wage, is there still exploitation
and alienation? Is biology always already biomaterial labor? In biomaterial
labor, has this twofold change—the nonhuman scale of genes and the role of
informatics—altered the quality of human subjects’ labor in the biotech
industry?
Another question: Does biomaterial labor configure biological “life itself”
as more natural or more artificial? Consider the arguments for and against
patents in the biotech industry. On the one hand, patents for, say, transgenic
plants, animals, and microbes are seen to be safe and useful, in part because
they are fully biological and thus bear some close relation to “nature.” Yet, in
order to fulfill the criteria for patentability, scientists must show that their
inventions are “new, useful, and nonobvious”—in short, that they are artifi-
cial. Biomaterial labor—and by extension the biotech industry—presents us
with the paradoxical notion of a “life itself” that is both transparent and yet
totally mediated.
Finally, at the level of ontology, biomaterial labor points to a qualitatively
different type of estrangement, a biological estrangement (indeed, biology
generally can be understood as the estrangement of “life itself”). The very fact
that your “own” body parts (cells, DNA) can be patented without your knowl-
edge implies a unique type of separation between biology and embodiment.
Biomaterial labor gives us a paradoxical life without agency, a “life itself” that
is always already objectified in the lab, even as your cells outside you are trans-
planted back into your body (as in tissue engineering).

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 Coda: Nonorganic Life and Its Discontents

The motto of biotechnology, as an industry, is “nature does it better.” What

this means is that biological knowledge plays a key role in articulating what
exactly nature (or biology) does, or how, exactly, biology can be understood
as a productive and value-generating process.
The rhetoric of “DNA as information” is now a given in biotech research,
as it is in textbooks and even popular culture. Despite many researchers’ con-
certed efforts to state that the individual is not, in fact, determined by his or
her DNA, a powerful cultural mytheme has developed around the centrality
of DNA in forming the individual and collective (species) subject. Many
critics have brought up the problems inherent in this information-based view
of genetic life, and, as Evelyn Fox Keller and Lily Kay have shown, the notion
of a genetic “code” emerged out of a complex set of historical, institutional,
and disciplinary contexts during the postwar era.61 One of the central tensions
in this consideration of a genetic code or a genetic program is the dichotomy
it sets up between organic and nonorganic matter. Science fiction has given
us many intelligent machines, but there is still a basic division between
carbon-based and silicon-based systems, the former assumedly existing “in
nature” (that is, supposedly preexisting technology) and the latter an inven-
tion by human beings.
In an essay on “nonorganic life” (a term borrowed from Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari), Manuel De Landa suggests that recent research into chaos and
self-organizing systems (from cloud patterns to wave solitons to “chemical
clocks”) forms a significant paradigm shift in the traditional notions of what
is meant by living and nonliving.62 De Landa shows that such systems, which
display complex patterning and dynamic interactions with their environment,
are more than automated reactions. They show how dynamic processes such
as bifurcations, attractors, and so on can create the condition for self-
organization and emergence; in effect, these “nonorganic” systems display evo-
lutionary patterning. As De Landa states, “what is important for our purposes,
though, is that both periodic and non-periodic oscillations and coherent struc-
tures are among the unexpected possible behaviors of ‘inert’ matter, behaviors
of which we have only become recently aware. Matter, as it turns out, can
‘express’ itself in complex and creative ways . . .”63
When this research is combined with research into cognitive science and
artificial intelligence, the boundary between the living and nonliving becomes

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even more blurred. The direction De Landa takes, however, does not simply
culminate in the anthropomorphic, humanist subject. Instead, systems such
as geological formations, crowds, insects, highways, sand dunes, computer
networks, cell metabolism, and the economy display unique sets of dynamic
structuration that, from one perspective, might contentiously be called “life.”
I might then suggest that what I have been calling biomaterial labor—
“informed” by recombinant capital—is a symptom of a more fundamental
crisis concerning the boundary management between the living and nonliv-
ing. The biotech industry needs effectively to separate the human and tech-
nological, the living and nonliving, in order that biotechnologies can be
clearly seen as simple, nonthreatening tools or medicines in the service of the
betterment of human health. Although a noble cause in which motive is not
the issue, this kind of separation is simply not possible if we begin to con-
sider the actual techniques, technologies, and discourse of informatics that
pervade current research.
The confusion between medical value and economic value can thus be seen
as a confusion between living and nonliving systems. The current integration
of information technology and biotechnology has brought us the challenge of
rethinking the still-active vitalist ideology in the life sciences. The question
is not whether or not vitalist-based approaches to life are in themselves good
or bad; the question is whether the ideological division between living and
nonliving that vitalist thought highlights is the best approach to dealing with
contemporary biotech. This is especially so in biotechnology research, where
blood and tissue samples, DNA sequencing computers, “immortalized” stem
cells, online genomic databases, and an array of biological-technological
hybrids are in the process of redefining the conventional distinctions between
humans and machine, nature and technics.
Biomaterial labor asks us to consider Marx’s concepts of “living labor” in
a technoscientific way. Whereas Marx’s early writings experimented with
underappreciated concepts such as “species being,” and the “inorganic body”
of human labor, the later Marx employed the frequently used metaphor of
“social metabolism” in Capital. Perhaps this is the moment in which to revise
Marx’s biologically inspired concepts with an eye toward the biotech indus-
try. Biomaterial labor asks us to consider the labor-capital relationship not
just at the level of factory work or the service sector, but at the core of biotech-
nology’s production process.

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 In light of Italian autonomism’s emphasis on the resistant, creative capac-
ities of labor, biomaterial labor also encourages us to ask how the nonhuman
domain of cells, enzymes, and genes displays a different sort of “resistance.”
Can the “complex” properties of biological “life itself”—metabolic networks,
biopathways, single-point mutations, immunoknowledge, protein folding—
offer a resistance to the genecentric and reductionist approaches taken by the
biotech and pharmaceutical industries?
Finally, biomaterial labor asks us to rethink the relation between the human
and the nonhuman in the cycles of life, labor, and capital. It asks us to inno-
vate new ways of thinking about the connections between a sequence of DNA,
a genome database, a gene patent, a genetic test, an individual patient, an
illness, and the economics of health care.

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 6

Bioinfowar: Biologically Enhancing

National Security

Honorific Body, Horrific Body

The Crazies (1973, retitled Code Name: Trixie), an underrated film by the cult
director George Romero, portrays the events that ensue when a top-secret mil-
itary bioweapon is accidentally released in a midwestern American town. Once
released, the bioweapon turns the townspeople into raving mad zombies who
seem to devour everything in their path, including human flesh. As in many
films in the “zombie” genre, The Crazies contains a number of familiar motifs:
an incompetent military unable to control the outbreak, a small group of civil-
ian “survivors,” a doctor struggling against state bureaucracy to find a cure,
and of course the “silent majority” of the zombies—this time in the guise of
the sick and the ill, rather than the living dead.1
What makes The Crazies noteworthy is the way in which it portrays the
network properties of what is now known as the biotech industry. An engi-
neered bioweapon spreads among the townspeople via biological networks of
infection. Once the military arrives, it establishes communications networks
with government agencies to facilitate the disaster management; within the
area of the town, the military and local police set up perimeters and quaran-
tine (see figure 6.1), as well as chaotic emergency medical stations and holding
pens (a high school biology lab serves as the site for the development of a
vaccine). All of this is, however, to no avail, for, as in many of Romero’s films,
the zombies slowly, steadily triumph through a fleshy network of infection,
cannibalism, and slow-motion pursuit.
Figure 6.1 The convolution of military and medicine in George Romero’s 1973 film The
Crazies.

Romero’s film was made one year after the 1972 Biological and Toxin
Weapons Convention (or Biological Weapons Convention, BWC), which
prohibited nations from stockpiling, developing, or producing biological
weapons, except for “prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes.”2 The
film was also made at the same time that the first recombinant DNA exper-
iments were being published, which would raise a host of ethical, social, and
political questions in the larger public sphere surrounding biotechnology.3 The
Crazies picks up on the outbreak or “medical thriller” genre, but it also com-
bines this genre with Romero’s rich use of the zombie metaphor. We as viewers
are never really told what the experimental bioweapon is, and the communi-
cations by the military to the government are as mysterious as the acciden-
tally released bioweapon. In effect, both the nature of the bioweapon/epidemic
and the nature of military communications are as alienating as the zombies
themselves.
Compare this context to that of the 2002 release 28 Days Later, another
zombie-epidemic film, directed by Danny Boyle. Set between London and
Manchester, the film also features a mysterious, experimental virus—the “rage

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virus”—that seems to be as much induced by violent media images as it is
triggered by a biological agent. The film combines several subgenres: the
apocalyptic “last man” scenario, the outbreak or medical thriller film, and of
course the zombie film.4 Like the zombies in Romero’s films, the “infected”
in 28 Days Later are turned into rabid, lifeless, flesh-eating creatures, except
that in the age of digital media the infection happens within seconds, and the
infected move significantly more quickly than Romero’s zombies (figure 6.2).
But, like Romero’s The Crazies (as well as Day of the Dead), the military is fea-
tured in a highly problematic light, at once establishing sovereignty over the
crisis and authorizing violence of all kinds.
Released first in Great Britain, then in the United States, 28 Days Later
appeared the same year that the U.S. government passed the 2002 Bioterror-
ism Act.5 Among other things, the Bioterrorism Act has provided the con-
ditions for an increase in research into biological warfare and potential
bioterrorist agents, while also boosting the regulation and oversight of bio-
logical materials (agriculture, livestock, microbes) distributed in the United
States. A number of U.S. government legislations—from Project BioShield to

Figure 6.2 War, the plague, and the abandoned city in Danny Boyle’s 2002 film 28 Days
Later.

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subdepartments within the Department of Homeland Security—have fur-
thered the “war against terror” by making funds available for the construc-
tion of “next-generation medical countermeasures” (new vaccines and
therapies), a streamlined FDA approval system for such drugs, and upgrad-
ing current “disease surveillance capabilities.”6
So, then, we have, arguably, two eras, two different kinds of war, repre-
sented in popular culture by two different films. If the BWC is scientifically
contextualized by genetic engineering, then the Bioterrorism Act is likewise
contextualized by genomics, bioinformatics, and computer-driven drug devel-
opment. If the BWC implicitly supported “defensive” bioweapons programs
(of which the U.S. program is by far the largest and most exhaustive), then
the Bioterrorist Act supports broad government and even civilian “counter-
measures.” If the BWC still harbored within it the language of Cold War pol-
itics, the Bioterrorist Act actively identifies “a new enemy” in the distributed
network of international terrorism.
In both cases, however, there is an important similarity: the establishment
of political sovereignty in the “state of emergency.”7 This state of emergency
is defined by an explicitly biological threat to the body politic, and in this
sense all war is biological war. Indeed, one of the arguments of this chapter
is that a biologically derived notion of political conflict is what defines this
type of sovereignty. Michel Foucault refers to this nexus of biology, politics,
and war as a form of “biopolitics.” It not only results in a permanent state of
emergency, but also induces widespread societal fear, an imperative on health
surveillance, and a culture of body anxiety. Although there is no question that
terrorism generally and bioterrorism specifically represent a threat to peace
efforts, it is also important to understand the forms of power engendered by
these threats and by this biological security.
In a sense, the hegemonic role of genetic science represents two sides of
this current biopolitical condition. On the one hand, the beginning of the
twenty-first century saw the completion of the sequencing of the human
genome, which many lauded as a landmark in scientific endeavor. This is what
we might call the “honorific body,” the body—or rather genome—built up
from the accumulation of knowledge and aided by technological advance. On
the other hand, a string of bioterrorist attacks worldwide—several by uniden-
tified terrorists in the United States, by the Iraqi government against the
Kurds, by a religious cult in Japan—points to a “horrific body,” a body that
is suddenly and unexpectedly rendered vulnerable by invisible bioweapons.

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On the one hand, we see the honorific body celebrated in the boom of the
biotech industry—new discoveries, new tools, new drugs, and so on. On the
other hand, we see the horrific body manifest itself in popular culture (e.g.,
the television serial 24), military wargames (e.g., Homeland Security’s Dark
Winter), and actual terrorist attacks.
This polarized view of the role of science vis-à-vis politics and war has led
a number of government agencies, nonprofits, and professional associations to
talk about a “new type of threat.” For instance, the WHO released a series of
agenda items and memos in 2002 relating to the ways that local and inter-
national governments can strengthen their defenses against bioterrorism.8 The
WHO pointed to two main strategies: increased or tighter regulations on agri-
culture, food, and livestock, and the development of information systems for
tracking outbreaks, be they natural or artificial. For some years, the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been developing the latter, including
the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS), which gathers
medical data on patients nationwide as a means of profiling worst-case sce-
narios and potential bioterrorist targets.9 This concern for deterring potential
attacks has also been expressed by the British Medical Association (BMA). In
one report, published prior to September 11, the BMA authors noted the pos-
sibility that information derived from the human genome could be used to
target specific populations.10
In short, there is a growing tendency to acknowledge the specificity of the
threat that biowar generally and bioterrorism specifically represent. But at
the same time that governments install preparedness protocols, surveillance
systems, preemptive vaccinations, and defensive research programs, it is also
important to ask how the “new threat” represented by biowar is changing the
relationship between politics, war, and biology. If Foucault broadly describes
biopolitics as the moment in which “biological existence is reflected in politi-
cal existence,” then it is also important to ask how bioterrorism, genomics, data
networks, and health organizations constitute a type of biopolitics in which the
twofold character of biology and informatics is foregrounded. As a step toward
exploring this question, let us first consider biowar in all its complexity.

Weaponizing the Body: Levels of Biological Warfare

A point of clarification: throughout this chapter, I use the term biowar to refer
broadly to all forms of biological warfare as well as to bioterrorism. My

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intention is to identify a term that emphasizes the way in which some knowl-
edge of biology or biological thinking pervades and conditions thinking about
war, especially in an instrumental sense. At other times, I distinguish quite
sharply between biological warfare and bioterrorism. Each arguably has a differ-
ent conceptual core—the former defined by what Foucault calls a “race war,”
and the latter by the vulnerability of biology or “life itself.” There are, cer-
tainly, many other differences between them, one of which is that biological
warfare has been traditionally defined as a war between nations, whereas
bioterrorism is not a nation-to-nation war, but a war waged against nations
by non-nation-state actors.
What makes biowar unique is that it is not simply another way to wage
war or to destroy large groups of soldiers, civilians, or regions; it is the direct
application of biology to the practice of war. In one sense, this is already appar-
ent: the very definition of biotechnology—from premodern techniques of breed-
ing to modern gene therapy—is the use of natural, biological processes for
human ends. Unlike chemical warfare, biowar uses living elements and life
forms, most often bacteria and viruses, as the agents or weapons themselves.
These biological agents are effective, however, only when they act upon other
life forms, other biologies. This is the unique character of biowar: biology is
both the weapon and the target, biological life acting upon biological life (or,
rather, biological “life itself” acting upon biological “death itself”). This means
that the extent of the damage inflicted and the range of effects that can be
achieved are significantly expanded. An effective, infectious agent can cover
much more ground than a single explosion, especially when we take into
account transportation technologies such as air travel. The presence of some
biological agents have a longer incubation period, which makes it more dif-
ficult to detect biological agents when they are released. An outbreak may
already be well under way before it is identified as a biological attack.
This is one of the greatest points of anxiety within all discussions of biowar
and biotechnology generally: the irresponsible or maliciously motivated
implementation of novel biotechnologies and the range of unforeseen, possi-
bly devastating results that may arise from integrating engineered organisms
into the human body, into human communities, into livestock, into plants,
or into the environment. There is, to be sure, good cause to fear the potential
effects of the new bioweapons, and their descriptions are often accompanied
with a great deal of dramatic flair. Richard Preston, a writer known for his
fictional works, describes a near outbreak of Ebola in a Washington, D.C.,

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suburb in his book The Hot Zone. Again, the descriptions of real events
are rendered in Preston’s familiar, fictional style. Here is a description of an
individual named Charles Monet undergoing the terminal stages of an Ebola
infection:

He appears to be holding himself rigid, as if any movement would rupture something

inside him. . . . The intestinal muscles are beginning to die, and the intestines are
starting to go slack. He doesn’t seem to be fully aware of pain any longer because the
blood clots lodged in his brain are cutting off blood flow. His personality is being
wiped away by brain damage. This is called depersonalization, in which the liveliness
and details of character seem to vanish. He is becoming an automaton. The higher
functions of consciousness are winking out first, leaving the deeper parts of the brain
stem . . . still alive and functioning. It could be said that the who of Charles Monet
has already died while the what of Charles Monet continues to live.11

Preston’s Ebola description, a fictional description of a nonfictional event, feeds

on the deep-seeded body anxiety that biowar elicits. Death is not instant, but
protracted and disturbingly transformative. The virus’s only aim is to trans-
form the human body into a viral replicator—in effect, to transform the body
into a virus itself. It is this “nonhuman” aspect of biological agents that,
perhaps, instills the greatest fear. Once a bioweapon is set loose, the intention
is in a sense irrelevant. A wide range of factors—how good the bioweapon is,
how infectious it is, how quick people are to respond, how effective counter-
measures are, even the weather conditions—affects the largely chance outcome
of a bioagent.
If nuclear arms were feared for their massive scale and expediency (at the
push of a button), biological weapons are both more extreme and more subtle.
Because biological weapons operate through microorganisms, they not only
destroy or harm, but literally take control of and occupy the body. This micro-
bial “occupation” of the population offers something more valuable than total
annihilation. It offers a means of precise targeting and control of a given pop-
ulation’s level of health—that is, their veritable dependence on health stan-
dards set by the nation possessing biological weapons (even if this nation is
one’s own). Quarantine and confinement here become both political and
medical, just as demography and statistics become military tactics.
In 1999, the BMA published a report that outlined three general stages
in the history of biowar: a first generation, which includes all premodern

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examples of biowar (mostly dealing with sabotage); a second generation, which
includes chemical warfare in World Wars I and II; and a current, third gen-
eration, which may include molecular genetics and genetic engineering.12 This
historiography has been similarly echoed by publications from a number of
U.S. government offices, including the Department of Health and Human
Services, the CDC, and the Department of Homeland Security.13 Biowar is
understood to proceed in distinct stages akin to the progress of technology,
and “doomsday scenarios” begin to read much like the speculative fiction of
the medical thriller genre. Although such historiography is for the purposes
of education, it also serves to draw out a narrative of scientific progress in the
practice of war. Current documentaries, such as the Nova special Bioterror,
locate bioterrorism as the latest phase in this progression, complete with a
plethora of scare tactics, ambitious journalists, and a replaying of the Cold
War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.14 However,
such histories make little mention of the long and extensive history of offen-
sive biological warfare programs in the United States that extend back to the
American Revolution. In addition, each instance of biowar takes place within
a social, political, and scientific milieu and is not exclusively a technical
narrative.
This blindness to the interconnections between political power struggles
and scientific-technological research enables many popular accounts of biowar
to read as a very one-sided story, in which the threat or the attack always seems
to happen for no apparent reason and from without. This historical conser-
vatism takes different forms. For instance, the account given by the BMA
report is dedicated almost exclusively to biological warfare between nations,
and the Nova special portrays biowar as a struggle between First World democ-
racies (meaning the United States) and shadowy terrorist networks in the
Middle East. The differences in context and the diversity of the ways that
biology, war, and politics intertwine are often dropped in favor of historical
narratives with a single punch line: the impeding threat of a war through
biology.
In addition, it is important to recognize that the rise of biowar does not
mean that nuclear arms are now simply out of fashion, just as the demon-
stration of “infowar” during the Kosovo crisis did not mean that all war simply
became “virtual.” If anything, the narratives of scientific and technological
progress told by the United States create a picture of a military-industrial (and
military-medical) complex that multiplies its forces and proliferates its means

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of security. Nuclear arms races, biological warfare, chemical warfare, infowar,
and good old-fashioned air, sea, and ground combat are all at the disposal of
these military superpowers. Thus, in thinking about biowar generally, we
might do better to think about concurrent but historically differentiated levels
of conflict that proceed through the knowledge and know-how of biology.
Thus, we can outline several “layers” or “levels” of biowar, all of which are
present to varying degrees in any event or identified threat.

First Level: Biological Sabotage

Accounts of early examples of biological warfare in antiquity already outline
three main components of biowar: the use of substances that make the body
ill, the sabotage of food and water resources, and attempts to create “modern”
biological weapons.15
Examples include forms of sabotage of food, water, or animals among the
Greeks.16 The use of poisons directly or indirectly (“weapons” composed of
venomous snakes or scorpions) was not uncommon in Greek and Roman
warfare. Examples of the second kind are found in Thucydides’ account of pos-
sible pollution of wells during the Peloponnesian War.17 In his account of the
outbreak of plague in Attica following the invasion of the Peloponnesian army,
Thucydides notes the patterns of infection and the disastrous political effect
that the plague had in the battle: “Athens owed to the plague the beginnings
of a state of unprecedented lawlessness.”18 Although Thucydides’ account con-
cerning pollution of food and water is conjecture, what is relevant is that he
consciously juxtaposes war and epidemic, as if the two become naturally coex-
isting phenomena (in this case, the latter determining the former).
The development of perhaps the first “modern” biological weapons is found
during the first outbreak of the Black Death during the Middle Ages.19 The
adjective modern is in quotes because, although the Black Death did not result
in a formalized, scientific knowledge of infectious disease, it did demonstrate
a moment in which war was consciously thought of in terms of biological
death. As is known, the Black Death first spread throughout Europe between
1347 and 1351, by some estimates destroying nearly half of Europe’s popu-
lation. Trade routes, trading posts and towns, religious conflict, and the use
of military organizations in facilitating trade are known to have had a signif-
icant effect in the transmission of the plague.
One event is of particular note, and it is thought to have occurred
around the early part of 1346. Historical records are lacking for this

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often-mythologized event, except for one Italian chronicler, Gabriele de
Mussis, a lawyer from Piacenza, whose Historia de Morbo remains one of the
important accounts of the early stages of the Black Death.20 According to de
Mussis, in September 1345 the Black Death crossed into European territory.
How did this happen? At an Italian trading settlement in Caffa, on the north-
ern coast of the Black Sea, a skirmish broke out between the Italian Christian
merchants and local Muslims. The skirmish escalated into a gang war, involv-
ing a small Tartar army and military exchanges from both sides. The Tartar
army attempted to siege Caffa but was hit with the Black Death, which had
then been spreading throughout the Mongol region. Before retreating, the
Tartar commander ordered troops to take soldiers’ diseased corpses and cata-
pult them over the walls of Caffa, where the Christian armies were entrenched.
Days later the Black Death was reported in Caffa, and by 1351 it had traveled
through Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and southern Europe.21
Historians continue to debate the accuracy of the events at Caffa and the
degree to which it may be exaggerated. Even if exaggerated, the case of the
Black Death is interesting for several reasons. First, it very literally demon-
strates the weaponizing of the body, in which biology becomes both weapon
and target, a propagator of disease and death. But more than this, the siege
at Caffa demonstrates something that is at the core of biowar: the application
of knowledge in the service of war. The very idea that a diseased cadaver could
have biological and strategic effects beyond its own lifelessness is itself a sig-
nificant moment in biowar thinking. In fact, even in contemporary contexts,
the concurrence of disease and war is striking (bioterrorist threats alongside
new infectious diseases such as SARS), and the events at the siege of Caffa
illustrate the basic strategy of biowar: that, metaphors aside, disease is war.
These early examples of biowar place an emphasis on the uses of disease or
toxins to affect an enemy or target indirectly; they did not yet include direct
militaristic methods of attack, and certainly did not yet have access to the
new technologies of genetic engineering. They made a rudimentary and fairly
uncontrolled use of disease and toxins, most often as a means of sabotage. In
contrast, the controlled sabotage of food and water systems is a top concern
for the U.S. FDA, whose responsibility within the 2002 Bioterrorist Act is to
monitor and prepare for possible terrorist attacks in the food and water
supply.22
Unlike direct combat, sabotage occurs invisibly and in secret; its effects are
often not immediately felt or are noticed only after a delay. Biological sabo-

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tage operates in this indirect manner, even more indirectly than the dispersal
of a biological agent. Infection happens not directly through the air or blood,
but through the metabolic process of food and water—the very substances
that maintain the body. In addition, in our contemporary context, the prepa-
ration, distribution, and processing of food constitutes a complex network of
farms, slaughterhouses, train cargo, food handlers, and so on, which can make
the backtracking of sabotage a difficult task. It is for these reasons that bio-
logical sabotage continues to be one of the primary concerns in terrorist pre-
paredness programs in the United States.
Indeed, in 1984 an attack such as this was carried out on a small scale
within the United States. Followers of the Bagwan Shree Rajneesh cult living
in Oregon contaminated salad bars in several restaurants with salmonella.23
In an effort to thwart a local election, cult leaders had intended this act as a
precursor to a more extensive act of sabotage that would be carried out at a
later date. More than 700 cases of food poisoning were reported, some of which
required hospitalization. In addition, early-twenty-first-century scares over
the nonterrorist outbreaks of mad cow disease, bird flu, and monkey pox have
further heightened fears about the possibility of a terrorist attack through bio-
logical sabotage.24

Second Level: Biological Weapons

Biological sabotage was made “more scientific” through the application of
microbiology and germ theory during World War I. The antiplant and antian-
imal campaigns carried out in the two world wars are an important aspect of
biowar, for they not only demonstrate the systematic application of the life
sciences to war, but also show an awareness of the network properties of infec-
tious agents, be they in food, water, or distribution systems.25
This second level of biological weapons extends from the scientifically
driven sabotages of World War I to the emergence of recombinant DNA,
genetic engineering, and a biotech industry during the 1970s. Here, a scien-
tific knowledge of disease and lethal biological agents is more closely fused
with contemporary tactics and strategies of war (including the chemical bomb
or nerve gas bomb). The most common approaches were mobilizing patho-
genic agents toward targeted areas, biological resources, and both the mili-
tary and civilian populations.26 A greater effort is made on this level to control
the biological weapon and its desired impact (its target area, carriers, lethal
rate and dose, infected perimeter, modes of protecting soldiers).

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 During 1915 and 1916, the German army initiated a number of antiplant
and antianimal biological warfare campaigns against Allied forces.27 The
primary agents developed were anthrax and glanders, and the primary targets
were grain stocks and livestock such as horses and cows. Pathogens were cul-
tured in the lab, then distributed by German operatives within the United
States to various distribution points, in which horses and other livestock
would be injected with infected needles. In addition, some evidence also exists
that the French also had an antianimal biological warfare program during the
war.28
Though by most estimates the effects of these attacks were minimal, the
alarm they caused, along with the specter of chemical weapons, led to the
1925 Geneva Protocol, which was, in effect, a “no-first-use” agreement
between the signatory nations.29 However, although the Geneva Protocol pro-
hibited the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, it did not prevent
the further research, development, and weaponizing of biological weapons.
This major weakness in the agreement left the door open to a number of offen-
sive biological warfare programs, including those in the United States, Japan,
Germany, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union.
One of the most harrowing examples of offensive biological warfare pro-
grams involves the Japanese experiments on Chinese prisoners during World
War II. Known by the name Unit 731, this top-secret program began in 1936
in occupied Manchuria, under the leadership of Ishii Shiro.30 Over the next
four years, the respected scientists and physicians of Unit 731 would inten-
tionally infect Chinese prisoners with a range of diseases, including anthrax,
cholera, and bubonic plague. Other experiments involved the use of biologi-
cal sabotage, bacteriological bombs, and insect disease vectors on the unsus-
pecting civilians of local Chinese towns. Historians estimate that some 10,000
people were killed as a direct result of Unit 731’s experiments. As the war
came to an end, Unit 731 members came into U.S. hands. The U.S. govern-
ment brokered a deal with the Unit 731 members, granting them immunity
from war crimes prosecution in exchange for the knowledge they had gained
from their experiments.31
Following World War II, the awareness of the extent of Unit 731’s program
led a number of leading nations, including the United States, the Soviet
Union, and Great Britain, to more aggressive research into offensive biologi-
cal warfare. Much of this research centered around field tests, either in
populated, civilian areas with nonlethal forms of a biological agent or in

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unpopulated areas with lethal agents and animal subjects.32 In 1942 and 1943,
the British government tested an anthrax bomb (N-bomb) on Gruinard Island
off the coast of Scotland.33 The most extensive of these activities was that of
the U.S. biological warfare program, initiated in 1942 by the War Research
Service.34 Between 1949 and 1969, field tests led by the Committee on Bio-
logical Warfare in the Defense Department were conducted in more than 200
populated areas within the United States, totally unknown to the civilians
who lived in those areas. Examples of such field tests include a 1950 Serratia
marcescens and Bacillus globigii test off the shore of San Francisco; a 1951
Aspergillosis test at a shipping center in Virginia; a 1955 test of Hemophilus per-
tussis in the Gulf Coast of Florida; as well as urban field tests in Minneapolis
(1953), St. Louis (1953), and New York City (1966).35
In the examples of Unit 731 and the field tests conducted in the United
States, we see a noticeable shift away from an ad hoc, tentative deployment
of biological sabotage (in World War I) to the development of specifically
funded, government-mandated research programs. In addition, in the case of
the U.S. program and a bit later in the Soviet germ warfare program, we also
see the use of the civilian population as a kind of testing ground for the the-
oretical effectiveness of bioweapons.
This level of biowar might be said to close with the BWC, which was
signed by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Japan, and many other
countries in 1972 and was ratified by the United States in 1975. Numerous
reviews, policy modifications, and suggestions have been made to the origi-
nal BWC since its inception date, including more stringent methods of ver-
ification. To this day, an agreed upon, workable protocol for biological
weapons monitoring and verification remains one of the central weak points
of the BWC.36

Third Level: Genetic Warfare

Whereas the biowar programs of the previous level were dedicated primarily
to the analysis and experimental use of already existing biological agents,
another level—that of genetic warfare—takes a further step into the possi-
bility of engineering and designing novel biological weapons. The controversy
over the Soviet germ warfare program is but one example. A 1979 outbreak
of anthrax in the city of Sverdlovsk resulted in the death of approximately 70
civilians and the illness of many more.37 It was not until 1992 that inspec-
tors were allowed to visit the city, but their visit was presaged by the

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defection of a number of Soviet scientists such as Ken Alibek, who publicly
testified to his and other scientists’ government research into a genetically
altered “superplague.”
Thus, this layer of genetic warfare is dominated by the recent advances in
molecular genetics and biotechnology, in examples such as the HGP and the
HGDP. This level involves the use of techniques in genetic engineering, gene
therapy, medical genetics, and genomics to design, for the first time, biolog-
ical weapons that may be able to target specific regions, ethnic groups, pop-
ulations, or biological resources. One hypothetical example is the use of the
information from human genome projects and the HGDP, to develop novel
pathogens to target ethnic groups, which would use a gene therapy–based
carrier.38
However, the concept of engineering biological weapons has to be under-
stood also in light of the history of eugenics in the United States and Germany.
Modern eugenics follows upon the work of Francis Galton, who in the 1880s
coined the term and had proposed applying Darwinian principles of artificial
selection to human beings. Galton’s eugenics took hold in a United States
grappling with mass immigration, population growth, rising urban poverty,
and a looming economic depression. The idea that science could be used to
prevent social degeneration was formalized in a number of institutions,
primary among them the Eugenics Record Office, founded and run by Charles
Davenport, a respected biology professor at the University of Chicago.39 The
Eugenics Record Office generated an immense amount of survey data, includ-
ing studies of “feeblemindedness.” Such studies feed into the perceived social
need to exercise a “negative eugenics,” or a set of restraints on population
growth and reproduction, in order to prevent a range of ills—from criminal-
ity to “imbecility”—from spreading across the United States generally.40 By
the late 1920s, nearly half of the states had passed eugenic sterilization laws.
In the 1927 case Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court ruled that such laws were
constitutional, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes punctuating the decision by
noting that “three generations of imbeciles were enough.”
American eugenic legislation paved the way for the German programs, that
began in the early 1920s. In 1923, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Research
in Psychiatry established a chair for race hygiene. Other institutes would
follow suit, including the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and
Eugenics and the Society for Racial Hygiene, also in Germany, as well as the
Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics in London, headed by population

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biologist Karl Pearson. Eugenics in Germany took up many of the Americans’
racial policies.41 Together, the American and German movements helped to
introduce Mendelian heredity (then recently rediscovered by biologists) into
the field of eugenics and social policy. Involuntary sterilization laws led to
thousands of sterilized individuals in the United States, not to mention the
extremes to which the eugenics movement would go in the Nazi regime. In
1933, Hitler decreed the Heredity Health Law, directly inspired by eugenics.
At the same time, U.S. societies, such as the Genetics Society of America
debated about whether or not to condemn the Nazi policies. According to
some accounts, they were never able to reach a decision on the topic; in addi-
tion, following the war, many Nazi scientists and physicians were never pros-
ecuted and in fact returned to university posts within Germany.
As Daniel Kevles notes, there is a strong continuity between the Ameri-
can eugenics movement and the emergence of modern genetics in the 1940s
and 1950s in the United States and Great Britain.42 Following the atrocities
to which the Nazi program led, so-called reform eugenicists such as Ronald
Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane aimed to bring a more scientific view to eugen-
ics study, purged of its racism and doctrine of racial hygiene. To do so, molec-
ular biologists began focusing on early techniques in genetic mapping and
linkage analysis. One result was a wave of innovations in the use of this more
“scientific” eugenics in the diagnosis and prognosis of a range of illnesses. This
emphasis on the medical aspect of genetics—without the rhetoric of social
degeneration—led the way to the late-twentieth-century emphasis on genetic
testing and hereditary study of the transmission of disease. Although quite
different from the negative eugenics of the early part of the century, this “new
eugenics” was instead characterized by a consumer model for health care, high-
tech testing, and an emphasis on prevention.43
The context of eugenics helps to frame this layer of genetic warfare, in
which largely defensive measures are taken to protect either the military body
of the soldier or the social body of a population. The level of genetic warfare
is both preventive and preemptive at the same time. Several real-world examples
give further credence to this third level: first, the Gulf War demonstrated that
biological warfare was continuing to make its way steadily into the standard
armament of modern war, as revealed by Gulf War Syndrome and the exper-
imental vaccines given to soldiers prior to battle.44 Second, examples of intra-
national genocide—in Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda—suggest that
the possibility of targeting ethnic groups through genetics could offer a

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potentially powerful tool in the hands of regimes bent on ethnic cleansing or
racial war.

Fourth Level: Biocolonial Mission

A more directed use of biowar as a tool of ethnic and political conflict occurred
during the eighteenth century, in which we find documented instances of
biowar used within a colonial context. One example is British Soldiers’ inten-
tional use of smallpox to infect Native American tribes. In 1763, Jeffery
Amherst, the British commander in chief in North America, gave an order
for the presentation of smallpox-infected blankets to Native American tribes
in the Delaware region.45 The blankets were to be taken from infected patients
in the infirmary and given to the Indians as a peacemaking gesture. As General
Amherst emphasized, the aim was “to try every other method that can serve
to extirpate this execrable race.”46
It can be argued that colonialism is unthinkable without medicine.
Without an ability to ensure the health of a colonial army or the health of
colonizing populations, the colonial project is compromised from the start.
As David Arnold notes in his analysis of British colonial medicine in India,
there is “a sense in which all modern medicine is engaged in a colonizing
process.”47 Yet, as Arnold points out, this notion of “medicine in the service
of empire” is also two sided. On the one hand, there are instances in which
the spread of a disease has worked to the advantage of the colonizer or explorer.
On the other hand, there are also instances in which disease—“native
disease”—has served to obstruct the colonialist or expansionist enterprise.48
Malaria, yellow fever, sleeping sickness, and a host of other “native diseases”
often served to impede European expansionism as much as other illnesses indi-
rectly furthered its cause. As medical historian Roy Porter notes, “without
disease, European intruders would not have met with such success or found
indigenes so feeble in their resistance. Yet endemic diseases also held back
European expansion into Africa.”49
Recent efforts to provide assistance in the fight against AIDS in Africa—
most notably by the Gates Foundation as well as by the U.S. government—
is undoubtedly a positive sign of an awareness of global health issues.50 But
it is also important to assess how such financial aid is spent and whether
financing alone is enough in a situation where education, communication, and
the complexities of the physician-patient relationship are still primary issues.
Furthermore, it is also important to ask whether the global health-care

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industry or the pharmaceutical industry stands to gain from such relief efforts.
Although it is clear that AIDS and malaria in countries such as Africa do
constitute serious health crises, it is also important to recall the tangled
history of colonialism and medicine, as well as the often one-sided narrative
of British “medical missionaries” in India and Africa during the nineteenth
century.51
Today the logic of this level of biocolonial war is, strictly speaking, not
war at all, but rather the establishment of a naturalized, permanent link
between “developed nations” and a Western health-care paradigm based on
costly prescription drugs. Although such treatments are often quite effective
and life saving, their benefits are always abetted by what Frantz Fanon
describes as a structure of indebtedness.52 A number of pharmaceutical com-
panies have noted the potential market for generics in developing nations, and
controversies still ensue over the corporate patenting of genetic material and
cell lines from diverse regions around the world. A multifactorial health-care
approach—including environment, diet, cultural context, poverty, education,
and drugs—is clearly what such health crises demand.
Of course, the limit of this biocolonial level is when it is turned inward,
within the United States itself. This is what Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer
call “endocolonization,” in which the social body is invaded internally through
genetic screening, in vitro fertilization, medical prostheses, and so forth.53 If
it is true that the newest biotechnologies will be field tested in the United
States—DNA chips, tissue engineered skin or organs, stem cell therapies—
then this testing will be preceded by efforts by the “medical missionaries” of
the biotech industry to establish biotechnology as safe, desirable, beneficial,
and, above all, natural.

Fifth Level: Bioinfowar

Thus far I have covered four levels, each existing simultaneously, but to
varying degrees depending on historical, social, and political context: a first
level of biological sabotage, a second level of biological weapons, a third level
of genetic warfare, and a fourth level of biocolonial mission. A fifth and final
level is that represented by the integration of molecular genetics and com-
puter science in the biotech industry: bioinfowar.
Bioinfowar is not yet a reality, but it is, arguably, quickly becoming one.
It includes what has for some time been the practice of “infowar,” or the mil-
itary conflict played out on the level of computer codes, databases, Internet

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servers, electronic wiretapping, computer viruses, firewalls, and physical com-
munications infrastructures.54 The development of infowar does not occur as
a technological feat, but takes place in the development of military use of
information technologies, most explicitly demonstrated in the Gulf War and
the Kosovo conflict.
Recent discussions on the intersections of war, global politics, and tech-
nology have raised the issue of how the increasing importance of computer
and information technologies have transformed the field of combat into a
logistical, screenal Sega System (or PS2).55 This entrance of both spectacle-
based technologies (media-based infowar) and information technologies (com-
munications and hacking) into the domain of war has meant, in part, that the
enemy ceases to be a body or mass of bodies, but rather coordinates among
other coordinates on a pixel plane. These “wars which did not happen,” as
Jean Baudrillard states, show two fundamental changes occurring in post-
modern war. First, the physical encounter of hand-to-hand combat is increas-
ingly being replaced by the mediated encounter of vision machines. The
model here is Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game, in which a young video
game wiz unsuspectingly becomes the futuristic military’s top combat pilot.
Second, war is increasingly coming to be seen as so much more than actual
battlefield combat; during every modern war, there are several other levels of
combat: media war, encryption and decryption, finances, the business of pro-
duction for war, the opportunities for revitalizing nationalism, the dark oppor-
tunities for genocide and ethnic cleansing, and the use of new media such as
networks, computers, and databases of automated war machines. At the most
extreme end of this war business, we enter a condition that Paul Virilio and
Sylvère Lotringer call “pure war,” or the situation of infinite preparedness for
an always deferred war. 56
Juxtapose this scenario of infowar with current developments in biotech-
nology: the automation of genome sequencing, the rise of bioinformatics and
gene discovery software, DNA microarrays and microfluidic “labs on a chip,”
data mining software, DNA encryption, and other developments show that
biotech is becoming thoroughly computerized, and that the biotech patient
of the future will be less an anatomical, individuated body than a computer-
ized profile of gene patterns and statistical predispositions analyzed by bioin-
formatic expert systems. Yet, for all this, biotechnology remains resolutely
material in the drugs, therapies, and diagnostics that regularly rub up against
the patient’s body.

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 Biotechnology currently plays a number of roles in biological warfare. One
recent area of application has been in portable hazardous bioagent detection
systems. Nanogen, for example, has a hand-held biochip device for the detec-
tion of aerosolized agents such as anthrax. Another area is in the use of genetic
engineering for the design of vaccines to potential pathogens such as anthrax,
ricin, or smallpox. As noted previously, the U.S. Project BioShield has as
one of its priorities the development of “next-generation medical counter-
measures”—that is, new drugs produced by the American-based global phar-
maceutical industry. Finally, a third area of application has been in medical
surveillance systems for the monitoring of potential outbreaks of a naturally
occurring or terrorist type. The WHO and the CDC have such networks
currently in place.57
What would a merger between infowar and the new computerzied
biotech look like? Is the answer here nanotechnology? The use of nanomed-
ical particle systems? The use of robotic drones to disperse engineered
pathogens to ethnically targeted regions and populations? Will we see
the horrific hybrid of the biological suicide bomber? Bioinfowar seems
at once less material than the catapulting of diseased cadavers and more
material than the targeted military release of computer viruses on an enemy
subnetwork.
To recap: a history of biowar cannot be told from one perspective, be it
technological development, scientific progress, or the culture of fear and para-
noia. A critical account of biowar would have to take into account the social
and political dynamics that enframe the transition from military application
to civilian use. In the case of biowar, we can see (at least) five coexistent levels
at play in any given event, each of which raises fundamental issues concern-
ing the way in which biological “life itself” is instrumentalized in political,
military, and ideological conflict.

Targeting the Body

In any consideration of these different but coexisting levels of biowar, it is

important to note also how the concept and the practice of biowar has his-
torically changed. We might ask: How does biowar “target” the body? In
biowar, biology is both the weapon and the target, a form of “life itself” that
targets “death itself” through the use of a range of pathogens, epidemic infec-
tions, and, in some cases, engineered life forms.

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 As discussed in other chapters in this book, one key historical transition
in the concept of “life itself” involved a “taking charge of life, more than the
threat of death” in the development of a wide range of medicopolitical prac-
tices during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the application of sta-
tistics and demographics to account for the “health” of populations, the
attempts to reform hospitals in terms of management and infections, urban
hygiene programs, the establishment of professional societies dedicated to
maintaining and monitoring health standards for a population, and the notion
of a “medical police” or a managerial apparatus for ensuring the health of the
body politic. Michel Foucault refers to such practices as a form of “biopoli-
tics,” a form of power in which the health of the population is also the health
of the nation, and vice versa. In these and other instances, “biological exis-
tence was reflected in political existence,” and the medical often dovetailed
into the governmental.58 Biopolitics “tends to treat the ‘population’ as a mass
of living and coexisting beings who present particular biological and patho-
logical traits and who thus come under specific knowledge and technolo-
gies.”59 At the center of biopolitics is a concern over the “population,” defined
in terms that are both biological and informatic—an attempt “to rationalize
the problems presented to governmental practice by the phenomena charac-
teristic of a group of living human beings constituted as a population: health,
sanitation, birthrate, longevity, race.”60
In the context of biowar, the health of the population takes on a distinc-
tive character in light of concerns over national security. The population must
be protected or secured in two ways: against the threat of an attack from
nature, in the form of disease and epidemics, and against the threat of an
attack from a political entity, in the form of biological weapons or sabotage.
The first type of security metaphorizes disease as a war, whereas the second
treats war as an attack on the biology of the population, as an attack on “life
itself.” The population, then, is doubly vulnerable: it is vulnerable as a bio-
logical entity, subject to disease, famine, and overpopulation; and it is vul-
nerable as a political entity, related to national and international regulatory
policies, military research programs, and a range of social anxieties concern-
ing the level of threat. In the context of biowar, the population is defined by
vulnerable biologies.
The role of “population” moves Foucault to ask a broader historical ques-
tion: “How, when, and in what way did people begin to imagine that it
is war that functions in power relations, that an uninterrupted conflict

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undermines peace, and that the civil order is basically an order of battle?”61
In a series of lectures given at the Collège de France in 1976, Foucault
addressed this question within a biopolitical context. His analyses distinguish
between three general ways of “targeting the body”: a politics of sovereignty,
an anatomo-politics (or discipline), and a biopolitics (or governmentality).
Each of these approaches defines three types of targeted bodies: the body of
the sovereign, the docile body of the individual subject, and the regulated
social body of the population. The context of war—war that is the continua-
tion of politics by other means—frames these three bodies as vulnerable biolo-
gies in need of an “apparatus of security” to provide protection from
threatening forces of nature or artifice, epidemics or weaponry. The body politic
is defined by its vulnerable biologies. It will be helpful, then, to situate Foucault’s
lectures within our own context of biowar.
As is well known, Foucault argues that a shift in the historical character
of power occurred during the eighteenth century, in which structures of power
based on sovereignty gradually receded in the face of a disciplinary power. The
doctrine of absolute sovereignty, which Foucault analyzes in the formation of
nation-states in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, is a notion of power
that is legitimized through the sovereign’s right to rule. As Giorgio Agamben
and others have noted, this notion of sovereignty is also a right to the excep-
tion from the rule: the sovereign is that power that exists above, yet is included
within its domain of rule.62 As Foucault notes, “the essential function of the
technique and discourse of right is to dissolve the element of domination in
power and to replace that domination, which has to be reduced or masked,
with two things: the legitimate rights of the sovereign on the one hand, and
the legal obligation to obey on the other.”63
However, Foucault also suggests that sovereignty is not simply a “top-
down” model, for the sovereign’s effectiveness is measured only by the effec-
tiveness of its “truth” in the daily lives of the citizens who are ruled. Here he
distinguishes between sovereignty and domination: “by domination I do not
mean the brute fact of the domination of the one over the many, or of one
group over another, but the multiple forms of domination that can be
exercised in society.”64 Sovereignty, in this early modern sense, not only is
exercised from on high, but takes effect throughout the social body. This
shift in emphasis helps Foucault lead into his discussion of the emergence
of a disciplinary power in the eighteenth century. Focusing on the dev-
elopment of social institutions—military, medical, educational, penal, and

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governmental—he suggests that a new type of power emerges, in which the
“operators of domination” that had been implicit in sovereignty take on a
more explicit form. Rather than sovereignty’s focus on territory and land, dis-
cipline focused on individuals’ bodies and on their limited “rights,” especially
their political and property rights. Rather than extracting commodities and
wealth, it extracted time and labor, shifting the state’s emphasis from the
wealth of territory to the wealth derived from the individual subject. Rather
than exercise itself through discontinuous taxation and obligation, it exercised
itself through continuous surveillance, even self-surveillance. Finally, rather
than relying on the self-legitimizing presence of the sovereign ruler, it estab-
lished a set of coercions that materialized in a range of social institutions
(hospitals, schools, mills, prisons, military barracks, and so forth). Rather than
a focus on the divine, “living body of sovereignty,” we have a focus on the
citizen’s, anatomical, physiological body, a focus that Foucault calls an
anatomo-politics.
What is of interest in this broad transition is that sovereignty did not
simply disappear. Rather, sovereign power, formerly embodied in the king,
was further incorporated into the workings of discipline. The combination of
an emphasis on political subjects’ individual rights and a set of institutions
for rendering subjects docile as subjects produced a different, more attenuated
form of sovereignty—the sovereignty of the social body, of the political
subject. Foucault refers to this process as a “democratization of sovereignty”:
“In other words, juridical systems . . . allowed the democratization of sover-
eignty, and the establishment of a public right articulated with collective
sovereignty, at the very time when, to the extent that, and because the
democratization of sovereignty was heavily ballasted by the mechanisms of
disciplinary coercion.”65
This newer form of the soereignty of political subjects, however, produces
a certain tension, for, inasmuch as sovereignty is based on an exception to the
rule (formerly embodied in the monarch) and is exercised in a blanket way
over the citizenry, the democratization of sovereignty claims no exception—
or, it claims only the exception not to be ruled by an all-powerful, absolute
sovereign. Foucault, in his later work, analyzes this relation as the core of “lib-
eralism”—the suspicion of too much government. In the shift into discipli-
nary power, then, we see a sort of sovereignty that has been distributed
throughout the social body and which is a kind of negative sovereignty,
the right of political subjects to exist as subjects.66 But, as Foucault notes,

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resolving this tension requires a mediation between sovereignty and discipli-
nary modes of power:

I think that normalization, that disciplinary normalizations, are increasingly in con-

flict with the juridical system of sovereignty; the incompatibility of the two is increas-
ingly apparent; there is a greater and greater need for a sort of arbitrating discourse,
for a sort of power and knowledge that has been rendered neutral because its scien-
tificity has become sacred. And it is precisely in the expansion of medicine that we
are seeing . . . a perpetual exchange or confrontation between the mechanics of disci-
pline and the principle of right. The development of medicine, the general medical-
ization of behavior, modes of conduct, discourses, desires, and so on, is taking place
on the front where the heterogeneous layers of discipline and sovereignty meet.67

It is here that Foucault begins to outline the emergence of what he calls a

“non-disciplinary” power, a biopolitics, in which the role of medicine plays a
central role. As we have seen, this biopolitical power is predicated on treat-
ing the biological traits of the population as opposed to the individualized
body of the political subject. What is the difference between discipline, or an
anatomo-politics, and biopolitics?

One technique is disciplinary; it centers on the body, produces individualizing effects,

and manipulates the body as a source of forces that have to be rendered both useful
and docile. . . . And we also have a second technology which is centered not upon the
body but upon life: a technology which brings together the mass effects characteris-
tic of a population, which tries to control the series of random events that can occur
in a living mass, a technology which tries to predict the probability of those events
(by modifying it, if necessary), or at least to compensate for those effects. . . . Both
technologies are obviously technologies of the body, but one is a technology in which
the body is individualized as an organism endowed with capacities, while the other is
a technology in which bodies are replaced by general biological processes.68

Thus, to summarize, Foucault makes a distinction between an anatomo-

politics, or disciplinary power, and a biopolitics, or a form of governmental-
ity. Anatomo-politics is a form of power applied to the individualized human
body of the subject. Its means include discipline, drilling, testing, routines,
habit, and measures that instill a degree of docility in the subject. To this end,
it employs an anatomical, physiological, and organismic approach to the body

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of the subject to be disciplined. The sites of anatomo-politics are often insti-
tutions such as the prison, the hospital, the school, the military, and so forth.
The aims of anatomo-politics are docility, coercion, and self-surveillance—the
internalization of disciplinary measures, an “anatomo-politics of the human
body.”
Biopolitics, by contrast, is a form of power applied to the massified, human
population as biological species. Its means include the use of statistical aver-
aging, demographics, forecasting, and a general quantification of the social
and political body. To this end, it employs the biological sciences of species
and a medicalization of the social. The sites of biopolitics are often medical
fields or instances in which medicine is used in the service of other interests.
The aims of biopolitics are regulation, modulation, and control—the homeo-
static regulation of the population species as a whole, a “biopolitics of the
human race.” (See table 6.1.)
Thus, we have three broad historical shifts in the way power is material-
ized within society: a politics of sovereignty, an anatomo-politics, and a
biopolitics. Now, it is precisely in this last shift toward a biopolitics that we

Table 6.1 Targeting the Body

Anatomo-politics (“An
Biopolitics (“A biopolitics of anatomo-politics of the human
the human race”) body”)

Mode of control Governmentality, regulation, Discipline, docility,

massification subjectification
Effect Collectivizing, universalizing Individualizing, singularizing
Object of control Population, group, body politic Person, individual, subject
Interpretive lens Biology, evolution, medicine Anatomy, physiology, physics
Unit of control Species Body
Tools Statistics, demographics, Mechanics, mechanism,
informatics engineering
Examples Hygiene, criminality, heredity, Prison, school, military barracks,
eugenics, neurasthenia, hysteria, hospital, sanatorium, workplace
degeneracy, birth control, sexually
transmitted disease, welfare,
insurance, social security
Result Life, war, security Organism, institutions,
surveillance

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see the role of war significantly change. I noted previously how Foucault saw
the role of medicine as crucial to balancing the tension in the “democratiza-
tion of sovereignty.” The issue can be put another way. The rise of biopolitics
implies a kind of biologization of politics. As Foucault notes, the emergence of
biopolitics indicates “the acquisition of power over man insofar as man is a
living being, [where in] the biological came under State control, [and] there
was at least a certain tendency that leads to what might be termed State
control of the biological.”69 This relation between power and life is, then, to
be distinguished from an earlier relation, that of sovereignty. Sovereignty
claims the right to take life or let live (die and let live), whereas biopower
claims the right to foster life or let die (live and let die).70 In sovereignty,
power is exercised by the right to kill, to take life, to deprive the subject of
his or her most basic attribute. The subject is therefore neither alive nor dead,
unless qualified by the sovereign. By contrast, biopolitics, a new type of power,
poses the question of life in a different way.71
If sovereignty is predicated on an absolute power, even the power to
command the death of another, then biopolitics takes the opposite track: it
undertakes the ongoing monitoring and fostering of “life itself.” So, again,
Foucault’s question: “How can a power such as this kill, if it is true that its
basic function is to improve life, to prolong its duration, to improve its
chances, to avoid accidents, and to compensate for failings? . . . How can the
power of death, the function of death, be exercised in a political system cen-
tered on biopower?” Foucault offers a response that is in many ways unex-
pected: “It is at this moment that racism is inscribed as the basic mechanism
of power, as it is exercised in modern States.”72
In this context, Foucault uses the term racism in a different sense than it
is often used. Racism is here an ism in that it is, in Foucault’s usage, a way in
which relations within a single species—a population—are thought of in
terms of conflict. Racism in this sense is a biologically inflected political rela-
tion in which war is rendered as fundamentally biological:

The war that is going on beneath order and peace, the war that undermines our society
and divides it in a binary mode is, basically, a race war. At a very early stage, we find
the basic elements that make the war possible, and then ensure its continuation,
pursuit, and development: ethnic differences, differences between languages, different
degrees of force, vigor, energy, and violence; the differences between savagery and
barbarism; the conquest and subjugation of one race by another. The social body is

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basically articulated around two races. It is this idea that this clash between two races
runs through society from top to bottom which we see being formulated as early as
the seventeenth century.73

What is needed, then, is a set of measures for ensuring the security of the
population: not only welfare programs, health insurance, health-care policies,
and an industry for the development and distribution of medicines, but, in
addition, new means of monitoring health, both at the macrolevel (disease
surveillance networks) and at the microlevel (individual monitoring of
cholesterol, blood pressure, red blood cell count). “In a word, security mech-
anisms have to be installed around the random element inherent in the pop-
ulation of living beings so as to optimize a state of life.”74 Although such
practices have many beneficial aspects, they also introduce new levels of dis-
cipline and regulation that become increasingly normalized and naturalized.
New scientific paradigms—such as genetics—play an important role is the
redesignation of medical normativity and health as being predicated on infor-
mation, sequence, and code.
In fact, the role of informatics is a key part of biopolitics. As Foucault and
others have noted, the mathematical and informatic approaches of statistics,
demographics, the census, and the field of classical political economy consti-
tute approaches in which the biology of the population—birth, death, mar-
riage, migration, disease—is accounted for through information. There is a
sense that this accounting has only magnified in the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries: the increasing quantification of medical diagnosis (X rays, uri-
nalysis, magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], blood pressure), the introduction
of computers into medical and health-care management, the development of
molecular genetics and genetic engineering, and, most recently, nascent fields
in the biotech industry: bioinformatics, genetic testing with microarrays,
and computer-aided drug discovery.75 As Scott Montgomery suggests, “bio-
informationalism, to no small degree, provides the discourse of combat with
a new, inner layer of action and intent.”76 In molecular genetics, then, health
and illness become a matter of conflicting, combating genetic codes in which
it follows that the key for successful medical therapy is code breaking or cryp-
tography. “Here, health or disease would be defined as one or another state of
control over the body’s informational systems.”77
In addition, the combination of anatomo-politics and biopolitics diversi-
fies the domain of control, encompassing both the individual subject as patient

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and the collective population as a body politic. According to Foucault, “We
are, then, in a power that has taken control of both the body and life or that
has, if you like, taken control of life in general—with the body as one pole
and the population as the other.” It is in this nexus that medicine and biology
come to play a diversifying function, exhaustively accounting for the patient
and the population. “Medicine is a power-knowledge that can be applied to
both the body and the population, both the organism and biological processes,
and it will therefore have both disciplinary effects and regulatory effects.”78
Foucault’s comments on the race war should be understood in this context.
Not only is health increasingly mediated by and understood through the ter-
minology of informatics, but this informatic view operates in a nonreductive
manner, actually proliferating and diversifying the types of medical subjects
and collective biological entities that can be studied, analyzed, and treated.
“Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended;
they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are
mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity:
massacres have become vital . . . the existence in question is no longer the
juridical existence of sovereignty; at stake is the biological existence of a
population.”79
Despite the new forms that power takes—anatomo-politics or biopoli-
tics—sovereignty persists, though in a modified form. What Foucault’s work
suggests to us is that, in a sense, all war is biowar, not only in the obvious
confrontation it elicits with death, but also in the sense that war conditions
the ongoing efforts to establish the population’s security. In the current biopo-
litical context, it is war that mediates between biology and politics, but a war thor-
oughly informed by medicine and biology.

Genome Bomb or Genome Message? or, Affection by Infection

If war mediates between biology and politics, it is important to ask, What

kind of war? If all war is in some sense biowar, then how are we to under-
stand the specificity of the different levels of biowar I referred to earlier, or
how are we to understand the specific bioterrorist attacks in the United States
in the early twenty-first century?
In his analysis of sovereignty in the work of Hobbes, Foucault makes a dis-
tinction between the “ideal war” and “real battles,” the former being the
largely fictional state of nature without government, and the latter being the

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actual conflicts that ensue between governments.80 We can take Foucault’s dis-
tinction between the ideal war and real battles and look at a particular case
study of biowar: the 2001 bioterrorist anthrax attacks in the United States.
Again, this chapter considers both biological warfare and bioterrorism as
instances of a more general “biowar,” or the biologically driven mode of polit-
ical conflict that may include, but is not exclusive to nation-state entities. At
the same time, the 2001 anthrax attacks demonstrate the difference between
biological warfare and bioterrorism, as seen through the lens of Foucault’s dis-
tinction between the ideal war and real battles. The legitimation of sover-
eignty is readily apparent in both instances, but in different ways.
The 2001 anthrax attacks are still, as of this writing, in recent memory for
many in the United States. The general facts of the event are well known,
though with some gaps.81 On September 18, 2001, letters containing a
“weaponized,” powdered form of anthrax were mailed to the offices of NBC
and the New York Post, and possibly to the National Enquirer. The letters
contained a hand-written note expressing anti-U.S. sentiments and Islamic
fundamentalist views. The letter arriving at NBC was opened by Erin
O’Conner, an assistant to Tom Brokaw (to whom the letter was addressed).
Some ten days later, after falling ill, O’Conner was diagnosed with cutaneous
anthrax. Other similar cases were reported by employees at CBS and ABC. By
early October, the first reports of anthrax inhalation cases in Florida, and on
October 5 the first death from anthrax occurred. On October 9, letters were
mailed to government officials, including Senator Tom Daschle. In addition,
prior to and after the first mailed anthrax letters, several “hoax” letters con-
taining a harmless powder were sent to the New York Times, NBC, Fox News,
and the St. Petersberg Times. On October 12, the media released the first reports
of the anthrax letters.
The response in some situations was to close down offices (as happened in
Washington, D.C.), whereas in other instances investigations into the Postal
Service revealed the letters’ origin. In addition, investigative reporting over
the next year revealed other, disturbing conclusions. A Los Angeles Times
column noted that “the strain and properties of the weaponized anthrax found
in the letters show that it originated within the U.S. biodefense program.”82
The particular strain of anthrax found in the letters was identified as the
same strain in the Northern Arizona University database (the AMES strain).
After two years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was still not able
to provide any suspects of the anthrax attacks, though it is estimated that of

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the 200 or so scientists involved in the U.S. biodefense program, only 50
would have had the knowledge to produce weaponized anthrax.83 The dis-
covery of secret bioweapons programs in the United States and the relative
disappearance of the anthrax investigation led many—scientists, politicians,
and journalists—to criticize the government’s handling of the situation, which
is ongoing.84
On October 25, 2001, House Democrats introduced a $7 billion “bioter-
rorism bill” (later to become the 2002 Bioterrorism Act), which would call
for increased spending on a national health-care surveillance effort, as well as
an increase in the national stockpile of vaccines and antibiotics. The day prior
to this, health officials announced that a “deal” had been struck with Bayer
to purchase large amounts of Cipro (Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride), the anthrax
antibiotic of choice.85 During this time, several government buildings, includ-
ing post offices, Senate offices, and business offices, were either temporarily or
indefinitely closed off for testing and decontamination. The week of October
8, 2001, Newsweek ran a cover story on bioterrorism, the title reading “How
Scared Should You Be?” in front of a close-up of a gas mask. It appeared on
newsstands the same time that a mechanical fault in a New York subway car
inadvertently released smoke into a subway station, causing the panic-led rush
of crowds toward the exits.
By 2003, one biotech company, Human Genome Sciences, announced
the promising preclinical results of its anthrax drug ABthrax, a engineered,
human monoclonal antibody intended for the “prevention and treatment” of
anthrax infections. Although a number of Human Genome Science’s drug can-
didates have been in clinical trials for a much longer time, the FDA granted
ABthrax a “fast-track” designation because of its promising use in bioterror-
ist response programs such as those outlined in the 2002 Bioterrorism Act.
But ABthrax was not the only drug to receive widespread attention; imme-
diately following the anthrax attacks, there were reports of hundreds of indi-
viduals in the United States purchasing gas masks, decontamination suits, and
Cipro—online. The overwhelming demand for Cipro has also had a backlash.
There is at least one class-action suit against Bayer for its ambiguous mar-
keting of Cipro for anthrax; accusations are that Bayer knew its drug was not
successful in treating anthrax, but owing to demand did not discourage its
use in anthrax treatment.86
If, for a moment, we take the two waves of terrorist “attacks” launched
within the United States—the events of September 11 and the anthrax-tainted

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letters sent through the mail—we are presented with a troubling juxtaposi-
tion. As we know, the first wave of attacks resulted in a large-scale tragedy
that encompassed thousands of human lives, New York’s urban infrastructure,
the airline industry, and the nation’s economy. The second wave of bioterror-
ism included, most prominently, a letter sent to the U.S. Senate majority
leader Tom Daschle in Washington, D.C. On the one hand, we have an event
with no warning and no precautions, which resulted in a tragedy that claimed
many lives and brought the airline industry and economy to a standstill. On
the other hand, we have an “event,” if that is the right word, which has been
framed by an excess of warnings, precautions, and concern, and which—thus
far—has resulted in several deaths in localized buildings. Both events have
been treated with the exhaustive, even obsessive reportage we have come to
expect from (American) global media networks. But one cannot help but sense
the strange incongruities between these two types of “attacks.”
And that is perhaps the point: that they are two different types of terror-
ist actions, each defining the “event” in a different way. It would be wrong
simply to conclude that the September 11 attacks were effective, whereas the
anthrax attacks were not effective. Understanding what effective or noneffective
means is the key to understanding the strategy of bioterrorist attacks such as
the anthrax scare. Again, the question: How do we assess “effectiveness” in
such contexts? From a purely militaristic-scientific perspective, bioterrorism’s
effectiveness is in the number of people in a targeted area who come into
contact with, are infected by, and either become ill or die owing to a patho-
genic biological agent (most often a bacteria or virus). However, if we con-
sider the cultural, social, and political environment into which a pathogen is
introduced, the effectiveness of bioterrorism has to do with much more than
biological contamination; it also has to do with a political contamination of
national security. This is the moment in which the biological body becomes
inescapably political; politics becomes biopolitics.
To the perspective that says the bioterrorist activities involving anthrax
were not successful, we can reply that, on the contrary, they were very suc-
cessful in generating a state of immanent preparedness on the governmental
level, accompanied by a state of “biohorror” on the cultural and social level.
This accompanying state of biohorror may or may not have anything to do
with the “reality” of biowarfare, and that is its primary quality. That anthrax
is not a “contagious” disease matters less than the very fact that an engineered
biological agent infiltrated those components of the social fabric we take for

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granted—the workplace, the mail system, even subways and city streets. If
there is one way in which the bioterrorist anthrax attacks “targeted” the body,
it was in its very presence in proximity to our bodies, which triggered a
heightened cultural and social anxiety about the threat of an immanent con-
tagion. This anxiety is related closely to a certain horror of the body, or, more
specifically, to a horror of what biological warfare (whether for defense or for
acts of bioterrorism) is able to do to the body.
Events such as the 2001 anthrax attacks elicit fearful images of a new type
of war, one in which conventional weaponry will be augmented by more
precise, more long-lasting, and more comprehensive genetic weapons or
bombs. In fact, this image of the “genetic bomb” is what Paul Virilio points
to as the likely outcome of the current “militarization of science” in biotech-
nology and genetics.87 For Virilio, the “genetic bomb” is both a literal and
metaphorical configuration. It is, quite literally, a new type of weapon, but,
as noted previously, a weapon that makes use of biology as its payload (be it
viruses, bacteria, or an engineered biological agent). Like all bombs, this
genetic bomb will attain its effectiveness through explosion, dispersal, and
destruction. But the genetic bomb is also a bomb in a more metaphorical sense
in that it serves to proliferate an awareness of the possibility of exterminat-
ing the species in a new way. Paraphrasing Einstein, Virilio distinguishes
between three types of bombs: the atomic bomb, the information bomb, and,
finally, the genetic bomb. Whereas the atomic bomb “sets off the question of
a possible end of the human species through extinction of a way of life,” the
information bomb, produced from research in military mainframe comput-
ing, not only makes possible the atomic bomb, but also “allow[s] one to
decode the encoding of the human genome map.”88
The idea of a genetic bomb is not new—indeed, it was concretely imag-
ined by postwar field tests conducted by the United States and the United
Kingdom, if not foreshadowed by the deployment of American eugenics poli-
cies, which later inspired Nazi medicine. But the doomsday scenario is also a
powerful image, having been applied not only to genetics, but also to infor-
mation technologies (infowar, cyberwar, and the information bomb). Indeed,
if the atomic bomb makes possible the idea of total specieswide extermina-
tion, then the genetic bomb would appear to follow upon that, but with more
refinement: the extermination of genetically targeted populations within a
given region. As Virilio notes, the genetic bomb is a more updated term for
the population bomb, the demographic explosion that was seen to occur in

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the United States during the 1950s, noted by Einstein and many sociologists
of the postwar era. But Virilio discounts the population bomb thesis and
suggest that, now, the genetic bomb is in the process of engineering new
divisions within the species, a “super-humanity that has been ‘improved,’ a
eugenic humanity, by virtue of the decoding of the genome.”89
Indeed, the 2001 anthrax attacks would seem to illustrate Virilio’s com-
ments, if in a more attenuated form. A literal genetic bomb—a package of
weaponized anthrax—triggered a wave of genetic and medical interventions
in the body of the population, from new antibiotics and vaccines to biohaz-
ard equipment and clothing, to immunization-boosting for soldiers. Accord-
ing to Virilio’s scenario, a kind of preemptive, neoliberal eugenics would soon
follow: gene therapy, customized drugs, consumer devices for monitoring an
environment. This attitude of genetic preemption is the result of a new neo-
liberal eugenics that is combined with the national security concerns of the
militarization of science.
With such a doomsday scenario, we should also theoretically situate
Virilio’s comments in relation to their interest in the accident: “the accident
is the new form of warfare.” Virilio’s unique take on the history of technol-
ogy is that it is a history of technological accidents: “Each time we invent a
new technology, whether electronic or biogenetic, we program a new catas-
trophe and an accident that we cannot imagine.” With each innovation in
technology comes an unintended innovation in the form of the accident.
“When we invented electricity, we didn’t imagine Chernobyl. So, in the
research on the living organism, on the ‘book of life,’ we cannot imagine the
nature of the catastrophe.”90
But we can ask: Is what we are dealing with in biowar generally really the
apocalypse of the “bomb,” be it atomic, informational, or genetic? Virilio’s
reliance on the tropes of World War II imply that each new militarized science
happens as a catastrophic event: Hiroshima (nuclear war), the Gulf War
(infowar), and so on. But it is difficult to find such an event, a singularity, for
biowar. Should we consider the 2001 anthrax attacks as such an event, a sin-
gularity that demonstrates the genetic bomb? We might do so, except that
the temporal nature of biowar is quite a bit different from that of nuclear war
or infowar. Those living in the United States are, arguably, still feeling the
effects of the anthrax attacks. Not, of course, from direct infection, but in
terms of national security and Homeland Security initiatives, new restrictions
on the movement of biological samples and knowledge within the scientific

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community, new “fast-track” drugs and other therapies designed for preemp-
tive uses, and the presence of epidemic motifs in popular film and television.
It is clear that biowar builds no bombs—or it builds not only bombs—but
that it feeds on a series of microevents, brief appearances, failed weapons
inspections, and botched attempts. These are not events, but more happen-
ings, situations, even forecasts and speculations. But from them issue sig-
nificant changes that extend throughout the governmental, health-care, and
cultural sectors.
The fact that the anthrax attacks utilized the mail system—perhaps the
earliest “Internet”—is not without meaningful implications. Certainly there
are other means of conducting such as an attack—germ bombs, crop-dusting
planes—but they are less technically feasible than a technology that connects
groups of individuals in a network for distributing information. The folding
of biological pathogens onto an information network such as the postal system
shows us what molecular biologists have been suggesting for years—that
DNA is information and that genomes (bacterial and viral included) are
computers. The layering of one network—a biological one—onto another
network—an informatic one—gives us an uncanny example of the pathogenic
qualities of information.
In short, Virilio’s rhetoric is constrained by his reference point, which is
modern warfare between nation-states. The bomb, of whatever type, is the key
negotiator in such conflicts, either in the way it settles conflicts (Hiroshima)
or in the way it serves to dictate the terms of diplomacy (in the Cold War).
But the example of biowar—and, arguably, the example of emerging infec-
tious disease—illustrates the network properties of biology, as it affects many
by infecting a few. In this sense, it would more appropriate to refer to biowar
as utilizing not a grandiose, genetic bomb, but rather as deploying a number
of genome “messages.” It is no accident that anthrax, ricin, and other toxins
are most often spread via the mail, accompanied by a letter. It is the message,
not the bomb, that is the guarantee of the continuing effectiveness of the threat of biowar.
The message—in a letter, a vial, a package, even a computer file—attempts
to have the best of both worlds. It is able to create microevents in which the
reality of the threat is substantiated, and, in doing so, it creates a condition
of permanent threat and an ongoing “state of exception.”
Furthermore, the network properties of biowar illustrate the degree to
which it is able to affect so many by infecting the few. And here the distinc-
tion between biowar and emerging infectious diseases begins to collapse.

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Whether it is the 2001 anthrax attacks or the 2003 SARS epidemics, the
network properties of the genome message propagates itself via three layers
of the network: the transportation networks of air and road travel, the com-
munications networks of medical databases and disease surveillance, and, of
course, the biological networks of infection and mutation. Therefore, we can
say that biowar generally and the genome message specifically emerge from
the intersection between militarization and the accident. Indeed, in the case
of bioterrorism, in which the weapon is an uncontrollable and uncontrolled
bacteria or virus, the aim is precisely to effect an implosion between war and acci-
dent. This is why the language of post-2001 U.S. legislation often makes no
distinction between naturally occurring, emerging infectious diseases and
intentional acts of bioterrorism. It is disease or war; the results amount to the
same difference from a medical and political point of view.

Coda: “Life Is Just a Shadow of Death”

I began this chapter by contemplating a political shift, from the BWC in

1972 to the Bioterrorism Act of 2002.91 I also noted how a permanent “state
of exception” has become the rule, with regard to the way biowar targets the
body. Add to these factors another disturbing element. In July 2001, the Bush
administration, after some failed negotiations with other member nations,
pulled the United States out of the BWC altogether.92 In a statement to the
Ad Hoc Group of Biological Weapons Convention States Parties, Ambassador
Donald Mahley, the United States special negotiator, stated that the United
States would be unable to continue to support the BWC on three grounds:
first, the lack of any protocol for enforcing the BWC meant that it could not
adequately detect covert proliferation (e.g., terrorist activities). Second, the
monitoring and inspection procedures outlined in the BWC could be a finan-
cial risk to U.S. pharmaceutical companies in that their proprietary knowl-
edge may be compromised by inspections. Finally, it was argued that the
BWC would negatively impact the U.S. biodefense program and its classified
defensive research. The decision by the Bush administration came as a sur-
prise to U.S. allies, such as the United Kingdom. With more than 140 coun-
tries signed to the BWC and more than 50 ready to sign in favor of a prompt
completion of the BWC protocols, the U.S. decision brought the process to a
standstill.

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 The curious move by the United States to pull out of the BWC was,
possibly, answered in a New York Times article just days before the September
11 attacks. The article, which others have corroborated, reported that
the United States had under way three top-secret bioweapons programs,
programs that, for all intents and purposes, could be classified as offensive
and not defensive research. They included field-testing anthrax bombs in
the Nevada desert (conducted by the CIA), the assembly of bioweapons labs
using commercially available products (conducted by the Pentagon’s De-
fense Threat Reduction Agency), and the intent to engineer genetically an
antibiotic-resistant strain of anthrax (also by the Pentagon, under the Defense
Intelligence Agency). In 2003, President Bush secured almost $8 billion for
biodefense alone. The next round of BWC negotiations is not set to take place
until 2006.
Within such a context, in what ways are the biopolitical concerns expressed
by government agencies (such as the BWC) over a “genetic bomb” themselves
weapons, under the guise of “national security”? A more cynical rephrasing
of this question might suggest that we will never, in fact, see the kind of bio-
logical weapons of which the BWC speaks. Instead, what we will see is the
use of this rhetoric of crisis, the political structure of the exception, and a
biopolitical targeting of the body to gain an unprecedented control over the
nation’s population on the medical and genetic levels.
What might such a near future look like? I conclude this chapter with
three theses, followed by three scenarios.

Three Theses
Thesis One The discourse of biowar is one in which war is biology, and
biology is war. War is biology in the sense that the constitution of the body
politic is as much a concern of national security as the attack on the body
politic from outside forces. The militaristic function of eugenics is to be found
here, but, arguably, it is present in Plato’s Republic, which authorizes selective
breeding for the ruling classes.93 But biology is also war, and there is an
equally long tradition of regarding the medical fight against disease as a war
carried out on the level of cells, germs, and microbes. In modern times, anthro-
pologists such as Emily Martin have analyzed modern immunology’s predilec-
tion for war metaphors in describing the antibody-antigen response, a
metaphor that, interestingly enough, breaks down in the face of autoimmune

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diseases such as those caused by HIV.94 The questions that remain open is how
to do away with the hegemony of war metaphors in relation to biology and
medicine, and whether alternative models—symbiosis, autopoiesis, network
science—can offer a way of doing this.

Thesis Two In the twenty-first century, national security is increasingly

expressed as the implosion of emerging infectious disease and bioterrorism.
As noted several times in this chapter, a defining characteristic of the twenty-
first-century response to biowar has been the nondistinction in policy and
legislation between naturally occurring and artificially occurring instances of
biowar. The operative term in the plans for Project BioShield in the United
States is or: emerging infectious diseases or bioterrorism. It matters not which,
for the end results are seen to be the same: the infection and degeneration of
the body politic. Of course, from the perspective of their causes, they are very
different: whereas emerging infectious diseases ask us to consider our actions
within a network of relations with the environment globally, bioterrorism
challenges us with a fundamentalist view of biology.

Thesis Three The integration of biotechnology and informatics in national

security concerns culminates in a more general, pervasive biological security. The
2003 RAND report The Global Threat of New and Re-emerging Infectious
Diseases specifically notes how globalization has transformed both biological
boundaries and national boundaries, rendering them vulnerable in terms of
infectious disease.95 This transformation has prompted the authors to suggest
a shift in policy outlook, from national security to what they call “human
security.” Whereas national security places its emphasis on the national pop-
ulation, human security would place its emphasis on the individual (but the
individual as a participant in an ideal global citizenship). What seems to be
replacing national security in such examples is a form of biological security, or
a security so pervasive that there is no outside; it is simply a security against
biology, against biological “death itself” (the conceptual inverse of biological
“life itself”). This biological security is the use of biotechnology to defend
against biology itself, in a kind of surreal war against biology. Genetic screen-
ing, preemptive vaccination, new medical countermeasures, Web sites posting
disease alerts: the body is under attack on all fronts, and in the confrontation
of biology against biology we see the spectrum of responses, from antibiotics
to cosmetic surgery.

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These three points—the discourse of war and biology, the implosion of epi-
demic and war, and the notion of biological security—can serve as conceptual
tools for the further analysis of biowar as it exists alongside governmental
national security, the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, and the presence
of nonstate terrorist actors.
It is thus not difficult to imagine several possible scenarios—not dooms-
day scenarios, but rather scenarios involving an increasing naturalization of
the state of emergency that biowar elicits.

Three Scenarios
SimSARS The popular SimCity games allow players to oversee, manage, and
regulate a virtual city. Using unique algorithms, the player sets certain param-
eters and then watches as the complex of events—urban development, finan-
cial transactions, health, crime, education, and so forth—unfold before the
player’s eyes. SimCity is predicated on the idea of a complex system: multiple
agencies, multiple factors, and multiple demands, all acting simultaneously
over time (a user can “speed up” time, in which a SimCity day equals a real-
time second). The aim of SimCity is to know how to set the best starting con-
ditions for the growth of a city, and how and when to intervene in times of
crisis (financial crisis, natural disasters, rising crime rates, poverty in neigh-
borhoods). Although the player is in the position of sovereign with respect
to the city (a “God mode” allows a player to inflict natural disaster, thereby
destroying the city), what SimCity teaches, above all, is a mode of regulation,
monitoring, and surveillance. In fact, formally, SimCity is very much like the
field of epidemiology, which involves the tracking of, monitoring of, and
intervening in the spread of a particular infectious disease. It is not difficult
to imagine a version of SimCity based on the control of an outbreak: SimSARS
(SimAIDS would, presumably, be too complex for most computers). The player
acts as a “virus hunter,” or, better, as the head of a team at the CDC attempt-
ing to handle a potential outbreak of anthrax or Ebola. In the tradition of
military-training simulations, such a game might be useful for training per-
sonnel at agencies such as the CDC or WHO. But in its civilian use it would
serve to normalize further the heightened level of monitoring and regulation
that the current “disease surveillance networks” operated by U.S. government
agencies already demonstrate.

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PGP-DNA If DNA is a code, and if the encryption and decryption of codes
are a key aspect of any military conflict, then it follows that the most perfect
combination of soldier, weapon, and secret message would be encryption using
DNA—in the living body. Most modern encryption systems involve three
basic elements: a message text (or plaintext), a method of encrypting the plain-
text (cipher), and a means of decrypting the ciphertext (the key). Might it be
possible to encrypt a message into an actual DNA sequence? DNA, being
both remarkably simple (a mere four base pairs) and admirably complex
(endless combinatorics), would serve as an ideal medium for encryption. With
the basic tools of restriction enzymes, plasmids, and gene therapy, this is not
outside the realm of possibility. When the message exists in the living body,
an in vivo ciphertext, it will be indistinguishable from any other sequence of
DNA in the body. A horrific scenario comes to mind: the ideal suicide bomber
is one who is not recognized as such, but who is carrying a lethal, highly infec-
tious virus during its incubation period. In the 2001 anthrax attacks, the
message and weapon were delivered together; here, the weapon and the
message collapse into one.

“Good” Virus In 2003, the infamous “Blaster” virus worked its way
through the Internet, infecting an estimated 400,000 operating systems
running Microsoft Windows.96 During the attack, an attempt was made to
construct a countermeasure, a “good” virus, which would, like a computer
virus, propagate itself through the Internet, but instead of bringing down the
computer, it would automatically download a “Blaster fix” from Microsoft’s
Web site. Dubbed “Naachi” or “Welchia,” this good virus itself ended up
causing a fair amount of damage, affecting the systems of the Air Canada
offices and the U.S. Navy’s computer cluster. But the logic of Naachi is inter-
esting: fight networks with networks, viruses with viruses. In a sense, this
may be the analogue to the development of inoculation and vaccination in the
nineteenth century. Or, perhaps, we have not yet seen the biomedical equiv-
alent of Naachi. But it is not difficult to imagine. During an outbreak of an
infectious disease, what would be the quickest, most efficient way to admin-
ister a vaccine or a treatment? Hospitals are jammed, doctor’s offices over-
booked with appointments, the local drug store out of their supplies. A
vaccine can be inserted into a “disabled” airborne pathogen, thereby spread-
ing its anecdote against the epidemic. This is, basically, the logic behind gene
therapy. Perhaps a “good” virus is in the making here, using the networks of

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infection to spread a vaccine rather than a virus. A kind of invisible, molec-
ular war would take place in the very air we breathe. A decidedly yet ambigu-
ously nonhuman form of medicine under the aegis of national security.

We are placed in a very challenging situation. On the one hand, it is painfully

clear that the new “enemy” called bioterrorism is not completely a product of
military discourse. The “invisibility” of both the network of perpetrators and
the pathogens themselves pose an infrastructural threat that manifests itself
in very material-biological ways. But, on the other hand, it is difficult not to
see how this event of bioterror has triggered in the United States an ever
tighter vigilance, surveillance, and monitoring of its own citizens as biologi-
cal subjects, as a “population” in Foucault’s terms. At times, separating the
external threat of bioterror from its internalized anxiety (at the cultural, social,
and political levels) can be exceedingly difficult. It seems that, for the time
being, the best we can do, alongside the preventive measures being imple-
mented, is to make sure that we understand how bioterrorism functions in a
way that is more than simply biological. In short, we must ensure that we
understand bioterrorism as a set of activities (scientific, political, and cultural)
that is able to trigger the “state” of biopolitics.

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247
 III

Decoding/Consumption

Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the

consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the pro-
duction of the plant.
—karl marx, GRUNDRISSE
 7

The Thickness of Tissue Engineering

Skin Jobs

In May 1998, the U.S. FDA approved a product called Apligraf, an organic,
artificially grown skin product developed by the biotech company Organo-
genesis.1 Apligraf is the first “off-the-shelf” engineered body part to have been
granted FDA approval and is now being selectively implemented in medical
centers for the treatment of leg ulcers and general skin burns. Such products
are based primarily on research in the field of cellular biochemistry and stem
cell research—those cells that contain the capacity to turn into and differen-
tiate into particular cell types (blood cells, nerve cells, muscle cells, bone cells,
skin cells). Put simply, researchers are looking into ways in which the body’s
cells can be coaxed into growing and developing as they did during the first
stages of embryonic development.2 By harvesting cell samples, cloning those
cells, and “seeding” them into lattice structures immersed in growth medium,
researchers can “cook” the cells, which will, potentially at least, yield a new
patch of skin (figure 7.1), or a new organ.3 Commonly known as tissue engi-
neering, this field not only promises the ability to generate entire organs and
even limbs, but in projects framed by university, governmental, and corpo-
rate biotech organizations also emphasizes the practical necessity of such
research for transplantation, immunology, and medicine generally.4 Tissue
engineering is not a field of speculation; it is a set of practices currently being
implemented in health care and medicine, as well as in a range of clinical
trials and laboratory experiments.
Figure 7.1 Promotional image for Apligraf, a bioartificial wound therapeutics product man-
ufactured by Organogenesis.

Although advances in tissue engineering research have shown great promise

in the technical mastery and understanding of tissue and organ formation,
how might we assess the larger medical and philosophical effects of tissue
engineering in biomedicine’s view of “the body”? This chapter suggests that
a close examination of tissue engineering practices shows that the “regenera-
tive body” imagined by tissue engineering presents us with a series of aporias,
tensions, and contradictions with regard to the status of the biomedical body.
Through its techniques, tissue engineering separates the body from the tech-
nological domain at the same time that it constantly transgresses that bound-
ary, forming unique biomedical hybrids composed of stem cells, biopolymers,
and lab-grown tissues. Research in tissue engineering is transforming con-
ventional biomedical approaches to the body, health, and what Georges
Canguilhem has identified as the dynamic between the “normal” and the

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“pathological.”5 It is from within these transformations that the assumed rela-
tionships between bodies and technologies and between the natural and the
technical will likewise be affected.
Tissue engineering’s interest in this notion of a regenerative body is also
an instance of the modern investiture in power relationships in the articula-
tion of the biological population, Michel Foucault’s biopolitics. Tissue engi-
neering is not a liquidation of the body or an incorporation of the natural by
the technological, if by “natural” we mean an essential, prediscursive notion
of “the body itself.” Similarly, tissue engineering is not about the devaluation
of the body, whether regarded as mechanistic object operated by the self or as
the unpleasant conditionality of the “meat.”6 Tissue engineering is, however,
very much involved in a series of practical, technical renegotiations with bio-
logical materiality and biological function, and in this sense it follows our tra-
ditional definition of biotechnology as a technical enframing of “naturally
occurring” biological processes. It is in this sense that tissue engineering is
involved in the medical, philosophical, and political production of what bio-
medical science will define as a body. Through a look at tissue engineering’s
main technical approaches and at the extrapolations of those approaches
through Canguilhem and Foucault, I highlight the tensions and aporias in the
kinds of bodies imagined by tissue engineering practices.

Regenerative Medicine

On a technical level, tissue engineering involves an integrative, multidisci-

plinary array of techniques whose primary character is that at each stage it is
the “natural” biochemical processes and properties of the body that form the
central point of focus. As researchers Lawrence Bonassar and Joseph Vacanti
state, tissue engineering is based on the “concept that the repair and regen-
eration of biological tissues can be guided through application and control of
cells, materials, and chemoactive proteins.”7 Although the development of
artificial skin substitutes had been explored as early as the 1960s, these
temporary, nonorganic substitutes were designed to provide short-term tissue
maintenance.8 By contrast, tissue engineering has developed a set of novel
techniques for enframing the living biological body, for providing the right
biochemical conditions through which cellular growth and development will
take place. Thus, the first thing to note about tissue engineering—in its tech-
niques as well as in its conceptual approach—is that it is exemplary of the

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way in which I have been discussing biotechnology: as the technically
configured mobilization of biological components and processes toward
novel ends.
It will be helpful to begin with a brief description of tissue engineering’s
main techniques. Put simply, the logic of tissue engineering is to combine
“cells and materials” to grow tissues and organs, and then to implant those
tissues and organs into the patient’s body.9 Therefore, current tissue engi-
neering can be broken down into a three-step process: obtaining cell samples
(“cell sourcing”), cultivating those cells (often in combination with biomate-
rials), and then reimplanting those cells and tissues into the patient’s body.10
In the first step of cell sourcing, a cell sample, or biopsy, is taken from the
patient—that is, the “cells” part of the “cells and materials” recipe is acquired.
The trick in this initial step is to isolate a significant cell sample without
doing damage or causing complications to the donor site. This procedure is
less of a problem for some instances (e.g., epithelial cells from a burn victim
taken from any part of the skin), but for more complex organs (such as heart
or liver) it can be delicate.11 For this reason, some researchers have advocated
using therapeutic cloning techniques for replicating a cell source, or
developing “universal donor cells” whose membrane receptors have been
“silenced,”thereby making them applicable to any patient and thus circum-
venting histocompatibility issues.12 Once healthy, intact cells are isolated, they
can be cultured to produce a batch of what will basically be source material
for regeneration.
The second step involves biomaterials integration. Once the desired cells
have been isolated and cultured, they are then implanted or seeded into a kind
of biomaterial skeleton that will provide structural support—what researchers
variously call a “matrix,”a “lattice architecture,”or a “polymer scaffold.”13 This
three-dimensional structure ensures that cellular growth also has a form, so
that, for example, regenerative cartilage cells will grow in the shape of an ear
or a nose (both of which have been accomplished in the lab).14 Recent devel-
opments in the field of biomaterials science have privileged polymer and
polypeptide structures because they can actively help the process of cell and
tissue development and are biodegradable—that is, they simply dissolve away
as the regenerative cells grow into the damaged site.15
Finally, the third step takes this combination of cells and materials and
places it in an environment intended to induce regeneration. Once the
scaffold or matrix has been seeded with cells, the entire apparatus is set in a

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“bioreactor,”which gives the cells an initial jump-start toward regeneration.16
Often a biochemical “cocktail” of proteins or growth factors is added to aid
this process of regeneration.17 When the cells are stable and set within the
scaffold or matrix structure, the whole complex is then surgically implanted
(back) into the damaged target site in the patient’s body, where, ideally,
the cells will continue to grow, meshing themselves with cells in the
surrounding environment in the body, and vascularizing the new tissues
(growing the necessary network of tubular structures—capillaries, vessels,
veins, arteries).
This process might be referred to as the standard model for tissue engi-
neering technique, and it has been referred to as a standard model both in sci-
entific writing about tissue engineering and in tissue engineering research.18
However, a number of developments have also expanded and diversified this
standard model, some of which deserve mention here for the way in which
they conceptually transform the body at the cellular and molecular level into
a kind of storehouse of regenerative potential.
One alternative development for the regeneration of cells and tissues has
been the concentration on stem cells as a potentially reliable cell source.19
Researchers working in the field of stem cell research are attempting to under-
stand the ways in which the body’s embryonic stem cells begin the process of
cellular differentiation as the embryo develops.20 Likewise, the recent discov-
ery of adult stem cells has suggested that such capacities for cell morphology
continue to exist in the adult body, offering another, less controversial means
of cell sourcing.21 Such stem cells are often referred to as “pluripotent” because
in their undifferentiated state they contain the potential to turn into a con-
stricted range of the body’s cell types (muscle, bone, nerve cells, etc.).22 The
aim of stem cell research is, through the subtle manipulations of the cellular
environment, to control and direct the development of stem cells so that, for
example, muscle cells may be grown for the regeneration of muscle tissue or
mesenchymal stem cells found in the bone marrow may be induced to differ-
entiate into cell types such as bone or neurons.23
Although the main therapeutic goal of stem cell research is cell therapy
(which most often translates into cell injections at the target site), tissue engi-
neers have also been interested in the ways that stem cells can provide a novel
source for tissue regeneration using tissue engineering’s standard structural
model (“cells and materials”). Unlike traditional protocols for cell sourcing,
which sample cells from the damaged site, stem cells might provide a

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255
reliable, long-term source of diversifiable raw material from which a range of
tissues can be grown. Thus, for instance, mesenchymal stem cells might
become the main cell source for the regeneration of bone, cartilage, tendon,
or muscle, and the cells would not need to be taken from the damaged tissue
site. In addition, the ability to control cellular function in the lab has in some
cases proved difficult; some cell types (such as cartilage) taken by a biopsy will
display irregular functionality outside the body or will in some cases dedif-
ferentiate altogether.24 The use of stem cells offers an alternative in which the
careful balance of stem cell colonies and polypeptide growth factors provides
a means of directing cellular behavior.
The convergence of stem cell research and the standard, structural approach
in tissue engineering has been an area of ongoing attention. Stem cell research
itself is a distinct field, but the main question has been how to incorporate
the findings and techniques of stem cell research into the generation of struc-
turally complex tissues and organs. Writing about tissue engineering in 1993
(five years prior to the discovery of stem cells), Robert Langer and Joseph
Vacanti identified cellular differentiation and growth as a primary area of
future research for tissue engineering. In 1998, the same year that James
Thomson and colleages published their findings on human embryonic stem
cells, Bonassar and Vacanti identified the use of stem cells in tissue engineer-
ing as a possible means of overcoming the problems of in vitro cellular control
(namely, enabling sustainable function and preventing dedifferentiation):
“The issue of phenotype expression and dedifferentiation has led to the inves-
tigation of pluripotent stem cells as a source for engineered tissues.”25 A year
later, researcher Roger Pedersen cautiously echoed this possibility in Scientific
American by differentiating stem cell research, which is primarily aimed at
controlling differentiation, and the use of stem cell research in tissue engi-
neering, which aims not only to direct differentiation, but to coordinate that
differentiation into complex, functioning structures: “All the differentiated
cells discussed so far would probably be useful in medicine as isolated cells,
or as suspensions; they do not have to organize themselves into precisely struc-
tured, multicellular tissues to serve a valuable function in the body.”26 In the
same issue, Langer and Vacanti took up this challenge by suggesting three
possible ways of using stem cells as a cell source for tissue engineering: (1) by
using human therapeutic cloning to create embryronic stem cells specific to
a particular patient (both costly and controversial, they state), (2) by creating
“universal donor cells” from stem cells by “masking” the outer membrane’s

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highly complex structural ability to distinguish self from nonself, and (3) by
concentrating on an intermediary type of cell called a “progenitor” cell, which
is partially differentiated and still maintains enough flexibility for its process
of differentiation to be controlled.27 Finally, researcher David Stocum has
summarized these challenges by proposing that the most viable convergence
between stem cell research and tissue engineering is either stem cell therapy
(direct injection to target site) or cell sourcing (using stem cells as initial raw
material in tissue engineering’s structural approach). As he states, “the idea is
to transplant stem/progenitor cells, or their differentiated products, into a
lesion site where they will form new tissue, or to use them to construct a
bioartificial tissue in vitro to replace the original tissue or organ. . . . The use
of stem cells is preferable to the use of differentiated cells harvested directly
from a donor because stem cells have the potential for unlimited growth and
thus supply.”28
Another alternative development in tissue engineering research has been
to sidestep the laboratory altogether. Several leading researchers have sug-
gested that although current tissue engineering techniques have provided a
means of generating tissue and organ structures in vitro, the long-term goal
of tissue engineering is to be able to do the same in vivo, in the living body
of the patient.29 Such a strategy requires not only a more thorough knowl-
edge of how biomaterial polymers behave over time in the body, but also an
extensive knowledge of the genetics of cell morphology and differentiation.
One proposed technique involves the surgical implantation of biopolymer
structures seeded with stem cells and growth factors (an undeveloped appara-
tus, whereas the standard tissue engineering model first fully regenerates the
tissue in the scaffold and then implants it into the body).30 Another, similar
strategy involves “spiking” a surgically implanted biopolymer scaffold with
genetically engineered plasmids, which then insert themselves into the neigh-
boring cells at the target site.31 The plasmids contain inhibitors, promoters,
and other genes for the production of proteins needed for cellular regenera-
tion. As the surrounding cells take up these genetic cues, they begin repli-
cating and filling in the area created by the biodegradable scaffold.
However, at the time of this writing, many of these developments are still
highly experimental, some even hypothetical.32 For our purposes here, we can
include them as extensions of tissue engineering’s standard protocol (cell
sourcing, biomaterials integration, and apparatus culturing), principally
because they reinforce tissue engineering’s central concern, which is how

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257
effectively to enframe and modulate the “natural” processes of cell and tissue
growth, development, and regeneration. Therefore, although significant
developments have extended the study of biomaterial polymers or cell sourc-
ing in tissue engineering, this basic model has persisted since the 1980s, when
the first experiments into the synthesis of living tissue equivalents were
carried out.
An important point here is that at no point in these processes are mechan-
ical or nonbiological, nonorganic artificial materials or components incorpo-
rated as part of the core process of cellular and tissue regeneration. All
“natural” biochemical processes are maintained in their normal functioning,
and (according to researchers) only the extracellular, environmental context
has shifted, from the body’s interior to the lab and back again. The regener-
ated tissue thus ultimately derives from the patient-subject’s own biological
resources.

The Normal, the Pathological, and the Regenerative

Tissue engineering was originally a medical response to the problems of tissue

and organ failure and the shortage of organ donors, whereas previous and
current alternatives were and are mostly reduced to organ transplantation.33
Tissue engineering thus already emerges from a biopolitics of the population
as a medical-biological problem, where health statistics and the distribution
of biological materials (e.g., organs in transplantations) are translated into a
problem of the regulation of biological materials produced directly in the
laboratory (“off-the-shelf” tissues). An economy of body parts (transplantation;
xenotransplantation or from animal to human; surgical intervention) is thus
replaced by an economy of autogeneration (the generation of tissues from one’s
own cells) that is both circular and self-making.
This replacement points to an important distinction between the type of
medicine practiced in tissue engineering and a range of modern medical
perspectives on the biomedical body and disease. In The Normal and the
Pathological, Georges Canguilhem outlines several basic medical approaches to
disease, each of which emerged from a larger complex of a philosophy of life.
For instance, with the work of the physiologist F. J. V. Broussais during the
early nineteenth century, pathology or disease began to be more clearly artic-
ulated in relation to a normal state of health.34 Broussais, in his work on
excitation, irritation, and physiology, suggested that pathology and physiology

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form one continuum and are really part of the same state, differing only in
degree (excesses or deprivations of an equilibrium state). Canguilhem goes on
to show how Claude Bernard, in his work on the experimental elaborations
of a pathophysiology, clarified Broussais’s principle by suggesting that the
pathological state differs only quantitatively from the normal state; thus, every
pathological state corresponds to a normal or equilibrium state, and such dif-
ferences can be measured within the context of the experimental laboratory.35
As Canguilhem states, “every conception of pathology must be based on prior
knowledge of the corresponding normal state, but conversely, the scientific
study of pathological cases becomes an indispensable phase in the overall
search for the laws of the normal state.”36
This concept of disease—what we might call a “homeostatic” medicine—
is primarily restorative in its therapeutics. Its central aim is to “read” the
pathological state through a variety of measurable and visible signs and to
return the organism to its normative state of health and equilibrium through
a counteracting of the excesses or deprivations in the organism. Central to this
view of the homeostatic organism is the role of measuring technologies and
the laboratory in the assessment of excess or deficiency.
Canguilhem also cites a second conception of disease, one markedly dif-
ferent from the equation between pathology and physiology elucidated by
Broussais and Bernard. René Leriche’s early-twentieth-century work on the
physiology of reflex and the role of physical pain in disease marks, for Can-
guilhem, an important point in the notion of disease as a qualitative rather
than merely quantitative phenomenon.37 Leriche concurred with Bernard that
there is essentially no sharp dividing line between pathology and physiology
on a purely quantitative level, but Leriche did point out that on a qualitative
level—that is, on the quality of life of the organism—pathology or disease is
a distinct state quite different from a normative, healthy state. As Canguil-
hem notes, the “state of health is a state of unawareness where the subject and
his body are one.”38 This “silence,”as Leriche termed it, is broken in disease,
which is less a deviance from a norm and, as Canguilhem puts it, “more really
another way of life.”39 Although not exactly proposing a phenomenological
medicine, Leriche suggested that physical pain and the anatomical lesions and
physiological dysfuntionalities that are an index of that pain, constitute a
whole field of structural and systemic elements that are qualitatively differ-
ent from and run against the organism’s normal operations. As Canguilhem
states, according to Leriche, pain is not a symptom of disease, but a disease

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259
itself; disease not only founds normal pathology, but constitutes a qualita-
tively different way of life or mode of operation for the organism.
These two conceptions of biological normativity, health, and disease—a
homeostatic model (disease as essentially indistinguishable from health, as
in Bernard) and an externalist model (disease as “other” to health, as in
Leriche)—are founded on the notion that the healthy, normal state is the one
that is in some way returned to via the intervention of medicine. This “ther-
apeutic” notion of medicine—of health and the normal as the state that forms
the foundation for the derivations (be they quantitative or qualitative) that
constitute disease or pathology—still informs a majority of mainstream
Western medical practice, as evidenced by contemporary clinical trials and
applications in gene therapy and genetic drugs.40
If, following Canguilhem’s suggestions, the homeostatic (“quantitative”)
and externalist (“qualitative”) perspectives form two primary philosophies
of modern therapeutic medicine, tissue engineering presents us with another
model, based not on the quantitative measurement of disease or on the qual-
itative differentiation of the effects of disease. Instead, I suggest that tissue
engineering is in the process of constituting a unique biomedical nor-
mativity based on a notion of the body as “regenerative” and as self-healing.
However, as my description of tissue engineering’s techniques illustrates, this
capacity for self-healing is also a fully technologized capacity. The body of the
tissue engineering model does not simply spontaneously heal, but requires an
elaborate apparatus for properly enframing the regenerative potential of cells
and tissues.
In tissue engineering, the biomedical body returns to itself in a spiral that
simultaneously moves upward (an infinitely reproducible body) and down-
ward (an expendable body). With tissue engineering, the body is not treated
by medicine, is not improved or repaired by medicine; rather, tissue engi-
neering is part of a new type of medicine that instead facilitates the genera-
tion of the body’s own materials from itself. The difference here is between a
range of technologies intended to supplement the body (from drugs to surgi-
cal repair to prosthetics in modern, therapeutic medicine) and a biotechnol-
ogy whose aim is to be able literally to synthesize or materialize the body
(from the engineering of genes to the growing of organs). There is no return
to a previous, healthy state, though this is often how the medical application
of tissue engineering is presented. Rather, there is a proliferation of the body’s
cells outside the body, the production of the body’s materials and processes in

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the lab. The model here is not restorative or therapeutic, but rather genera-
tive and synthetic. Tissue engineering extends its biological and biochemical
processes beyond the corporeal boundaries of the patient-body itself, although
at the same time maintaining a direct connection to the patient-body.
What kind of externalizing process is this? The way in which tissue engi-
neering externalizes the body can be contrasted with the ways in which media
technologies similarly affect the body. When Arthur Kroker speaks of the
“outering of the body,” he is primarily focusing on the capacity of media tech-
nologies to distribute our sensorium externally (e.g., the Walkman external-
izes hearing, the cell phone speech, camcorders sight).41 When Marshall
McLuhan speaks of the “extensions of the self” in media technologies, his basis
is specifically neurological (the communicative and connectionist dimensions
of electronic media that create the fertile ground for a complex, interconnected
global village).42 Both Kroker and McLuhan are talking about technological
externalizations that function by forming a physiological or functional tra-
jectory from the biological, human body. That trajectory has as its destina-
tion some technology or media that is taken as ontologically distinct from but
nevertheless not disconnected from the body.
By contrast, tissue engineering is made possible by an approach in which
biological structure and biological process are separated and isolated. The bio-
logical process of growing kidney cells in a lab is taken as independent of the
structure of the renal system and the bladder inside the living body. Tissue
engineering creates a space for the externalization of the very operational and
material elements of the biological body, in conjunction with a series of tech-
niques and technologies in which certain aspects of the body biologically function
outside the body from which they have been extracted. According to tissue engi-
neering research, the cells sampled from the patient, which regenerate them-
selves in a structural matrix in the laboratory, operate exactly as they do inside
the body (for example, during embryonic development, when cells begin to
grow and differentiate). Researchers’ suggestion that the natural, biological
body operates the same outside (in the laboratory) as it does inside implies a
kind of biological externalization. The specific context and biological milieu
of the living system is fractured by an approach in which biological function
is extracted from biological structure.
In this sense, tissue engineering implicitly instantiates a shift from a
modern medicine based on homeostatic and externalist principles to a regen-
erative medicine based on the principles of biological renewal. If a modern

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medicine intervenes from without, either aiming to restore the organism to
its normative state (the homeostatic approach) or aiming to identify disease
as a qualitative state (the externalist approach), then a regenerative medicine
recontextualizes the body from within, isolating and abstracting the func-
tionality of the organism. If a modern medicine treats the body as marked by
disease and therefore a deviation from a biomedical norm, then a regenerative
medicine purports to treat the body as marked by operational deficiencies open
to improvement in design (e.g., lag in recovery times, vascularization capa-
bilities, diversity in stem cell differentiation, in vivo injections).

Our Tissues, Our Selves

The externalization of the body also has implications in how novel types of
biomedical subjects may be formed in tissue engineering–related practices.
This phenomenon can be analyzed by extending the “biopolitical” perspective
from previous chapters. In much of his later work, Foucault began to refine
his theories of the relationships between power, knowledge, and their mani-
fold points of contact with the subject’s body. He increasingly reserved the
term biopolitics for a particular strategy of power relations, exemplified by the
“art of government” in the modern state, in which what was of primary
concern was a collective body, or the “population,” viewed in biological terms.
Biopolitics is thus a political management and regulation of the population,
but at the biological level or at the “species” level. With the emergence of
political economy, demography, and population studies, modern subjects not
only were situated within a range of disciplinary and institutional contexts,
but also were considered collective biological bodies with their own dynam-
ics that could be articulated and organized as sources of instrumental knowl-
edge. To reiterate, biopolitics was thus “the endeavor, begun in the eighteenth
century, to rationalize the problems presented to governmental practice by the
phenomena characteristic of a group of living human beings constituted as a
population: health, sanitation, birthrate, longevity, race.”43
As in the discussion of genomics and biocolonialism in chapter 4, one of
the key strategies of biopolitical power identified by Foucault is its ability
simultaneously to universalize and individualize through its biological-species
perspective.44 A population can be a source of knowledge production as a col-
lective biological species, but this is possible only if the parameters of indi-
vidualized biological subjects are also taken into account and differentiated.

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The universal category that enables a conceptualization of the species-
population to take place is the notion of the continuity and universality of the
individual human body itself. In this sense, biopolitics makes the individual-
ized biological body the foundation for a flexible system of informational
knowledge production (e.g., health statistics, governmental health policy,
health records, hospital management). The population is biopolitically
accountable in each and every one of its units, as collectivities of individuals
and as individuals constituting a collectivity.
Tissue engineering also universalizes the biomedical body in this way, but
it subtly shifts the modes of application of the universal category of the human
biological body. As previously mentioned, tissue engineering emerged as a
response to problems in organ transplantation, which are primarily problems
of the immune system’s rejection of foreign tissue. Thus, although medical
science can posit the universality of the biological body (implicit in the very
idea of organ transplantation), the problems of immunocompatibility frustrate
such categories: bodies, though the same, can nevertheless identify each other
as foreign and as other. The central claim of tissue engineering approaches is
that they bypass tissue-matching problems and long organ-transplant waiting
lists by beginning with the patient’s own cells. No biological materials are
therefore introduced into the body that do not originate from that body to
begin with. Therefore, the return of one’s own cells to one’s own body is simply
an extended process of supplementing the body’s own self-healing mecha-
nisms—it is “as if” the body has never left itself. Although tissue engineer-
ing takes each individual body as unique, it also implies that one technique
will be valid across a population (that each instance of immunocompatibility
is unique in the same way; that vascularization is a problem in the same way
for all instances).
In tissue engineering, biomedical bodies are universal instances valid across
a population in terms of the biological processes occurring within themselves.
The biopolitics of tissue engineering works through a highly compartmen-
talized universality of closed, self-regenerating biological processes, which are
nevertheless consistent across a population. The practical models of health care
relating to this field—cell banks, off-the-shelf organs, donations of discarded
embryos from fertility clinics—form bioeconomies of body parts that illus-
trate the apparatus by which tissue engineering is able to produce a vision of
the regenerative body (a body always capable of regulating itself with the assis-
tance of a range of biotechnologies).

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 However, the body as seen by tissue engineering is not just a unidirectional
process of externalizing biochemical and physiological properties. Although
Kroker’s and McLuhan’s externalizations have as their specific destination
points either technologies or mediations to other subjects, tissue engineering’s
trajectory has as its destination the biomedical patient-body itself. The process
can be technically configured as a loop, but functions bioethically in its effects
more like a spiral. Cells are isolated, extracted, and multiplied in a lab culture,
then generated in a bioreactor, then seeded into a polymer structure with other
growth factors, where eventually the desired portion of tissue grows and then
is implanted back onto the patient’s target site, where the cells grow, differ-
entiate, connect, and vascularize the structure and its immediate environment,
while the polymer gradually degrades. Tissue engineering research claims that
regenerated tissues and organs will be “just like new” or the same as before,
but it is precisely this language of proximity that suggests that tissue engi-
neering forms a kind of self-differentiating, self-exceeding spiral. The regen-
erated tissue or organ is recognized as self because the cells used to generate
the tissue come from the patient’s own body. Yet the very act of biologically
producing and introducing a tissue mass or organ into the patient-body also
suggests a certain qualitative difference in the very act of artificially (re)intro-
ducing biological materials into the body. Biologically speaking, how can the
self be synthesized and introduced into the self? This reflexive relationship of
the body to itself raises several open-ended questions: Does the involvement
of a range of biotechnologies fundamentally change the ontological status of
the particular body part regenerated? Is the regenerated organ or tissue mass
exactly the same as the “original”? What are the phenomenological and psy-
chological dimensions of this process of autoalterity? If the biomedical body
of tissue engineering is dispersed throughout these techniques and technolo-
gies, how and where do we situate the body that is supposedly “proper” to
the patient-subject?
Looking at tissue engineering through the lens of Foucault’s biopolitics,
we can see a move toward a medicine that is both biologically individualized
(in terms of compatibility issues) and universalized (in the vision of “off-the-
shelf” organs or “universal donor cells” described earlier).45 The “material” of
the body becomes at once intensely proper to one’s self (only my flesh can be
transplanted onto my body) and totally open to a generalized therapy (through
tissue engineering, my body or anyone else’s body can be grown on demand).
Situated between modularity and custom design, tissue engineering is a

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dual statement about the biomedical subject: my body is specific to me, and
my body is your body—and both can be generated in the lab for medical
therapy.

“We Are Born Without Armor”

In analyzing tissue engineering through Canguilhem’s and Foucault’s lenses,

I have highlighted the ways in which tissue engineering separates biological
structure from function and in doing so creates the conditions for a simulta-
neous individualizing and universalizing of the body of the biomedical
subject.46 These conditions—a new paradigm of regenerative medicine that
approaches the body through a biopolitical perspective—set the stage for a
series of tensions, contradictions, and aporias in the kinds of bodies imagined
by tissue engineering research. Although I use the terms contradiction, tension,
and aporia interchangeably, aporia is central to my analysis in that it defines a
situation of two equally valid but incompatible situations, which therefore
necessitates a new formulation of the problem. In speaking of “the aporias of
the regenerative body,” we can begin to think about how the biomedical body
is made to accommodate incompatible notions of “bodies” and “technologies.”
Each of these aporias is some variation of this boundary between bodies and
technology, the natural and technical orders.

Ideal Biologies, Real Bodies

The first type of aporia is that the regenerative body finds itself caught
between idealism and empiricism. The idealism is embedded in the very logic
of tissue engineering: that the body’s natural components can be effectively
retrained or reprogrammed to operate in novel, “nonnatural” contexts. When
combined with research into stem cells, where pluripotency means that stem
cells can differentiate into a range of mature, adult cell types, the idealism in
tissue engineering looks forward to a highly diversified biological resource—
“universal cells.” This view elicits an image of a body that is totally malleable
and open to the interventions of tissue engineering techniques. Idealism is
countered by an empiricism that places a great deal of emphasis on the body
as a natural, organic resource—a resource that can be harnessed for medical
ends. The point of tension is that one can grow any part of the body, but that
one is also limited to the biological parameters of a particular body as source
material.

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 As previously stated, tissue engineering is establishing—through its
research, clinical trials, and product development—a unique biomedical
norm, encapsulated by the phrase regenerative medicine. To posit a regenerative
body is antithetical to postmodernist claims for the body’s disappearance, as,
for example, when Jean Baudrillard suggests that the body and sex have
unmoored themselves as referents and are thus always preceded by the “hyper-
reality” of the body as a “model,” as a sign, or as a media image.47 By con-
trast, tissue engineering is deeply committed to the materiality of the body
and to the notion of the (biological) body itself as the very foundation of its
practice. But this foundation is not fixed, for this commitment to the mate-
riality of the biological body is coextensive with a commitment to a technol-
ogy of the biological body, a biotechnology that always operates at a distance
from the integrity of the natural-biological body itself.
Without an approach to the body that begins from the body’s natural
capacities for cellular differentiation and regeneration, tissue engineering is
no different from other medical approaches (e.g., artificial limbs) that
more explicitly rely on technological aids. Tissue engineering therefore
assumes the body as preexisting in a natural state in order that its techniques
of recontextualization will be understood as not essentially altering that
pretechnical body.

Immediate Mediation
Tissue engineering’s balancing act between idealism and empiricism leads to
a second aporia, which is a kind of fantasy of transparent technology, of media
that do not mediate, of “biomedia” that are fully present to themselves. This
fantasy is to conceive of a technology that is indirect, invisible, and transpar-
ent to the natural and biological orders—a technology that simply helps
things along, creating the right context or conditions for the facilitation of
certain medical outcomes. In traditional uses of biotechnology in agriculture
and animal breeding, the development of this technology meant first gaining
a knowledge of natural processes and then utilizing them as processes geared
toward slightly modified ends (greater crop diversity or homogenization of
livestock). A similar logic follows in biomedicine. “Technology” in tissue
engineering seems to disappear because no prosthetics, mechanical parts,
foreign DNA, or even major surgical interventions are required. With the lack
of a readily identifiable technological apparatus, it appears that the body pro-

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duced in tissue engineering is a fully “natural” body—something akin to a
biotech vitamin supplement. Technology is thus invisible yet immanent. This
is an example of biomedia described in earlier chapters, where the biological
body becomes its own technical resource, through practices of biomolecular
recontextualization. Technology in tissue engineering is indirect, facilitative,
and transparent—not a mechanical apparatus, but a series of treatments,
actions of enframing, and shifts in contexts and environments.
The more indirect and invisible the technology becomes, the more the body
projected by tissue engineering becomes an autonomous, enclosed, prolifera-
tive sort of biomodule. The more the discourse of the natural body is asserted
within tissue engineering and medicine, the more this vision of a regenera-
tive body is instituted as a normative constraint defining the normal, healthy,
biomedical body. This version of the biomedical body is simultaneously
natural (that is, according to researchers, essentially unmodified by the tech-
niques utilized) and unable to do without a technology separate from it (that
is, a body whose definition implies the necessity of a set of regulative biotech-
nologies). The result is that the body of medicine once again is objectified,
but in a particularly unique way, such that the body can be seen, in the right
conditions, as a self-regenerating, self-curing “black box.”
Tissue engineering deeply invests the materiality of the body with a force
that attempts to break out of the constraints of materiality and corporeality.
For example, if we return to the opening description of the standard tech-
niques in tissue engineering, we can see a set of practices that harbor within
themselves some implication about the body surpassing itself. In the first step,
the very idea of cell sourcing looks forward to the capacity to replicate an
unlimited supply of raw material for tissue and organ regeneration (especially
when stem cells become the cell source). In the second step, the integration
of cells and materials (cells seeded in a biopolymer scaffold) evokes a process
of spontaneous order in which, given the right combination of materials, the
body simply self-assembles with minimal intervention. And in the third step,
the cultivation of the apparatus and its surgical implantation reinforce the
modular, highly objectified approach to the body seen in anatomical and
medical science.48 From this perspective, tissue engineering can be regarded
as an instance in which the body gradually arises out of what Arthur Kroker
calls a “torture chamber” of mortality49 and rapidly heads toward what can be
viewed as a body-without-death.

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 Transcend Aside
A third aporia to consider is that the body in tissue engineering is poised
between medical healing and biotechnical redesign, marked by a lateral tran-
scendence in which the body remains biological and material, but is also
impelled technically to surpass itself. This body is simultaneously expendable
(because, theoretically, tissues can always be grown back) and infinitely repro-
ducible (as in the idea of “off-the-shelf organs”). Such duality puts forth a kind
of revaluation or a reinvestiture of biological materiality, implying that the
natural may persist through the artificial, that the organic may persist through
the nonorganic, that the biological body may persist through technology.
Tissue engineering uses its assumptions concerning the transparency of tech-
nology in effect to upgrade what biological materiality can become. Matter is
not fated to the effects of microbes, injury, and time; rather, matter is
amenable to techniques of supplementation, biomolecular modification, and
biological design. Current research on stem cells, telomeres, and biomaterials
is concerned principally with these questions of efficiency, sustainability, and
effective design of therapeutic techniques. The body thus remains fully bio-
logical, but also enabled with attributes that surpass its prior functionality
(e.g., assisted in vitro or even in vivo cellular regeneration). Tissue engineer-
ing thus conceives of a strange body that is constantly surpassing itself, a
body-more-than-a-body.
This regenerative body is doubly marked by a movement of production and
a movement of excess—the model here is not incorporation or recuperation,
but production and (re)generation. To posit a regenerative body implies that
we are presented with bodies that are, theoretically speaking, infinitely repro-
ducible. Furthermore, this notion of a body that can be regenerated coincides
with the anatomical logic of body parts that form assemblages (components
of cells, tissues, organs). Thus, it is not the whole body that is regenerative,
but rather body parts or those sections articulated through anatomical and
physiological science as being open to laboratory isolation and experiment.
But along with this infinitely reproducible body, regeneration also implies a
region of excess of that which is displaced by regeneration. Thus, along with
the infinitely reproducible body, there is also the expendable body, the “spare
parts” that researchers speak of replacing (“I can always grow it back”).
The significance of these aporias of the regenerative body is that they col-
lectively illustrate the degree to which biotechnology fields such as tissue
engineering are attempting to negotiate the radical changes they bring to con-

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ventional medical notions of what counts as “natural” and a “body.” These ver-
sions of the regenerative body illuminate a deep-running anxiety over the
maintenance, at all costs, of the divide between the natural and technical
orders, while at the same time conceiving of nature as something that can be
manipulated. That the aporias mentioned here—idealism and empiricism,
transparent technology, the body-more-than-a-body—remain unresolved ten-
sions suggests that biomedicine’s philosophical perspectives on biological life
need to be reconsidered in a new light. At the basis of these contradictions is
the specter of technological dehumanization that has haunted industrial
biotech since its beginnings in genetic engineering. It is a fear of any number
of posthuman futures that mistakenly align technology with instrumentality.
The very introduction of technology in proximity to the body—the material
foundation of what it means to be “human”—brings with it the anxieties of
technical instrumentality and the fears of the loss of “the human.”
Tissue engineering is exemplary in this instance because it obsessively
grows the biological body while it masks the fact that its techniques funda-
mentally alter traditional biomedical and biological views of the body. What
we can distill from these aporias of the regenerative body is a will to preserve
the biology/technology divide, at the same time that this division is constantly trans-
gressed. Implied in tissue engineering’s practices are several notions: first, that
the divide between body and technology is absolute; second, that a body
without technology is more healthy, more natural; and third, that the
body-more-than-a-body can be achieved using techniques that simply
recontextualize preexisting biological processes. In order to achieve this
body-more-than-a-body, tissue engineering must mix up all sorts of cate-
gories. In Bruno Latour’s terms, tissue engineering must first undergo
processes of “hybridization” in order to arrive at a process of “purification,” in
which the biomedical body may be transformed into a experimentally viable
response to the medical problems of organ and tissue failure.50 It is to a con-
sideration of the ways in which tissue engineering establishes norms and facil-
itates hybrids that I now turn.

Tissues Are Actants

Thus far, my analysis of tissue engineering has tried to show how it produces
a range of characteristics of the ways in which the biomedical body is being
transformed. Continuing this line of inquiry, I now turn to Bruno Latour’s

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mapping of the modern scientific episteme as a means of understanding tissue
engineering’s doubled division and transgression of the natural/technical
boundary.
Latour suggests that the modern perspective is founded on a two-part,
asymmetrical epistemological process. Visible and self-evident, there is the
process he calls “purification,” whereby elements (in our case, stem cells,
biotech companies, public policies on cloning, DNA sequencing machines,
media reportage, individual medical patients, etc.) are organized and arranged
into a set of dichotomies, each distinct—human/machine, nature/technology,
science/politics, self/other, and so forth. Concurrent with this process of purifi-
cation, but invisible or interstitial, is the process Latour refers to as “hybridiza-
tion.” Whereas purification operates through qualitative differentiations,
hybridization operates by establishing connections and networks among ele-
ments; indeed, it can be said that hybridization is that act of connecting.51
These processes—purification and hybridization—and the elements they
produce—subjects/objects and hybrids—together form the modern world-
view. That is, they are interdependent, and they form a complex interplay of
mutually constituting elements that explicitly (purification) and implicitly
(hybridization) form the contours of the modern episteme. Latour’s overarch-
ing suggestion is that the unrepresentable, unthinkable quality of hybridiza-
tion has begun to saturate the visible zone of purification, resulting in both
a symptomatic relativist pluralism and a need to reconfigure critically the
modern worldview into a “nonmodern” one that places equal emphasis on the
processes of hybridization.
Hybrids, as Latour describes them, are a number of things; they are, above
all, heterogeneous collectivities interstitially constituted by mediation; the
process of mediation or hybridization is not transparent, but transformative.
If hybridization and hybrids are considered as transformative, productive, and
affective forces, we are then invited to think about the kinds of networks that
a field and practice such as tissue engineering weaves. As Latour states, “they
[hybrids] become mediators—that is, actors endowed with the capacity
to translate what they transport, to redefine it, redeploy it, and also to
betray it.”52
On the one hand, tissue engineering appears to be a very literal example
of the constructionist argument (the tissues of the biological body are actu-
ally synthesized or produced in the context of the laboratory); on the other
hand, the “product” of tissue engineering—the tissues of the human body

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itself—are, of course, always presented and represented as fully organic,
natural, and biologically pure biomaterials. That is, although on one level
tissue engineering appears to be perhaps the quintessential fusion of biology
and technology, on another level—that of its rhetoric in textbooks and jour-
nals, that of the way it enframes its practices and research—it rarely if ever
acknowledges its own intimate linkages between the biological and the
technological.
For Latour, one of the primary characteristics of hybrids is that the inter-
stitiality they occupy resists a complete reduction to the poles of subject or
object; they form what Latour calls “actants.”53 For instance, tissue engineer-
ing is a technology that is certainly the result of active, intentional human
intervention, which, from one perspective, is to be regarded as merely a tool
used by researchers or medical doctors. Tissue engineering is an object, then,
in the sense that it is the means—that is, the technology—by which a par-
ticular biomedical field may regulate, produce, regenerate, and render docile
a biopolitical body of biotechnology.
As a life science, with a certain claim to the “truth” of the human biolog-
ical body, however, tissue engineering and its technologies (cellular analysis
technologies, advanced microscopy, cellular cloning, biomaterials synthesiz-
ing, bioreactor technologies, surgical tissue grafting) are also very active par-
ticipants in the process of production or (re)generation of the body and the
formation of new biomedical approaches and models for generating body
knowledges. That is, on the part of the hybrid technologies of tissue engi-
neering there is an active intervention that is not the agential intentionality
of the subjects who are assumed unproblematically to “use” the technology.
Put simply, tissue engineering is impossible without technologies such as cel-
lular cloning, and such technologies fundamentally and actively constitute the
ways in which scientific, medical questions may be asked about the body, from
the level of technique and technology.
Tissue engineering forms a unique configuration between the body (specif-
ically, the biomedical body) and technology (specifically, biotechnology and
molecular genetics) such that the technological is fundamental, implicit, and
constitutive of the biological. Such a relationship depends, nevertheless, on
an absolute, original division between biology and technology. This ontolog-
ical division happens in spite of the fact that the techniques of tissue engi-
neering consistently transgress that division, forming hybrids of all kinds.
On the one hand, the practices of tissue engineering attempt to harness the

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naturally occurring processes of cellular regeneration, in which skin cells, for
example, are placed in the right environment for growth to occur. On the
other hand, tissue engineering is filled with an array of techniques and tech-
nologies combined from different specializations such as genomics, biomate-
rials, cloning, and stem cell engineering—a complex apparatus for enframing
the body. Technology is, in tissue engineering, not opposed to the body (that
is, technology does not consume or totally incorporate the body, as it does in
many science fiction narratives), nor is technology external to the body (that
is, it does not exist totally independent from the body). The “technology” of
tissue engineering is instead internal to the very biological processes of the body, but it
does not simply supplant or displace those processes.
If tissue engineering begins from an assumption concerning the absolute
division between body and technology and then proceeds through its prac-
tices to construct a notion of a natural, biological body defined by the body’s
regenerative capacity, then it is centrally concerned with a twofold movement:
simultaneously to preserve the referent of the natural, prediscursive body-in-
itself and to redefine the qualities of that body through the use of biotech-
nologies that minimally (that is, transparently) intervene in this process of
redefinition. This natural-biological body is made possible only through a par-
ticularized, indirect, and facilitative use of biotechnologies. These technolog-
ical practices and techniques are the nonvisible interstices of the body in tissue
engineering. They can be regarded as the media of transparency that form the
network of connective tissue that constitutes this vision of the regenerative
body.

Connective Tissues

As we have seen, tissue engineering relies on an ontological split between

biology and technology, the natural and the technical. Its overall theoretical
approach is one in which a more “natural” body is treated through new ther-
apies that harness the body’s own resources. Yet in its practice tissue engi-
neering constantly transgresses this split, combining adult or embryonic stem
cells with a biopolymer scaffolding set in an engineered growth medium to
await transplantation back into the patient’s own body.
In utilizing biotechnologies in ways they are not manifest—and thus
appear only at the interstices—tissue engineering seems to be gearing itself
toward a standard of the biomedical body that strategically eliminates one

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entire sector of the biological body’s contingencies (chromosome degradation,
tissue aging and decay, and the markers of the body’s mortality).54 Again,
although this vision may include the best intentions, what needs to be
asked is whether it is more valuable for what it excludes than for what it
promises.
This chapter has argued for a medical-philosophical reconsideration of the
possible transformations brought about in fields such as tissue engineering to
our broader notions of what a body is, within a framework that is at once sci-
entific, technological, and social. Instead of assuming the biology/technology
divide (which, as seen earlier, only engenders aporias), tissue engineering may
consider the ways in which its techniques make meaningful statements about
how human bodies may be conceived within medical practice and health care.
It would be a mistake to assume that a natural body is innocently treated by
technologies, just as it would be misleading to try to conceive of a more
natural, more “healthy” body produced through advanced biotechnologies.
Instead, tissue engineering can consider the specific contexts it produces (e.g.,
tissue-engineered, lab-grown organs for single-patient retransplantation
owing to organ failure of the kidney) as “tissue networks” that encompass a
range of heterogeneous factors: the body of the individual patient, enframed
by biomedicine; the tissue engineering apparatuses (tools and techniques for
biopsies, therapeutic cloning, PCR, bioreactors, biopolymer scaffold, growth
media, genomics stem cell resources, surgical techniques); institutional
context (research, clinical trial, medical practice, product development); dis-
ciplinary relationships (with surgery, genomics, cloning, stem cells); biomed-
ical challenges (compatibility, sustainability in lab-grown organs, in vivo
regeneration); and bioethical challenges (policy decisions, products and serv-
ices, stem cell resources, cloning).
By a thorough situating of the instances of biotechnical regeneration, tissue
engineering can take into account the polyvalent ways in which bodies are
reconfigured, renegotiated, and radically recontextualized. Challenges that
appear to be technical (e.g., how to enable the regeneration of a functioning
vascular system in a tissue-engineered liver) are also philosophical, social, and
ethical challenges (e.g., if such a process can be triggered in vivo, has medi-
cine switched from healing to “upgrading”?). Without ever losing sight of the
material practices that constitute a particular biotechnology such as tissue
engineering, we equally need to consider the ways in which traditional rela-
tionships between bodies and technology, natural and technical orders, may

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be critically rethought, with an eye toward the medical-cultural effects of such
“technical issues.”
Tissue engineering presents a version of the body in which all capacities
for regeneration, replacement, and supplement come from within the same
body of the subject itself through a range of techniques, technologies, and
engineered biomolecules. What the biotech industry values in the body pro-
jected by tissue engineering is the value of the biotech body to reproduce its
own materiality internal to its purportedly original, natural conditions. Again,
tissue engineering, in implying the potential physical and biological manip-
ulability of the human body, is not suggesting that the body is somehow “less
real.” But without a consideration of the dynamics of hybridization whereby
scientific practices such as tissue engineering are always already situated by
discourses, knowledge systems, and technologies, it becomes all too easy to
desire habitually, at any cost, the vision of a body transcending itself, subli-
mating itself, curing itself, and yet still “a body.”

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 8

Regenerative Medicine: We Can Grow It

for You Wholesale

Biologies Without Technologies

Our skin is in constant contact with our surroundings: our pores constrict and
loosen in response to temperature, dead skin cells fall off our bodies like ashes,
and, when cut, punctured, or scraped, our skin will repair itself, sometimes
regenerating new skin cells, at other times forming scar tissue in response to
more serious injuries.
According to modern cell biology, the human body is composed of some
100 trillion cells, with more than 200 different kinds of cells in the body,
ranging from bone to muscle to skin to blood cells.1 Each type of cell, though
they all contain the same genetic information, performs a specific set of func-
tions in the body, and each type responds differently to the onset of disease,
injury, or the regular wear and tear the body undergoes. In short, the body
contains within itself an incredible set of biological self-healing and regula-
tory systems that are at all times in communication with our environment.
Now imagine that this potential might be harnessed, even “reprogrammed,”
so that cells, tissues, and even entire organs might be “grown” on demand, in
vitro or in vivo, and all from the patient’s own cells.
These are some of the questions raised by the field of regenerative medicine.
The idea of regenerative medicine is simple yet powerful: study the body’s
own natural mechanisms of healing, and then develop a set of techniques and
technologies for harnessing those mechanisms. The term “regenerative med-
icine” has been used frequently in research publications, journals, magazines,
and even textbooks on cell biology and tissue engineering. For instance,
William Haseltine, CEO of Human Genome Sciences, has repeatedly defined
regenerative medicine as the ability to harness the naturally occurring regen-
erative properties of human biology. As he states, “We are a self-assembling
organism. . . . That information is there to be captured and used. . . . It’s a
fundamental principle of regenerative medicine that we only have to trigger
the body to do what it needs to do.”2 This view has been echoed in the aca-
demic sector by researchers in tissue engineering. For instance, tissue engi-
neering pioneers Lawrence Bonassar and Joseph Vacanti have defined their
field as focusing on “the concept that the repair and regeneration of biologi-
cal tissues can be guided through application and control of cells, materials,
and chemoactive proteins.”3
Medically speaking, regenerative medicine arises out of a range of specific
concerns, including histocompatability in organ transplantation, treatment of
degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and even the possibility of
moderately extending the natural human lifespan. Research into embryonic
and adult stem cells as well as research into the genetic mechanisms of cellu-
lar aging have opened a whole new field of potential medical intervention.
Leading tissue engineers David Mooney and Antonios Mikos have described
the promises of regenerative medicine in the following way: “Ten millennia
ago the development of agriculture freed humanity from a reliance on what-
ever sustenance nature was kind enough to provide. The development of tissue
engineering should provide an analogous freedom from the limitations of the
human body.”4 Such visions have also prompted some to voice questions con-
cerning the ethical implications of research on embryonic stem cells or the
long-term impacts of extended life span. The late 1990s saw the emergence
of a series of national and international debates over the regulation of research
using stem cells derived from human embryos. At the same time, a number
of biotech companies specializing in regenerative medicine, such as Geron
Corporation and Advanced Cell Technologies, have either advanced products
into clinical trials or, in some cases, gained U.S. FDA approval for selected
products and treatments.5
Thus, although there is definitely a need for effective therapies for debili-
tating diseases such as Parkinson’s, the emerging field of regenerative medi-
cine also brings with it a host of questions. How would such a control over
biological processes change our sense of what medicine does and what “the

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body” is? What would be the scientific and the medical implications of such
a capacity? What would be the social and cultural implications?
Perhaps we can look to science fiction for a different perspective on such
questions. Science fiction is worth considering because it is one area in which
science, society, and speculation come together. The main purpose of much
science fiction is, of course, entertainment (and merchandising), but it is
exactly this “pop” mentality that makes it interesting. For instance, a number
of science fiction films in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
have taken up controversial topics in biotechnology, from genetic engineer-
ing (The Fly; Mimic; Spider-Man) to human cloning (The Sixth Day; Star Wars
Episode II), to biological warfare (Resident Evil; 28 Days Later), to genetic
screening (Gattaca), to regenerative medicine (X-Men; The Hulk). It is this last
example—that of regenerative medicine research involving stem cells—that
is the point of focus in this chapter. The science fiction versions of scientific
and social issues are, without a doubt, exaggerated and fantastical. Embedded
in their exaggeration and hyperbole, however, we can also see the hopes and
fears of emerging biotechnology fields. The promise of regenerative medicine
generally—indeed, the very concept of “stem cells”—has already raised a host
of ethical, political, and philosophical questions in policy considerations by
the President’s Council on Bioethics. Many of these same concerns are dram-
atized—and allegorized—in science fiction.
For example, the recent science fiction films of the X-Men series provide
us with two biological “icons” for the field of regenerative medicine. There is,
on the one hand, the character Wolverine, who, aside from having surgically
grafted, extractable metal blades, also has the ability to recover rapidly
from any injury through tissue regeneration. As the X-Men mythos goes,
Wolverine is thought to be the product of military experimentation on
humans, using biotechnologies to craft the ultimate fighting machine, with
an anatomical structure fortified by a near-indestructible metal and a biology
designed to regenerate efficiently and repair itself in response to injury.
Wolverine bears the markers of both industrial technology (his cyborglike
metallic claws) and contemporary biotechnology (the flesh wounds that we see
healing right before our eyes).
In contrast to Wolverine’s militaristic robustness, there is the character
Mystique, a kind of mutant femme fatale who is defined by a single ability:
molecular biomorphing. Though the computer graphics artists working on

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the X-Men film did, of course, use graphical morphing software for imaging
Mystique, within the narrative world of the film Mystique actually morphs
her body at the cellular level. We usually think of morphing as two-
dimensional, image-based process in which an animation is created by extra-
polating between two different images. Mystique does not use morphing as
an illusion, but rather, we might guess, she actually controls her body on the
cellular and molecular level. This is the capacity to shape-shift on a biologi-
cal, three-dimensional level, something that speaks to her gender assignation
(the stereotype of fluid female identity) and to her personality traits (mute,
impersonal, cold, without any personal history).
Between these two characters—Wolverine’s fortified, regenerative body and
Mystique’s flexible, biomorphic body—are two slightly different cultural
expressions of the scientific field known as regenerative medicine. Put simply,
regenerative medicine is a field within biotechnology that harnesses the power
of the body’s own healing and regenerative properties toward medical appli-
cation.6 The basic idea of regenerative medicine is to take a biological process
such as cellular regeneration and technically redirect that process toward a
more “natural” approach to handling tissue and organ damage as well as trans-
plantation. As discussed further on, regenerative medicine not only is a field
of science research, but also presents us with radically new views of what
“health” is and how the body may be defined and redefined. The primary claim
I would like to make is that practices in regenerative medicine demonstrate
a complex regulation of the division between biology and technology, and in
doing so it demonstrates the anxieties surrounding the contingencies of the
biological body.
As a methodological note, it is worth reiterating that leading-edge research
fields in biotechnology such as regenerative medicine are not only scientific
and technical practices, but also social and cultural practices. The kinds of
meanings they produce through their research also have implications for
thinking about the future of medicine and biology, implications that extend
beyond the domain of medical research, from policy decisions to technology
development to popular culture. This also means that the ways in which fields
such as regenerative medicine view the body are never simple. The body is
complexly sculpted in manifold ways by science, technology, institutions, eco-
nomics, bioethics, education, and media. It follows that in attempting to come
to an understanding of fields such as regenerative medicine, we need an
approach that is neither an “anti-biotech” position (which might claim a

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“return” to the natural body) nor a kind of “technophilic” position (in which
science and technology are the answers to social concerns). In between these
positions we need to locate a site of negotiation, to understand the potentials
that inhere in regenerative medicine, but to do so through a critical
perspective.

Ready to Wear

As might be guessed, the incentive for regenerative medicine is both medical

and economic. According to a recent survey, more than $400 billion per year
is spent in the United States alone on patients suffering from organ failure or
tissue loss, amounting to some 8 million surgical procedures involving organ
or tissue transplantation.7 But the real problems are the shortage of organ
donors for such procedures. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people die
in the United States from organ or tissue failures, many while they are on an
organ-donor waiting list. Regenerative medicine is claiming to provide a solu-
tion to such medical challenges. William Haseltine, CEO of Human Genome
Sciences, has heavily promoted the use of the term, and the field itself com-
bines the practices of gene therapy, tissue engineering, stem cell research,
biomaterials, and bioengineering. Researchers in different labs have already
shown that many body parts—skin, cartilage, bone, kidneys, heart valves, and
bladders—can be grown in the lab, prompting some of them to envision a
future of “off-the-shelf organs.”8 In 1998, the U.S. FDA granted approval for
a tissue engineered, bioartificial skin product called Apligraf, made by
Organogenesis.9 Around the same time, Joseph Vacanti’s lab at the Univer-
sity of Massachusetts shocked the public by growing a tissue engineered
human ear on the back of a mouse.10
A good way to talk about the techniques of regenerative medicine is to dif-
ferentiate it from current biomedical approaches that similarly address the
body’s incapacitation through organ and tissue damage. Within medical prac-
tice, there are currently two basic approaches to organ and tissue failure.11 The
first involves the use of hardware to take the place of the malfunctioning organ.
Bionic devices, artificial organs, and prosthetics are examples. The paradigm
here is that of displacement. The mechanical organ—be it a pacemaker or a
dialysis machine—functions in place of the biological organ, but because such
hardware is often not physically amenable to the body’s daily functioning, it
also often requires a radical change in the patient’s physiology and lifestyle.

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The drawback of the medical hardware approach is that by imperfectly
miming biology, such devices can require extensive maintenance, even when
surgically implanted. Thus, their longevity and sustainability are put into
question because they function mostly as short-term solutions.
A second biomedical approach involves organ and tissue transplantation.
It can be from one human donor to another; it can be donated biomaterials
from tissue banks; or it can be an animal-to-human organ transplant (xeno-
transplantation). Transplantation requires a view of the body as modular—an
automobile with equally interchangeable parts. This paradigm of replacement
takes one kidney to be like another, simply necessitating an exchange. Unfor-
tunately, two major problems have recurred with transplantation since its
beginnings: organ donor shortages and immunocompatibility. The first is
simply a case where the demand far exceeds the supply, and even when organ
donors are available, the problem of rejection by the immune system can often
negate all possibilities except a donor who is a blood relative.
The problems inherent in both of these approaches have to do with the
body’s unwillingness to incorporate these foreign objects—medical hardware
and foreign tissue. On both the technological level and the biological level,
the body thus responds through a breakdown, a material and functional
incommensurability. The alternative offered by regenerative medicine is to
take the body itself as its own resource. This is not so much a technical par-
adigm of displacement or replacement as it is one of regeneration. Regenera-
tion is not the search for an adequate substitute for the body, but rather the
use of the very processes of development and maintenance to let an organ,
tissue, or cell exist again—a kind of biological reiteration within the body.
Regenerative medicine researchers use several techniques and one primary
biological resource.12 That resource is the stem cell, discovered in humans in
1998 by Geron Corporation (human embryonic stem cells) and named the
“discovery of the year” by Science magazine in 1999.13 Briefly, stem cells are
those undifferentiated cells that contain the capacity for specialization within
the body. Researchers have been concentrating on human embryonic stem
cells, which are often acquired from infertility clinics, as well as on human
adult stem cells, which have recently been isolated in the brain.14 At the very
first stages of embryonic development, just after fertilization, the embryo in
its single-cell state can be described as totipotent; that is, it contains the poten-
tial to turn into any type of cell (its potential is total). Just after this, the
embryo undergoes a series of cellular divisions, and as it does this, the cells

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gradually begin to specialize (cellular differentiation). The cells at this early
stage are now further limited in their range of differentiation, and are known
as pluripotent. Each cell is eventually taken down one line of development, spe-
cializing itself through a tight correspondence of form and function (e.g.,
muscle cells tend to be long, spindlelike, and flexible, whereas epithelial skin
cells are tightly packed in layers). Though the exact genetic and molecular
mechanisms that control this process are largely unknown, researchers have
found that, when inserted into different cultures with growth medium, stem
cells will spontaneously begin differentiating according to their new cellular
milieu (figure 8.1). Furthermore, the controversies surrounding the use of
stem cells from discarded embryos has recently been sidestepped by research
into adult stem cells and engineered stem cells (or “embryoid derived cells”),
both of which make use of the stem cell’s lessened but still promising “mul-
tipotent” capacity.15
Current regenerative medicine research is exploring two general
approaches.16 The first borrows techniques from gene therapy and involves the
site-specific transplantation of prepared stem cells into the region in which
regeneration is to take place. As with gene therapy, the challenge is effective
delivery, and researchers often use a viral vector. The idea here is to prompt
the cells to replicate, either through the isolation of the genes or genetic trig-

Cultured blastocyst

Isolated inner cell mass Cultured human

embryonic stem cells
Trophoblast

Inner cell mass

Heart muscle cells

Heart muscle cells Kidney cells

Bone marrow cells

Figure 8.1 Culturing stem cells. Image courtesy of the U.S. NIH.

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gers in adult somatic cells, or through the culturing of embryonic stem cells
that would then be injected into the patient’s body. This approach is both the
most promising and the most difficult. Finding the genetic triggers that take
a cell down one line of specialization or another is an extremely ambitious
task, given that in all probability multiple genes and signal pathways are
involved. However, researchers do know that certain stem cells can be directed
along certain developmental paths: adult hematopoietic stem cells can develop
into blood and neuronal cells; adult stem cells from the brain can develop into
neurons, bone marrow, and blood cells; and adult mesenchymal stem cells can
develop into bone, muscle, cartilage, and tendon cells.17
The second approach in regenerative medicine has focused less on stem cells
and more on the ways in which organs, tissues, and limbs form during embry-
onic development—the field known as tissue engineering, discussed in the
previous chapter.18 Tissue engineering proposes to make use of the body’s own
cells for the regeneration of tissues and entire organs, with the assistance of
biochemical growth factors, bioreactor technology, and biomaterials science.
In animal experiments and human clinical trials, tissue engineering
researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to grow and reimplant entire
organs into the organism. To date, bone and cartilage structures, skin, the
liver, pancreas, kidney, bladder, and neural cells have been grown using this
approach.
The most common procedure thus far—pioneered by Joseph Vacanti and
Robert Langer—involves the treatment of a biopsy or cell sample taken from
the patient. Let us say it is a patient with a diseased kidney.19 Those cells
are then replicated in culture and infused with growth medium to prompt
cellular division. The cells are then seeded into a lattice structure made of
biodegradable polymers to guide the growing cells and make sure they grow
in the proper shape of a kidney. The whole complex is then surgically placed
back into the patient, where the patient’s body takes up the new cell and organ
structure, allowing vascularization (the growth of a network of blood vessels)
to occur. In contrast to other biomedical approaches—be it the use of drugs
or the use of mechanical devices—regenerative medicine uses the body’s own
biological processes of cellular growth, replication, and regeneration. This
approach is, of course, aided by an array of techniques, including cell deliv-
ery techniques, isolation of cell lines of stem cells, development of biochem-
ical growth factors for cells, and the construction of biodegradable lattice
structures for the seeding of cells.

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 Thus, in response to modern medicine’s “technological” approach to the
body (either through medical hardware or the mechanistic view of transplan-
tation), regenerative medicine attempts to facilitate a view of the biomedical
body that is essentially self-healing.20 On the one hand, it would seem that
this more “natural” approach to medical therapeutics requires only a
minimum of technical enframing, simply the right type of environment in
which the self-healing body may emerge; the question here is less technology,
but more context. On the other hand, we might also question this surrepti-
tious disappearance of technology, in which it appears that cells and tissues
will automatically regenerate themselves in a fashion analogous to the repair
of minor skin cuts, for example. Where is the technology in regenerative med-
icine? Is it to be found in various laboratory tools? Is it to be located not in
“gadgets” or hardware, but in techniques, processes, or actions? It is this trans-
formation of what we mean by technology with which regenerative medicine
is, on one level, engaged. The issue is important because some approach to
the boundary (the separation?) between bodies and technologies is imperative
for medical practice to differentiate between patient status and medical tech-
nique, between an autonomous biological body, and a technical apparatus for
analyzing that body.

Is the Body a Pathogen?

A key to understanding the perspective of regenerative medicine is to con-

sider how “biology” or “body” is defined through its research. For instance, a
stem cell “discovered” in the body might be taken as naturally occurring,
whereas stem cells derived through therapeutic cloning might be taken as
technological or artificial. Although never totally questioning the boundary
between bodies and technologies, regenerative medicine does create a zone of
ambiguity by defining the biological body as both fully natural (preexisting
medicine and science, operating independently, self-regulating, and self-
producing) and fully amenable to biomedical augmentation, enhancement,
improvement, and design. As an organic system that is both natural and open
to technical improvement, the body as described by regenerative medicine
invites a certain type of intervention in the body’s “natural” operations—inter-
ventions that supposedly do not alter its ontological status as natural.
To put it another way, the body in regenerative medicine is both the
resource and object of technical action. In a kind of feedback loop,

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regenerative medicine takes “technology” to reside in the biological itself; the
“tools” that regenerative medicine uses are not external prosthetic devices or
mechanical organs, but rather the very processes of cellular regeneration and
differentiation themselves. By focusing on certain cellular processes that occur
to a limited degree in the body, regenerative medicine creates novel condi-
tions in which these natural, biological processes are foregrounded. Such
an assumption at once takes the body as something that is lived (individual
subjects are always embodied and specific) and as an object that is composed
of a universal set of parts (“off-the-shelf organs”). This body is still totally
“biological,” fully organic, “vital” through and through; but in its new,
technically optimized context, it also acquires a new range of capacities. This
is not (only) a body that has been medically healed, but a body that has been
upgraded using its “original” design principles.
A great deal has been added to this body, but a great deal has also been
glossed over in favor of the more ambitious promises of regenerative medi-
cine.21 The body in regenerative medicine is in many ways a highly insular
body, both in its technical configurations and in its ideology. Technically, this
body is a dream of the autonomous, totally self-sufficient biological system,
which, by using its own regenerative properties, is able to regulate itself
regardless of any environment—a biological monad, the body existing in a
kind of vacuum. Ideologically, this notion is supported by the far-reaching
desires embedded in regenerative medicine research. From the claims for a
future of increased longevity (by Geron Corporation) to the promises of a
niche-marketed medical future (by Human Genome Sciences), regenerative
medicine is largely concerned with ensuring the body’s protection from the
dangers of certain contingencies that threaten its well-being. “Bodily contin-
gency” here refers to a set of complex factors that both negatively and posi-
tively define what it means for us to exist as bodies: environmental
specificities, disease, injury, aging, lifestyle, and mortality itself. Those con-
tingencies, which often enframe the body as a set of limitations, are ironically
the very things that define the biological body as a body. Put simply, the body
can be thought of as a kind of membrane, constituted by sets of constraints,
limitations, and specificities. But these contingencies, these elements that
define the body by constraining it, also define its flexibility and mobility—
anatomically, physiologically, immunologically, neurologically, and so
forth. Bodily contingencies are difficult to deal with for obvious reasons,

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but at the same time it is equally difficult to imagine where the line between
the eradication of disease and the engineering of cellular immortality should
be drawn.
Regenerative medicine may thus be seen to remove two modes of contin-
gency from the body. One might be referred to as “external,” which involves
a deemphasis on the roles that environment and context play in forming
dynamic relationships with bodies. For regenerative medicine, as for modern
molecular genetics, the body is first and foremost the product of the causal
dynamics of its genome, genes, or DNA. Despite shifts away from reductionist
approaches in molecular biology, this “central dogma” still holds, as is clear
from the investment (both figurative and economic) by biotech companies in
gene targets, gene therapeutics, and drug development.22 Curiously, regener-
ative medicine has chosen not to study the relationships between body and
context, but to focus solely on the body’s capacity to “regrow” itself on the
cellular level to operate in a preventive, regenerative way (capable of respond-
ing to any external influence, be it disease or injury). The dangers in the
general deemphasis on environment and context is that the body is viewed in
a cellular vacuum, which takes all external context as homogeneous and which,
as a result, offers one universal response (the genetic triggering of cellular spe-
cialization and replication).
In a related vein, regenerative medicine also seeks to remove an “internal”
contingency. Regenerative medicine not only seeks to insulate the body from
any environmental influence, but also seeks to extricate the contingencies that
mark the biological body as internally unstable, dynamic, and marked by
temporality. Geron Corporation’s focus on biological aging, Curis’s focus on
medical therapeutics, and tissue engineering’s focus on renewable organs point
to a more general desire effectively to engineer biological mortality out of the
body.23 In many ways, an immortal biology is somewhat of an oxymoron, just
as a vision of our bodies in bubbles denies the very thing that makes bodies
what they are: a constant negotiation between an interior and an exterior.
Although no one will counter the efforts to understand and treat diseases such
as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, regenerative medicine treads a difficult bioeth-
ical line in setting its sights on the biological basis of aging, for instance. That
line becomes more blurred as research shifts from working through the body
(where a certain concept of medical therapy and healing is still at work) to a
kind of lateral transcendence (in which biotechnology is used to escape from

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the body). In this sense, to posit a body “cured” of all its contingencies is
something like wanting to privilege the senses through massive sensory iso-
lation or sensory deprivation.
What these techniques of regenerative medicine seem to demonstrate is
that biological processes such as cellular regeneration can occur independent
of the context within which those processes take place. The techniques of
regenerative medicine point to an abstraction of biological processes—be it
in the lab, in the patient’s own body, or through gene therapies. This would
seem to imply that the body, although remaining fully biological, can be
redesigned so that it becomes more efficient and technically optimized. But
how might these bodies in regenerative medicine be different as living, acting
bodies?

The Concept of Regeneration

The very idea of regeneration brings to mind science fiction scenarios of self-
repairing wounds and even immortality. Indeed, the pop cultural transmuta-
tion of regeneration may stem in part from the biological sciences. In biology,
regeneration has two primary meanings: the replacement of lost tissues and
organs lost in injury or the healing of wounds. The former is demonstrated
by many plants (the ability to generate a plant from a shoot or leaf) and certain
crustaceans (crabs) and eichnoderms (starfish). Some reptiles and amphibians
have the ability to regenerate a lost limb—say, a tail—if it has been trapped
by a predator (a process known as autotomy), and the planaria flatworm is a
favorite subject of high school biology classes for its ability to regenerate when
cut and even for its ability to grow two heads when split.
However, in most animals, certainly humans, regeneration is limited to the
second definition—the healing of wounds. The distinction is noteworthy, for,
although a wound may heal, its healing is not the replacement of lost tissues,
an organ, or limb. Nevertheless, the biological healing process has been a source
of fascination for biologists for some time. We may not have the capacity to
regenerate entire organs or limbs, but at the cellular level our bodies do have
the capacity, in most cases, to heal with a great deal of efficiency. A simple cut
on a finger initiates a set of responses that include clotting of the blood, deploy-
ing the proteins for the clotting of the blood, and initiating rapid cellular repli-
cation to cover the wounded area, resulting in tissue that may not be as flexible
(because it is scarred), but still functions as normal tissue.

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 In a specifically biological sense, however, regeneration is also different from
development, the latter a primary interest in morphogenesis, or the study of bio-
logical form. In biological development, cell division and differentiation play
key roles in the growth of an organism. In vertebrate animals, this growth is
accomplished by three basic stages: a cleavage stage, in which the zygote
begins dividing, resulting in a ball of cells known as the blastula; a gastrula-
tion stage, in which the dividing cells become arranged in three “germ layers,”
or a gastrula; and an organogenesis stage, in which further differentiation in
cells eventually results in the formation of a particular type of tissue (skin,
muscle), organs, or limbs.
Even in morphogenesis, the line between development and regeneration is
not decisive. Although development happens “once” in the life of the organ-
ism, the processes of cellular differentiation can occur more than once in the
life span of an organism. The recent discovery of adult stem cells has led to
further inquiry into the ways that development is, in a sense, a lifelong
process. The main question is whether or not there is something in the regen-
erative properties of living cells that also is present in the development of the
organism itself. This is, arguably, the wager of stem cell research: that there
exists in stem cells a biological potentiality of pluripotency or even totipotency
in cellular differentiation.
This basic process of regeneration—whether in terms of healing wounds
or regenerating whole organs or limbs—serves as the source of inspiration for
biotechnology research in regenerative medicine. Indeed, at some basic level,
cells in our bodies are dying and regenerating each day, and it may be said
that regeneration is in some sense isomorphic with the very cellular processes
of “life itself.” Aristotle had already noted this in his distinction between
“coming-to-be” and mere “alteration” in animals.
Aristotle’s treatise On Generation and Corruption begins by asking a ques-
tion: Is “coming-to-be” different from mere “alteration”? That is, is the emer-
gence of a body, of some thing, a fundamentally different process from a
change in that body or that thing? In the context of regenerative medicine,
Aristotle’s question can be rephrased as follows: Is cellular differentiation from
stem cells a “coming-to-be” of fully differentiated, functional cells, or is it a
mere alteration within a cell that remains, in some basic way, the same?
For Aristotle, both monists such as Empedocles and atomists such as
Democritus, begin from the assumption that the change of any thing, living
or nonliving, is dictated by its capacity to be divided. Whereas Empedocles

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argues that there is a basic, singular magnitude (“the One”) from which
different things emerge, the atomists see everything as infinitely divided.
However, this premise concerning divisibility leads to a number of paradoxes:
a singular magnitude is actually constructed by the particular things that
emerge from it (because it already exists in them in potential), and, likewise,
the atomistic body is built on nothing because it is divisible through and
through.
The assumptions that both monists and atomists have concerning change
in general are that coming-to-be is defined by “association and dissociation,”
whereas the change in what is continuous is defined by alteration. In other
words, coming-to-be is the assembly or disassembly of parts, whereas alter-
ation is a mere change or shifting of the same parts.
Aristotle’s response is to suggest that coming-to-be is in fact distinct from
alteration, but not based on the divisibility of bodies. Coming-to-be is defined
by a change in the relationship between matter and form, but alteration is a
change in either matter or form, but not in their relation:

For unqualified coming-to-be and passing-away are not effected by “association” and
“dissociation.” They take place when a thing changes, from this to that, as a whole.
But the philosophers we are criticizing suppose that all such change is “alteration”:
whereas in fact there is a difference. For in that which underlies the change there is a
factor corresponding to the definition (i.e. a “formal” factor) and there is a material
factor. When, then, the change is in these constitutive factors, there will be coming-
to-be or passing-away: but when it is in the thing’s qualities, i.e. a change of the thing
per accidens, there will be “alteration.”24

Coming-to-be is predicated, therefore, not only on some sort of prime

matter, but on a dynamic process of potentiality and actuality: “In one sense
things come-to-be out of that which has no ‘being’ without qualification:
yet in another sense they come-to-be always out of ‘what is.’ For coming-to-
be necessarily implies the pre-existence of something which potentially ‘is,’
but actually ‘is not’; and this something is spoken of both as ‘being’ and as
‘not-being.’ ”25
Aristotle’s distinction between coming-to-be and alteration leads us to ask
if the same distinction holds for stem cells. Are stem cells a form of coming-
to-be or of alteration in Aristotle’s sense of the terms? On the one hand, cellu-
lar differentiation is a coming-to-be of a fully differentiated, functional cell

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where before there was not one, but instead a stem cell, something like “the
One” of Empedocles or a prime matter. On the other hand, cellular differen-
tiation is not a genesis, but rather a change within the cell, triggered by gene
expression and the environment of the cell. The same cell exists, but simply
changes. The stem cell and the fully differentiated cell are thus isomorphic.
The question here is whether this process is reversible, whether a fully dif-
ferentiated cell can be transformed back into a stem cell. According to
Aristotle, this transformation would make the process not a coming-to-be
but rather an alteration.
This interest in the naturally occurring properties of regeneration in the
body has led to the questions of how regeneration occurs, and what are its
mechanisms and its logic. For Aristotle, regeneration broadly speaking
required some foundation. Whether it is a singular magnitude, a resource from
which all things emerge (as the monists would have it), or whether it is simply
the collisions and interactions among atomic elements (as the atomists would
have it), the process of regeneration requires, in Aristotle’s view, two things:
a prime matter or “stuff” out of which organization might occur and an
organizing principle or prime mover actively to make order from nonorder.
Aristotle’s hylomorphism is a response to this question concerning regenera-
tion. Matter cannot be separated from form, but the function of form is as the
organizing principle, that which sculpts or molds matter into a body. Regen-
eration—as the fundamental biological property of all living things—is thus
the result of a transformation of matter by form, of a basic resource by an
organizing principle.
Aristotle’s assumption is that in the process of regeneration there has to be
some “stuff” that exists prior to the coming-to-be of a body, to serve as the
source material, as it were. In addition, the active principle of form necessi-
tates a force from the outside and a principle of organization externally applied
to the source material. Although the view from molecular genetics would
place Aristotle’s principle of form in the DNA or genes, current research in
biocomplexity has brought new perspectives to the questions first raised by
Aristotle. Brian Goodwin and Ricard Solé, for instance, have shown how cel-
lular differentiation and morphogenesis do not require a prime matter or
prime mover. In their discussion of studies on somite formation in the chick,
amphibian, and mouse embryos, Goodwin and Solé suggest that genes play
only a minor role in cellular differentiation.26 Rather, morphogenesis is seen
to emerge from “self-organizing” processes that are the collective result of

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internal networks of interactions (gene expression, protein-protein interac-
tions) as well as of cellular environmental conditions. For Goodwin and Solé,
genes “do not occupy a privileged position in making decisions about alter-
native pathways of differentiation. Yet they clearly constrain the possibilities
open to cells.”27 There is no external, controlling prime mover, as Aristotle
would have it. Nor is there any primeval matter from which a body is con-
structed. As Goodwin and Solé state, “it is not genes that generate this coher-
ence, for they can only function within the living cell, where their activities
are highly sensitive to context. The answer has to lie in the principles of
dynamic organization that . . . involve emergent properties that resolve the
extreme complexity of gene and cellular activities into robust patterns of
coherent order.”28
Thus, the concept of regeneration in regenerative medicine seems poised
between an Aristotelian emphasis on a prime matter and external formal
agency, on the one hand, and a view of the self-organizing, emergent proper-
ties of the cellular milieu, on the other. As a biotechnology research field,
regenerative medicine can be understood as a particular interpretation of the
Aristotelian distinction between coming-to-be (or development) and alter-
ation (or regeneration). Regenerative medicine reiterates this distinction
through a wide range of projected applications that go from life-extension
biotechnologies (development) to medical therapy for degenerative diseases
(regeneration). Of course, the line between medical therapy and biotechnical
enhancement is not as clear as limit cases seem to suggest. Attempts to
augment the human life span may seem mere folly, but research into neu-
rodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease has gained much support
and shown a significant level of progress. But what about examples that are
not so clear-cut, such as the use of stem cells for gene therapy or the research
into telomeres as a possible cancer therapy? It is, certainly, too soon to tell
whether such projects will show significant promise.
We have, then, a series of terms that collectively define the field of tension
within regenerative medicine (table 8.1): Aristotelian coming-to-be and alter-
ation; development and regeneration in biology; life-extension biotechnologies and
medical therapy; enhancement and medicine.
Certainly, however, the line between these terms is far from decisive. In
fact, the examples mentioned are only heuristic. With powerful biotechnolo-
gies such as stem cell research, tissue engineering, and other fields of regen-
erative medicine, each application will confront in some way this tension

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Table 8.1 The Conceptual Field of Tension in Regenerative Medicine

“Coming-to-be” in Aristotle “Alteration” in Aristotle

Development in biology (morphogenesis) Regeneration in biology (autotomy in certain

organisms)
Life-extension biotechnologies Medical application of stem cells
Extramedical enhancement Medical therapy

between extramedical enhancement and medical therapy. What is important

to note about regenerative medicine broadly is that the concept of “regeneration”
in regenerative medicine considers coming-to-be as a mode of alteration. In other words,
regenerative medicine is a way of understanding development within the
context of regeneration. Recall that Aristotelian coming-to-be is analogous to
the process of morphogenesis in the biological development of the organism.
Key in this process are the processes of cellular division and cellular differen-
tiation. Yet in most organisms this process happens only once; or rather, it is
a continuous process that in many ways defines the organism. By contrast,
regeneration, as the replacement of injured tissues, presumes the prior devel-
opment of the organism and is thus analogous to Aristotelian alteration.
This field of tension impacts what Susan Squier calls “the tissue culture
point of view,” or the ways in which various discourses on the biomedical body
impact the meanings that science research has within and outside of the specif-
ically medical context. As Squier notes, the tissue sciences such as xenotrans-
plantation, life-extension therapies, or stem cell research are positioned
between “the boundary of the species and the boundary of the human life
span.”29 The regenerative properties of cells are explored in two ways that
reflect table 8.1: “Two forms of growth are typically investigated in tissue
grown in vitro: organized growth and unorganized growth. Researchers have
accessed them—with iconic overdetermination—by culturing the embryo and
the cancer cell, potent images of life and death.”30 If the concept of regener-
ation is poised between Aristotelian coming-to-be and alteration, then we can
also say that regenerative medicine articulates two types of regenerative cells:
the cell defined by organization (driven, indeed, by Aristotle’s four causes) and
the cell driven by proliferation and production—the cell that differentiates
and the cell that produces.
The cell that produces, then, not only produces for a biological use value,
but in the context of the health-care industries it can also be made to produce

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for a biological use value that is also an economic exchange value (e.g., a
medical therapy or bioartificial tissue product). Furthermore, this relation
between biological and economic value is largely mediated by a social network
of exchange constituted by donors, volunteers, and structures of social indebt-
edness. Stem cells are thus carriers of what Catherine Waldby calls “biovalue.”
For Waldby, biovalue “refers to the yield of vitality produced by the biotech-
nical reformulation of living processes. Biotechnology tries to gain traction in
living processes, to induce them to increase or change their productivity along
specified lines, intensify their self-reproducing and self-maintaining capaci-
ties.”31 Aristotle expresses this correlation between medical and economic val-
uation in ambiguous terms: “As in the art of medicine there is no limit to the
pursuit of health . . . so too, in this art of wealth-getting there is no limit of
the end.”32 Again, regenerative medicine is in many ways a paradigmatic
biotechnology precisely because it identifies a mode of biology that is at once
“natural” and yet potentially (in Aristotle’s sense of the term) technical. It will
thus be worth our while to consider the concept of regeneration with respect
to the “time of life” of the cell and the organism.

Biotechnical Speed

As we have seen, the approach of regenerative medicine is different from

current biomedical approaches to tissue and organ failure in that it uses the
body’s own cellular processes toward novel ends. In addition, the very concept
of “regeneration” is set within a field of tensions between extramedical
enhancement and medical therapy. Yet the bodies in regenerative medicine
are never static, fixed bodies, but always embedded in different biotemporal
cycles and processes; regenerative medicine is, in this sense, constantly con-
cerned with the body’s sustainability through biological time. One way to
address this unique relationship between bodies and technologies is to con-
sider media theorist Paul Virilio’s views concerning the connections between
speed and technology: “Being alive means to be lively, quick. Being lively
means being-speed, being-quickness. . . . All these terms challenge us. There
is a struggle, which I tried to bring to light, between metabolic speed, the
speed of the living, and technological speed, the speed of death which already
exists in cars, telephones, the media, missiles. . . . Politics should try to
analyze this interface, because without this analysis a fatal coupling will be
established.”33 The tension Virilio highlights here is exactly the fact that

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although technologies of speed have quite literally been progressing at the
speed of light, the techniques of the body have largely been left to obsoles-
cence, wired into the “polar inertia” of interactivity. Elsewhere, Virilio out-
lines four modalities of speed in the current, dromological order: metabolic
speed (or “animal speed”), which includes physiology but also psychology and
emotions; and technological speed, which can be either mechanical speed (or
“automotive speed”) or the speed of spectacle (or “audiovisual speed”).34 The
former has come to replace the use of the body and animals as a means of
transportation (Virilio cites the mass production of automobiles and “auto-
mobility”), and the latter has come to replace the exclusive reliance on the
human sensorium (the gradual ubiquity of a tele-vision).35 In addition to
metabolic and technological speed, there are, Virilio states, “couplings”
between the two, the metabolic-automotive coupling and the metabolic-
audiovisual coupling.36
But what of these tensions Virilio evokes between metabolic and techno-
logical speed? On the one hand, it is clear that new transportation and com-
munications technologies are advancing the science speed to new levels, new
units of temporality, new definitions of presence. On the other, the human
body, the supposed bearer of such advances in speed technologies, has been
left behind, still defined by antiquated notions of the long duration of the
living, the slow and meandering pace of the “natural” operations of the
organism.
Or has it? Virilio’s dichotomy between metabolic and technological speed
is helpful because it asks not how the body itself is changing as a result
of technology, but rather how the “couplings” of the dynamics of body-
technology relationships are being transformed by new, technical notions of
development and morphogenesis. From such a perspective, it is clear that the
body is also a generator of a unique type of dromologistics, a generator of
speed in such a way that more traditional notions of the organism, biology,
and health are challenged.
For this reason, we would do well to take up Virilio’s notion of metabolic
and technological speed if only to question the very ontological division this
coupling presupposes. As we have seen in a variety of other contexts (tissue
engineering, genomics, bioinformatics), if there is one thing that biotechnol-
ogy demonstrates, it is that the body itself can be deployed as a technology,
that it can accelerate its own internal metabolic speed beyond the domain of
what it is “naturally” capable. The very techniques that these approaches use

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also show us the extent to which the body itself comes to inhabit a unique
type of temporality, partially defined by the biological processes of growth,
development, and decay, and partially defined by the technical enhancements
of a punctuated, triggered regeneration.
Within the tension Virilio highlights between metabolic speed and tech-
nological speed, we might locate a biotechnical speed in which the biological
body is constantly surpassing itself. Biotechnical speed involves a technical
approach to the body, whose goal is to maintain the integrity of the biologi-
cal body as a “natural” entity, while also improving it’s capacities. This is a
body that is not just responsive to environmental signals, but that seeks to
optimize itself independently of its environment. The body of biotechnical
speed emerges within a set of conditions in which it can biologically self-engi-
neer, culminating in a newfound optimization (increased efficiency and effec-
tiveness) and a new found cellular versatility (regeneration at any location).
Taking these comments into consideration, we might, like biotech research
itself, peer into the near future to speculate on the kinds of bodies that regen-
erative medicine might produce through biotechnical speed. Again, as pointed
out at the beginning of this chapter, we need to see these bodies in all their
complexity; our near-future scenario is not simply a utopia or a dystopia, but
a network of cells, technologies, therapeutics, politics, and economics. Think-
ing about the body on a philosophical and political level, we can extrapolate
three possibilities, based on current research.

Immune System 2.0

Although regenerative medicine research has been able to stimulate singular
instances of cellular regeneration, its dream is to be able to reprogram the
body on the cellular-molecular level to accomplish this regeneration on its
own. Reprogramming the body requires thinking of the body’s immunity
operations as not only offensive (attacking designated molecules) but also
defensive (capable of triggering regeneration at diseased, weakened sites). The
goal of the regenerative medicine research into diseases such as Parkinson’s or
Alzheimer’s is not just the replenishment of, for example, neuronal cells, but
the programming of the body’s immune system to respond to disease by trig-
gering targeted regeneration. If we extend this basic process—not just the
replacement of cells, but the design of a biological replacement system in the
body—then regenerative medicine becomes a kind of directed, controlled
metastasis.

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 Gerotech
As with all biomedical innovations, the bioethical line between necessity and
vanity, disease and design, is ever present in regenerative medicine. Biotech
companies focusing on cellular aging, in which, the telomeres, or the protec-
tive caps of chromosomes, get progressively shorter each time a cell divides,
are pointing to telomere research as the fountain of youth. If regenerative
technologies can be utilized to counteract the telomere-shortening process,
then cellular aging would turn into cellular longevity, and biological aging
would turn into biological immortality. The age-old concept of defeating the
aging process and cheating death has found its newest exemplar in the very
idea of regeneration. Once cells, tissues, and organs can be grown on demand,
outside or inside the body, then the line dividing medical necessity and meta-
physical vanity becomes more ambivalent.

Off-the-Shelf Organs
We should never forget that biotechnology is first and foremost an industry.
Although medical application provides an impetus for the research, its true
test will be whether viable products and services can emerge out of this
research. The existence of bioartificial skin products on the market is testi-
mony to this bioeconomic drive. For regenerative medicine, this test means
patenting and marketing the techniques used to trigger cellular regeneration
for medical purposes; the development of novel, genetically designed drugs,
aimed to trigger regeneration or stem cell development biochemically, is also
another area of focus. What regenerative medicine shows us is that the body
can be approached as a biological storehouse, a living cell bank located inside
the body that is constantly replenished. This body defines itself not accord-
ing to cycles of growth and decay, but according to biological surplus, encour-
aging a view of the body that is defined by disposability.

As these examples indicate, biotechnical speed transforms the biological body

into a technology, a continued, controlled deployment and enhancement of
the body’s cellular capacities. These bodies defined by biotechnical speed are
hyperresponsive (the upgraded immune system), biologically interminable
(cellular immortality), and marked by disposable bioeconomies (off-the-shelf
organs).
Both technical optimization and cellular versatility also imply a general
improvement in the body’s performance. A body that can, within the right

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type of context, self-initiate the regeneration of damaged tissues and cells is
also a body that is constantly pushing the limits of its performance. This is
what Virilio refers to as “the race to achieve limit-performances” within the
technosciences.37 For Virilio, this emphasis on the “limit-performance” moves
technoscience away from discourses of medical truth and closer to technical
paradigms measuring functionality, an ambiguity between medical healing
and technical effectiveness.
What is left of the body when both external and internal contingencies
have been biotechnically removed? Different research agendas present us with
different visions of the future of the biomedical body. In terms of aging, the
body becomes self-recyclable, harnessing its stem cells—the biomolecular
fountains of youth—to replenish lost cells continually. In terms of disease, the
body becomes a biological war machine constantly undergoing autovaccina-
tion by targeting and recognizing possible pathogens; indeed, the environ-
ment itself becomes one great pathogen for regenerative medicine. Finally, in
terms of tissue and organ replacement, the body becomes a “wet” storehouse
of resource materials, which may be freely bought and sold, exchanged and
engineered, in a sudden materialization of the biotech economy. The point of
contention here is not the benefits of developing treatments for disease.
Rather, the issue raised by fields such as regenerative medicine is how differ-
ent ways of approaching the biological body articulate certain views of how
disease, health, normativity, and the body are understood.

The Labor of Regeneration

These temporal aspects of regenerative medicine lead to a consideration of the

unique type of “labor” performed by the cells, enzymes, and genes that con-
stitute the regenerative body. Recall that, in Marx’s terms, “labor-power or
capacity for labor is to be understood as the aggregate of those mental and
physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever
he produces a use-value of any description.”38 Marx comments that labor
power requires that three conditions be met. The first is that the worker must
offer his or her labor power on the market as a commodity. That is, in order
for labor power to exist, the worker must be able to conceive of labor as being
amenable to quantification. This openness to the quantification of labor
enables labor or productive activity in general to become specifically labor
power. Once this occurs, labor power can be sold as a commodity.

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 But this openness to quantification actually means that the worker is able
to separate labor from the body and do so in a way that renders labor as prop-
erty—that is, property to be sold. Labor cannot become labor power, and labor
power cannot become a commodity unless the worker establishes the connec-
tion between body, labor, and property. Therefore, the second condition is that
the worker must be willing to offer his or her labor power (separated prop-
erty of quantification) for sale. That is, the worker must be able not only to
quantify, but to exchange, circulate, and sell that labor power. Implied is the
willingness to extricate the body’s productive activity from the body of the
self. Self is therefore disengaged from labor (or only to the extent that labor
will produce returns for the body of the self ).
Also implied is that the worker has nothing else to sell except his or
her labor power. That there are those who own money and those who sell
their labor is not a natural condition, Marx notes, but a product of historical
conflict. The form that that conflict historically takes is an exchange of
quantitative values. What kind of a quantity is labor power? Marx states
that “the value of labor-power is determined, as in the case of every
other commodity, by the labor-time necessary for the production, and
consequently also the reproduction, of this special article.” Furthermore, “it
represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labor of society
incorporated in it. Labor-power exists only as a capacity, the power of the
living individual.”39
As a quantity, labor power is determined by a time measurement—how
long it takes to produce a commodity. Note that this time is not necessarily
how long it takes to produce an object with use value for the worker, but the
time it takes to produce an object of value for others. This value is determined
not only by external social customs, but principally by the amount of labor
power necessary to sustain the life (body) of the worker. Here Marx edges
toward biological terms again in speaking of labor power as a quantity that
is defined by biological sustenance of the body doing the labor. The vicious
circle is that the body must work a certain amount in order to sustain itself,
but it can sustain itself only if it is healthy to begin with. Biological processes
get translated directly into economic terms: “thereby a definite quantity of
human muscle, nerve, brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored.
This increased expenditure demands a larger income.”40
The role of time—of many kinds of time—is a key factor in the broader
issues raised by regenerative medicine. Antonio Negri, in his discussion of the

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pervasive expansion of capitalist modes of production over many aspects of
social life, notes not only that time becomes a major point of contestation
between laborer and capitalist, but that this contestation takes the form of an
ontological and material struggle: “If social labor covers all the time of life,
and invests all of its regions, how can time measure the substantive totality
in which it is implicit?”41 If a quantitative valuation of time—of labor time—
becomes the basis for labor power, the wage, and the guarantee of surplus
value, then the primary challenge of a capitalist view of time is to render qual-
itative social activity into quantitative labor power. What results is the
“impossibility of distinguishing the totality of life (of the social relations of
production and reproduction) from the totality of time from which this life
is woven.”42 Time, in Negri’s analysis, is not a mediation of a laboring body,
nor is it simply a representation of the product of labor. The very concept of
labor power involves a notion of time that is constitutive, that in fact pro-
duces the very laboring bodies it describes. The nexus of labor power, body,
and capital “develops materially, in a tendential and necessary sense, toward
the tautology of time and life.”43
This development leads to a situation in which, literally, life is put to work.
For Marx, this occurred when the individual sold his or her capacity for work
or production as labor power. Michael Hardt and Negri—expanding on work
done within the Italian autonomist tradition—have recently suggested that
in the informational, global economy, labor power becomes “immaterial labor”
in which no material product is produced, but rather acts of communication,
calculation, and affect.44 But in the biotech industry, labor power is trans-
formed in a different way. Regenerative medicine is unique in that it works
toward being able to harness naturally occurring biological processes. In this
sense, the ideal biotechnology is one in which there is no technology at all,
in which biology does all the work itself. Thus, the species-being is not just
molecular-genetic; it is that which is made amenable to the technical para-
digm of regenerative medicine. Hardt and Negri’s immaterial labor becomes
a kind of biomaterial labor, enabling biologies to produce themselves in novel
contexts. Labor power in regenerative medicine is cellular, enzymatic, genetic—a labor
power defined by a biological potentiality.
Marx, writing in the mid–nineteenth century, was of course talking about
industrial modes of production. But his comments concerning production are
relevant to us for the way they reconfigure the biotech industry. In fact, I
suggest that regenerative medicine, inasmuch as it participates in the biotech

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industry and health-care economy, constitutes a novel mode of production,
one that is distinct from industrial modes of production or more recent modes
of flexible accumulation or informatization. In Marx’s later work, production
is defined as being composed of three elements. Each of these elements has its
correlative in the biotech industry, but in ways very different from the mode
of industrial capitalism of which Marx was speaking. The first element of pro-
duction involves the conditions of production, such as the natural resources
available for work. As previously noted, for regenerative medicine the condi-
tion of production is biological life at the cellular, molecular, and genetic
levels. The second element includes the forces of production, or the means by
which natural resources are transformed into products. For regenerative med-
icine, these means include the means by which biological processes are
harnessed, appropriated, and recontextualized. The notion of biological “infor-
mation” is a key component to the forces of production. Biological informa-
tion acts as both an immaterializing and a materializing force, enabling one
to move between an in vitro tissue culture and a computerized genome data-
base. The third element involves the relations of production, or the relations
of property and exchange. For regenerative medicine, the relations of produc-
tion are many, from genetically designed drugs to stem cell–based therapies,
to patents on techniques or compounds, to levels of funding and investment
in research. The relations of production enable a mobility between informa-
tion, property, and matter, especially in the case of patents and the potential
marketing of regenerative medicine therapies.
It seems, then, that when looked at as a mode of production, regenerative
medicine relies a great deal on the ability to define biology in relation to tech-
niques for working on biology and in relation to the economic valuation of
such techniques. In this sense, we might describe regenerative medicine not
as a mode of industrial production or as a mode of information, but as a mode
of regeneration. As a mode of production, regenerative medicine begins by
approaching biological process as a potential coming-to-be, as a set of known
variables with known ends. The labor power of regenerative medicine includes
the biological, cellular, and molecular processes of regeneration itself. In
regenerative medicine, the conditions of production are constantly regener-
ated or replenished by the forces and relations of production. But more than
this, regenerative medicine produces its own conditions of production; that
is, it defines the biological domain as the domain of biological potential, in
which a process such as cellular differentiation is viewed as a set of known

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steps that produces predictable results, which are then amenable to medical
forces and economic relations. Hardt and Negri make a similar point when
they distinguish between that which is “outside measure” and that which is
“beyond measure.”45 That which is outside measure is a spatial exteriority, that
which is not yet measurable.
What does this mean for regenerative medicine specifically and biotech-
nology generally? I should note that the idea here is not to apply Marx point
for point from the industrial factory and the human body of the worker to the
biotech lab and the nonhuman body of cells, enzymes, and DNA. Rather, we
want to see what Marx’s concept of labor power can tell us about the biotech
industry and its mode of production.
One thing that stands out is that in biotech there is no laboring body.
There are, as previously stated, the laboring bodies of researchers, lab techni-
cians, administrators, and so forth. But there is no body that actually does the
producing. That job is handled by biology, biology put to work. This is most
obvious in the case of tissue and cell cultures, in which the metabolic and
developmental capacities of cells are maintained almost indefinitely in labo-
ratory conditions. Their labor is a strange kind, for the very principle of
biotechnology is that, ideally, one has to do very little; there is a sense that
the biology takes care of itself. A number of characteristics make the labor
power of regenerative medicine unique. One is the nature of the labor itself,
in which all efforts go toward creating the right conditions for naturally occur-
ring biological processes to take place (e.g., cellular differentiation, division,
apoptosis). The labor of biotechnology is, in a sense, purely biological—that
is, the labor of biotech aims to be transparently biological.
But genes expressing themselves in an embryo and a culture of stem cells
are two different contexts. Labor in one becomes labor power in another, which
is made especially evident in the private sector, where stem cell–related
patents and the promises of stem cell therapy form a part of several biotech
companies’ business plan. This labor power is unique for a second reason: no
human owner of the labor power volitionally sells that labor power as a com-
modity. Marx’s conditions of labor power have been rewritten by the biotech
industry. Instead of a human worker, who views his or her labor power as prop-
erty to sell, exchange, and circulate, we now have a nonhuman biological
network of cell lines, tissue cultures, and genomic databases. Labor is not,
then, real-time labor of the physical body; instead, it is the archival labor of
cell cultures, databases, and plasmid libraries.

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 Labor power in biotech is put to work in two kinds of bodies. One body
is the nonhuman “molecular” bodies of cells, enzymes, and DNA. These
bodies can be derived from one of two sources. One source is human beings
or animals by genetic or tissue sampling. This source is controversial, espe-
cially in cases where patenting of biological materials is involved, or where
genetically and ethnically isolated populations are targeted for study. The
second source is much more preferable in that it bypasses the human element
altogether and relies on the source code of DNA. Though much regenerative
medicine research has ostensibly “black-boxed” the cell, trends in research
point to the further integration of cell biology with genomics and proteomics.
The data that currently exist are overwhelming, and with the click of a mouse
a researcher can download the sequence for a given gene from a given organ-
ism and then synthesize that gene in the lab.
The second body in regenerative medicine is human, or rather on the
verge of the human (some might say posthuman). This is the body of the
patient in a clinical trial, the recipient of a gene therapy, a stem cell therapy,
or a bioartificial tissue transplant. The body of the patient is a unique type
of laboring body. The introduction of new genes, proteins, or cells impels
the body to work in a new way; this is the basic idea behind gene therapy.
The modified body is impelled to produce something new—a gene that is
not expressed, a protein to block gene expression. This is fine when it
works over the long term and can demonstrate both safety and effectiveness.
But often this modified, laboring patient-body is not set for the long
term. It needs intervention from the outside. This is where the patient’s
body of the patient exists in a bizarre kind of biological estrangement,
when cells taken from that body are used to culture cells that will be
modified and put back into the patient. This body is, then, self-sustaining,
but only on condition that it be semipermanently wired into the biology of
the wet lab.

“Life Runs Painfully Gray down the Walls of Time”

When tissues and organs can be grown on demand, irrespective of bodily con-
tingency or surroundings, our relationships to our bodies and our notions of
health and disease are bound to be altered.46 Regenerative medicine is a unique
approach to the biomedical body not only on a scientific level, but, more
important, in the way in which it regulates the relationship between biology

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and technology, the natural and the technical, as both are contextualized by
the sciences.
The science fiction expressions of this type of regeneration can be found in
the X-Men series, the example with which I began this chapter. As genetic
mutants, the X-men form ambivalent hybrids caught between genetic dis-
crimination and a kitschlike, heroic posthumanism. If we take regenerative
medicine’s desire to extricate bodily contingency from the body, we can see
two bodily imaginaries at work; the characters of Wolverine and Mystique
represent two poles of the regenerative, biotechnical body—one marked by
the military-industrial complex, the other manifested through the ability to
shape-shift.
As an expression of the autonomous self-referential subject, Wolverine rep-
resents the totally fortified, insulated, defensible body. Along with the cyborg
enhancements of postmodern warfare, Wolverine’s capacity for biological
regeneration makes him the autonomous, self-sufficient, biotechnical subject,
able to withstand any environment or context of threat. The only way to trans-
form the mortal, biological body into a monad is to make it into biological
armor, which is, in effect, to attempt to remove mortality from the body. By
contrast, Mystique represents a deeply rooted anxiety surrounding the impli-
cations of a total biotechnical control of the body. That is, if Wolverine rep-
resents the dream of a totally fortified, autonomous body, Mystique represents
the uneasy implications of taking this logic of biotechnics to its logical con-
clusion. Wolverine’s body is primarily defensive, certainly combative; it is
industrial, biological, structural. Its entire purpose is to maintain its own self-
identity, even in the face of death and even if it means going to the extreme
of removing death from the body. Mystique’s body is about a biotechnical
control of the body to such a degree that “the body” becomes something other
than a fixed, stable identity, even something other than the structural, anatom-
ical anthropomorphism that traditionally defines the human body. Mystique’s
body is biotechnical control to the extent that one may lose control of the
body; it is biotechnical control to the extent that the traditional notions of
the human body—and the human itself—become regularly transgressed,
morphed, and mutated.
If one can technically condition the body at the molecular, genetic, and
cellular level, and if one can essentially design all of the body’s contingencies
out of the body, then it seems that medicine has far surpassed its traditional
role as a therapeutic practice and has fully entered the domain of biodesign.

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The next logical step here is to move from a pervasive biological regulation
of the body to an equally pervasive total redesign of what the body is capable
of. Mystique’s biomolecular shape-shifting is simply the dark underside of
Wolverine’s overconfident, hypermasculine dream of a totally fortified body.
Although these two characters’ gender identifications may be seen as pre-
dictable, both Wolverine and Mystique, as a single discourse on the future of
the biomedical body, “perform” the limits of an enabling biotechnology.
Wolverine thus becomes the biotechnical dream of the self-contained, human-
ist subject, whereas Mystique represents the scientific and cultural anxieties
of total formlessness (or total control).
Regenerative medicine recontextualizes the biological body as capable of
being optimized and made more versatile by the creation of certain techni-
cally enhanced conditions, through which an upgraded version of the biolog-
ical may emerge. It provides us with an example of a biotechnology in the
literal sense of the term—a technical design of life. The confusions that result
are that the body supposedly benefits from technical intervention, while all
the time remaining a “natural” biological entity unmodified by technology.
It is this ambiguity regarding the relationships between biologies and tech-
nologies that inhabits science fiction hybrids, as we see in X-Men, revealing
both the techno-optimisms and the abject anxieties of biotechnologies.
Thus, the main challenge for any bioethical, political, and philosophical
thinking about fields such as regenerative medicine is how to conceive of the
role of the subject or patient in the decidedly nonhuman biologies of stem
cell research or tissue engineering. The biomaterial labor of regenerative med-
icine is at once desubjectified, occupied only by the complex biological agen-
cies of gene expression networks, cellular differentiation, and developmental
pathways. Yet in the medical application of regenerative medicine, individ-
ual subjects are clearly involved in clinical trials, gene therapy experiments,
and the business of the field. A central challenge will be the problem of a “col-
lective corporeality,” as Negri puts it.47 There exists no phenomenology of the
patient that addresses the uncanny, almost science fictional examples of
“immortal” cell lines, totipotent stem cells, and proposals for life-extension
therapies. The question is, Can such a view of a biomedical, bioethical, col-
lective corporeality exist while also acknowledging the new forms of bioma-
terial labor being created in the biotech industry?

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 9

Conclusion: Tactical Media and Bioart

In her essay “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappro-

priate/d Others,” Donna Haraway begins by making the point that what
counts as “nature” is both constructed and necessary.1 As an instance of “arti-
factual reproduction,” with extended global histories in science, colonialism,
and political economies, nature becomes for Haraway less a thing and more
a “topos” or field of renegotiation. Haraway is insistent on the constructed
aspect of our notions of nature and the natural (“nature for us is made, as both
fiction and fact”), as well as on the scientific discourses that articulate and act
upon nature (“biology is a discourse, not the living world itself”).2 However,
she does not emphasize the constructed aspects of nature in order to destroy
it as an efficacious concept. Rather, it is precisely through this artifactual
quality of nature that she proposes a refiguration of nature, both as a field of
negotiation and as a negotiating or mediating dynamic. The category of
nature, with its complex histories and permutations, both structures the field
of possible inquiries and investigations concerning life, culture, and technol-
ogy and mediates the possible connections between various “material-
semiotic nodes.”3
The main force of Haraway’s “biopolitics of postmodern bodies” is that it
is an inquiry into the ways in which the notion of an agential, intentional,
self-aware, and autonomous subject is variously instituted into a range of
contexts within contemporary technoscience. Haraway does not ever deny the
political reality of “the subject” as it is incorporated into everyday practices.
Instead, she proposes a complexification of the subject by offering a view of
the multitude of nonhuman, material-semiotic actors involved in any techno-
scientific process (machines, cells, scientific papers, policy regulations, dis-
eases, etc.). This means that it is not only a matter of questioning the subject,
but of the “givenness” of the subject—its nature. What gets constructed as
nature and as the natural in scientific discourse and practice dictates the kind
of ethics and politics that can develop.4

Consensus, Dissensus, Post-Media

But what kinds of ethics and politics can develop? In a series of essays dealing
with globalism’s “planetary computerization,” philosopher and activist
Félix Guattari asks how subjectivity is currently being articulated in an age
of information technologies.5 These processes of articulating subjects he
calls “collective apparatuses of subjectification,” and they take a specific form
in contexts where technoscientific knowledge legitimizes ways of thinking
and acting in the world. Guattari begins answering his initial question
by analyzing three main types of apparatuses of subjectification: pathways
of power, pathways of knowledge, and pathways of self-reference or self-
transformation.6
The primary question for Guattari is how to relate the third pathway (self-
transformation) to the first two (power and knowledge). In other words,
amidst all of these apparatuses of subjectification (technologies for condition-
ing subjects), how can one conceive of a mode of self-making that will serve
as an alternative to either the pathway of power or the pathway of knowledge?
“The burning question, then, becomes this: Why have the immense proces-
sual potentials brought forth by the revolutions in information processing,
telematics, robotics, office automation, biotechnology and so on, up to now
only led to a monstrous reinforcement of earlier systems of alienation, an
oppressive mass media culture and an infantilizing politics of consensus?”7
Guattari suggests that before we can think of how to identify sites that are
reduced to the pathways of power (such as the state) or knowledge (such as
science), we must first think about how to create the conditions for “new exis-
tential territories.” That is, before thinking about new modes of subjectivity,
we must first think about experience, existence, and selfhood in relation to
science and technology. The possibility of outlining new ways of thinking and
acting in the world are therefore predicated on finding new ways of thinking
about technology in relation to the “subject.”8

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 Guattari poses the possibility of a “post-media era” as one alternative. As
its name indicates, the post-media era would be one that both incorporates
media (that is, it is not anti-technology), but also transforms media such
that they are no longer assumed to be separate from the subject (that is, they
are no longer an object, a commodity, a tool, or something opposed to
the subject). Guattari does not define what this post-media politics would
be, but he suggests that one route is to move from “consensual media” (media
homogenization, standardization, and corporate ownership) to “dissen-
sual post-media” (bottom-up media that emphasize polyvocality, that are
critical).9
How might Guattari’s notion of post-media operate in relation to biotech?
As we know, continuing developments in the areas of computer animation,
the construction of virtual environments, telerobotics and motion capture, and
an array of technologies for broadcasting and webcasting innovative work are
becoming available not only to scientists, but also to artists, performers, and
cultural activists. If biotech research is increasingly becoming “computerized,”
and if a range of computer technologies are available to the nonspecialist cur-
rently, then it makes sense to inquire into the kinds of politically aware,
critical, and ethically conscious interventions that are enabled by this
nonspecialist engagement with the “medium” of biotech. The term bioart is
often used to refer to projects that deal with biology as an artistic medium
(as opposed to painting, sculpture, photography, or video, one assumes).
However, I find it worthwhile to refuse this convenient tag for a number of
reasons. It not only marginalizes (or niche markets) art, effectively separating
it from the practices of technoscience, but the notion of a “bioart” also posi-
tions art practice as reactionary and, at best, reflective of the technosciences.
Though the term bioart may indeed refer to artists and artworks circulated
primarily within the gallery system, we might do better and ask how cultural
research dealing with biotechnology can take seriously its interdisciplinary
nature. As an example, we may briefly consider four groups specifically
working in the intersections between biotechnology, art, and new
media. Each employs different strategies of engagement and critique, which
also means different technologies and techniques. Each also involves
some level of collaboration between artists and scientists, attempting to
complicate the redundant circles into which “science wars” discussions can
often fall.

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 SymbioticA and the Tissue Culture & Art Project: The Culture of
Flesh
In a text commenting on the way in which technoscience facilitates a “gene
fetishism,” Haraway has the following to say: “Organisms emerge from a dis-
cursive process. Biology is a discourse, not the living world itself. But humans
are not the only actors in the construction of the entities of any scientific dis-
course; machines (delegates that can produce surprises) and other partners
(not ‘pre- or extra-discursive objects,’ but partners) are active constructors of
natural scientific objects.”10 The strange, alien artifacts that populate many
bioscience labs—from DNA chips to lab-grown tissues—challenge our tra-
ditional thinking about the boundary between the living and the nonliving.
Bruno Latour often refers to such strange entities as actants, neither actors (in
the sense of the agency presumed to lie in human subjects) nor objects acted
upon (in the sense of instruments or resources). Similarly, Haraway begins to
outline a new category for the production of the natural and the technical that
is not simply about a dichotomy between nature and artifice, biology and tech-
nology, human and machine. Both Haraway and Latour are attempting to
move beyond the exclusively ideological critiques of science and toward the
creation of a space inhabited instead by a variety of qualitatively differenti-
ated actants, each with its own force, contingency, and context.
However, as both Haraway and Latour note, the actants are also “mon-
strous,” especially when they are placed in a position of radical difference to
the more familiar (or naturalized) conditions of the science lab or medical
clinic. Perhaps fields such as tissue engineering offer the prime context in
which to investigate the extent to which our own bodies—as biologically con-
stituted—are redeployed as actants. Although it is easy to see how a mechan-
ical prosthetic (or laptop or PDA or cellular phone) can become an actant in
our everyday activities, the issue of bioartificial tissues is more complex. The
tissues are my own, yet they exist outside of and separate from my body. They
live outside of and separate from my body. Are they indeed “my” tissues? Or
are they my tissues once they have been grafted (or regrafted?) onto my body
and have assimilated to their new (originary?) environment?
For some years, a small group of artists has been exploring the phenome-
nological and biomedical paradoxes that tissue engineering elicits. The Tissue
Culture & Art Project, begun in the mid-1990s in Perth, Australia, inten-
tionally set out to create a technically feasible laboratory environment in

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which artists could learn about and investigate biotechnology from a cultural,
ethical, and anthropological standpoint.11 The project is also housed under
SymbioticA, a larger project that aims to bring together critical artistic
inquiry with the techniques and practices of cellular biology and tissue engi-
neering.12 In conjunction with the Department of Anatomy and Biology at
the University of Western Australia, SymbioticA and the Tissue Culture &
Art Project have initiated and presented their work in a variety of contexts,
from art festivals to science conferences.
For instance, the Tissue Culture & Art Project artists working at the Sym-
bioticA labs have utilized tissue-culturing techniques to create miniature
figurines out of animal stem cells, some—as in their Semi-living Worry Dolls
project—seeming to fulfill a kind of ritual function (the artists encourage
viewers to “tell the dolls your worries”). They have also used architectural and
sculptural principles to design novel scaffolding structures upon which to
grow tissue, creating “pig’s wings” (miniature wings from mesenchymal pig
cells) and other such impossible, anomalous anatomies. The discourse of the
monster and the monstrous is appropriate here; the types of monstrous bodies
SymbioticA designs are biologically and physiologically nonfunctional, and
yet still “living.” They occupy that ambiguous, intermediary zone between
subject and object, a sort of “tissue actant.”
If tissues are indeed akin to Latour’s notion of actants, then SymbioticA’s
projects can be understood as inquiries into the issues that arise in the con-
sideration of these strange teratologies—teratologies no stranger than those
that exist in tissue engineering labs themselves. Can there be a politics that
effectively takes into account these nonhuman actants, entities that are much
more than inert objects and yet much less than autonomous organisms? How
can we keep from falling into the too easy habit of reducing all actants to
agential origins (e.g., the notion that, yes, there are these nonhuman machines,
but ultimately humans design and operate them)?13 The Tissue Culture & Art
Project’s Extra Ear Quarter Scale (figure 9.1), developed in collaboration with
the performance artist Stelarc, addresses this question. The Extra Ear project
aims to grow a bioartificial ear that will, in concept, be transplanted onto
Stelarc’s head.14 The ear is fully “biological” in the sense that it utilizes tissue
engineering principles and is not a mechanical prosthetic or cybernetic device.
But the ear is also excessive, artificial, in the sense that it is not needed by
the body to live. The cells of the extra organ are the body’s own, and yet the

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Figure 9.1 The semiliving body: Extra Ear 1/4 Scale, by the Tissue Culture & Art Project
(Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr), in collaboration with Stelarc. Courtesy the Tissue Culture & Art
Project.

organ is something that is functionally alien to the body. This and other proj-
ects raise the issue of biological property, or, rather, the relationship between
biology and property that is at the core of current debates over tissue banking
institutions, stem cell economies, and genetic patenting. On the one hand,
we assume that our bodies are indeed isomorphic or at least “proper” with
ourselves. On the other hand, there is also a booming business of tissue
banking (sperm, ova, etc.) that presupposes that the ownership of “a” body is,
strangely, predicated on the ownership of “my” body (informed and legal
consent, and so on).15

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 SubRosa: The Sex of the Species
As an ideology and social theory, sociobiology is, generally speaking, about the
application of biological knowledge (mostly from evolutionary biology, hered-
itary genetics, and population biology) to social phenomena. Heralded as a
new synthesis of science and sociology by proponents such as E. O. Wilson,
sociobiology attempts to account for social behavior as in some way biologi-
cal at its basis (such as studies on the evolution of altruism).16 At its most
reductive, sociobiology seeks to isolate, describe, and explain a wide variety
of social anomalies (from medical diseases to “social diseases” such as crimi-
nality) from the perspective of the biological sciences. At its best, it aims to
develop a theory of the coevolution of genes and culture in the understand-
ing of social phenomena. Sociobiological trends have recently gained a fair
amount of publicity, largely over what some say are their discriminatory and
eugenic implications. Debates over the degree to which certain hereditary or
genetic disorders or both are linked to questions of race and ethnicity have
sparked a controversy as to how far science should advance on social questions.
Similar debates have occurred over the possible genetic variants contributing
to other so-called genetic predispositions as wide-ranging as homosexuality,
infertility, and mental disability.17
Sociobiology today is arguably not so much a school or scientific discipline
as it is a way of managing the social as a collectivity. This is most evidenced
by the role of biological knowledge in the areas of reproductive technologies,
genetic diagnostics, and the increasing reach of the pharmaceutical industry
into all aspects of human behavior. At issue with the investigations of socio-
biology is this enframing of the social as a biological population (that is,
defined by patterns of growth, reproduction, demographics, disease, mortal-
ity). The population is regulated through the means of scientifically distin-
guishing health from disease, the normal from the pathological, and by the
intention to locate a biologically rooted cause of a range of social phenomena
manifest in the population. This form of management proceeds by many tech-
niques, from surveys to statistics, to health care, to social policy, to scientific
experimentation. Its goal is always a search for complex and productive (that
is, coercive and nonrepressive) ways to regulate the social body operationally.
Although sociobiological perspectives often seek to isolate a biologically
based causality to social and cultural phenomena, the SubRosa collective
approaches the social as a field thickly demarcated by the political signifiers
of gender, race, and class relationships. As a self-described “cyberfeminist”

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group, SubRosa takes up a wide range of topics related to biotechnologies.18
In their performances, projects, publications, and workshops, SubRosa
members instigate a series of confrontations between culture, economics, and
biology. For example, early SubRosa projects investigated the ways in which
gender was being transformed by biotechnology. Faith Wilding’s SmartMom
project extrapolated medical and reproductive technologies into a full-
spectrum surveillance system, and the SubRosa Biotech Sex and Gender Ed
Workbook appropriated the format of a women’s health manual, but in the
context of the cultural and ideological aspects of new reproductive technolo-
gies. Recent performances such as Expo EmmaGenics (figure 9.2) and Biopower
Unlimited! explore the rhetoric and semiotics of corporate biotechnology trade
shows, complete with CD-ROM, sales pitch, powerpoint, advertisements,
corporate branding, and the use of molecular biology lab techniques for
demonstration purposes.19
If sociobiology attempts to view the social in terms of the assumptions of
the scientific and biological, then anthropologist Paul Rabinow suggests a
reversal, biosociality, which is about the critical questioning of sociobiology

Figure 9.2 Demonstrating “ART” (Assisted Reproduction Technologies): appropriating the

trade-show format in Expo EmmaGenics, a project by the SubRosa collective. Courtesy
SubRosa.

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and is a helpful term for describing SubRosa’s activities.20 Rabinow’s bioso-
ciality makes two suggestions: that sociobiological trends reduce the social to
the biological (and by extension the scientific), and that sociobiology, through
its assumptions, discourses, and research, in many ways produces the social as
essentially a biological problem.
Although SubRosa’s members do not simply take an “antiscience” position
in their projects, they do raise contentious issues that demand accountability
within the biotech and health-care industries. Their workshops focus on edu-
cation and awareness building in specific local communities, especially as
regards assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and the ongoing technical
advances in in vitro fertization. Contrary to the technophilia that inhabits
much medical technologies, SubRosa asks how the population is monitored,
classified, and channeled (in technologies such as ARTs) into a range of viable,
culturally homogeneous positions (e.g., the configuration of tissue, sperm, and
ova “banks”).

Biotech Hobbyist: Will the PC Happen to Biotech?

In most contexts, the notion of the “amateur” or “hobbyist” is looked down
upon, signifying as it does one who is not properly trained, who is not an
expert or specialist in a field, and who does not take seriously that which he
or she practices. In another context, amateurism and hobbyism have been
taken in a quite different, opposite manner. For example, prior to the explo-
sion of the PC industry, a number of small zines circulated in the 1970s that
were dedicated to the idea that computers could be customized, tweaked, and
modified for a range of purposes. These “computer hobbyist” zines (e.g., Cre-
ative Computing, Computer Hobbyist) circulated alongside the first computer kits
(e.g., the Altair 8800, the Apple I). In this context, the amateur or hobbyist
was someone with a great deal of knowledge and an interest in the nonspe-
cialist use of that specialist knowledge.
However, all of us are also aware of what happened to the so-called liber-
alism of this geek subculture: the PC, Microsoft, the MacIntosh, an entire
industry built around the idea of personal computing. It is this contradiction
that the collective Biotech Hobbyist explores. A loose group of individuals
from a range of disciplines, Biotech Hobbyist—started by artists Natalie
Jeremijenko and Heath Bunting—proposes that what happened to com-
puting may also happen to biotech. That is, the question Biotech Hobbyist
(half-ironically, half-seriously) poses is: Will the PC happen to biotech?

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 As a way of investigating such questions, Biotech Hobbyist projects explore
the idea of the “kit.”21 In a do-it-yourself fashion, projects draw on science
education to explore biotechnology techniques such as DNA extraction,
sequencing, and PCR using readily available materials and tools (e.g., kitchen
PCR, DNA extraction with a blender, sequencing with sugar). Other projects
focus on specific issues, such as Jeremijenko’s project OneTree, which involved
the cloning and then planting of 100 trees around the San Francisco Bay Area.
Among other things, OneTree demonstrated the fallacies of the reductionist
understanding of genetic cloning: each of the planted cloned trees developed
in different ways, in part owing to the different urban and environmental con-
ditions of the Bay Area. Another Biotech Hobbyist project, PbC (Personal bio-
Computing), proposes to build a low-tech DNA computer using the standard
lab techniques of gel electrophoresis and PCR (figure 9.3). Other projects
explore open-source bioinformatics, tissue culturing, biotech video games,
genetic horoscopes, and antipatenting software tools.
Biotech Hobbyist projects employ a kind of “tactical media” that supports
amateur practice in that the amateur or hobbyist makes use of whichever

Figure 9.3 Garage biotech: gel electrophoresis kit, lo-fi PCR, and laptop bioinformatics in a
Biotech Hobbyist lab. Courtesy Biotech Hobbyist.

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media are necessary for a given context (the “digital divide” becomes a
“biotechnical divide”). Amateurism and hobbyism are important here because
they imply both an interest in learning and an interest in reappropriating,
repurposing. We can learn from gaming culture: “mods” for biotech. However,
this does not mean the freedom to do whatever one wants with one’s own
mods, nor does it license a total lack of knowledge or responsibility. What is
important to understand about this amateurism and hobbyism is the way in
which the practitioners construct for themselves customized environments for
learning and critiquing (which implies the development of unique commu-
nities of differentiated specialists). Tactical media are nonteleological but
directed; they support multiple agendas and fully imply all the complexities
of ethical action.

Critical Art Ensemble: Delivering on the Promise of Biotechnology

For a number of years, the group known as the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE)
has utilized a range of media and practices—video, cultural theory, net.art,
activism, guerrilla performance, and research collaborations—to extend its
analyses of our contemporary “machinic” culture into new strategies for resist-
ance and “electronic civil disobedience.”22 CAE’s book, Flesh Machine, lays out
three power structures in which the social-political, symbolic-ideological, and
biological domains are managed by techniques and technologies aimed at the
naturalization of the imperatives of global capitalism. These power struc-
tures—the war machine, the vision machine, and the flesh machine—utilize
forces of global conflict, representation, and health management effectively to inte-
grate the individual subject into a labyrinth of systematic violence, media oversti-
mulation, and the exhaustive visualization and mapping of the species-body.23
One of CAE’s projects involves a presentation by representatives from a
biotech corporation simply called BioCom. Given at art festivals, academic
conferences, and various conventions, the presentation shows BioCom offer-
ing to its subscribers an exclusive online sperm donor and fetal-design service
in which, for example, female customers can actually “shop” for their preferred
genetic mates using online video conference interviews, a Web-based screen-
ing application, and an individualized report from BioCom’s genetic screen-
ing lab pertaining to the genetic information of sperm donors (e.g., disease
predispositions, etc.). At BioCom’s labs, the latest in ARTs enables the
company to fertilize the egg of a customer expeditiously with the DNA from
the sperm of her selected donor or to utilize cryopreservation technologies to

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extend the value of a particular egg or sperm. Combining phenotypic review
(person-to-person interviews online between a customer and potential donor),
genotypic analysis (by a BioCom research group), and professional fetal-design
services (mediated by a BioCom sales representative), BioCom integrates the
potentials of computer-mediated communication (CMC) with the reliable
advances in genetic engineering and reproductive technologies.
Although not in the “official” spaces of conferences or conventions, another
group, the Society of Reproductive Anachronisms (SRA) offers an activist-
based countermeasure to the high-tech promises of corporations such as
BioCom. Appealing to the general public through adhoc street presentations
or at recruiting stations on college campuses, SRA promotes a rigorously
Luddite version of biological reproduction and the health of the species.
Through pamphlets, posters, discussion, and an independently run Web site,
SRA emphasizes the more Malthusian values of natural childbirth, person-to-
person sex with reproduction as the goal, and the innate, natural laws of selec-
tion dictating the occurrence of disease, mortality rates, and overpopulation.
As can be imagined, the responses by audience members and passers-by
to both groups vary considerably. What each presentation does—what it is
geared to do—is bring up questions concerning the degree of control held by
the flesh machine (that is, the scientific-medical establishment) on the human
body and its functions as a dynamic organism. For CAE, the strategies of
command and control of the war machine combine with the will to visibility
of the vision machine, and they produce a flesh machine that requires absolute,
total visualization of all levels of the body. For the flesh machine (again, mostly
concentrated in the medical-scientific community), visualization equals pro-
duction of knowledge, which equals a significant degree of technological,
ethical, and economic control.
CAE isolates as a point of critical intervention in the flesh machine the
potential rupture between consumerist and social imperatives as they relate
to the flesh machine. CAE’s example is the controversial “gay gene,” which
would simultaneously essentialize sexuality while also reducing it to biolog-
ical determinism. In social terms, given the conservative tendency in the West
toward compulsory heterosexuality, the gay gene is dangerously near the
domain of pathology and would thus be a candidate for designation as a disease
gene. In economic terms, however, greater diversity always extends the
domain of the consumer market, especially as biological attributes (from body
type to sexual preference) attain cultural value in the media. Such tensions

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illustrate the current trend toward the need for negotiations between govern-
ment-medical imperatives (the rhetoric of research to fight disease) and
corporate-engineering imperatives (the rhetoric of tailor-made biological
products such as pharmaceuticals).
CAE’s more recent work has involved a deeper collaboration between art,
activism, and science, a combination they term contestational biology. For CAE,
contestational biology involves the critical and ethical redeployment of
biology to enable it to function politically. CAE offers a set of principles for
their unique form of resistance that includes the demystification of scientific
knowledge, the defusing of public fear, the critique of utopian rhetoric,
and the building of respect for conscientious forms of collaboration and
amateurism.24 The ends of contestational biology can be varied, from raising
public awareness to posing the question of “how to create models of risk assess-
ment that are accessible to those not trained in biology.”25 In one project, CAE
has worked with biologists to engineer a safe, environmentally sound, herbi-
cide-resistant strain of plant (figure 9.4). The herbicide Roundup Ready works

Figure 9.4 Demonstrating “contestational biology” in genetically altered, environmentally

safe, antiherbicide crops, from a CAE project. Courtesy CAE.

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by inhibiting a particular enzyme (5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate
[EPSP]) found in most microorganisms and plants, in effect starving the
organism. Agricultural biotech companies have then genetically engineered
their crops to overexpress a modified form of the enzyme, thereby making only
the crop plants resistant to Roundup Ready. CAE proposes a “biochemical
intervention” that would inhibit the synthesis of the GM enzyme, thereby
making the crop plants vulnerable to the Roundup herbicide. Further, CAE
proposes doing this by using—appropriating—a compound manufactured by
Monsanto itself, one that, when combined with Roundup, will inhibit the
EPSP enzymes in a plant. The aim is not only to demonstrate the vulnera-
bility of GM crops, but also to devise a means of doing so that is environ-
mentally conscious and that in its own way effectively reintegrates plants and
organisms into their environmental context. As CAE state, “the gene(s) or bio-
logical processes that modify the organism can be targeted, and turned from a
trait of adaptability into one of susceptibility.”26

“There—An Animal Shadow Crawling”

Though it will be seen as a truism, it is important to reiterate that biotech

is always about bodies.27 In his work on the history of sexuality, Michel
Foucault reserves the term biopolitics to speak of the normalizing, coercive
strategies of management, or “governmentality,” of the social-biological body.
As he states, “the disciplines of the body and the regulations of the popula-
tion constituted two poles around which the organization of power over life
was deployed.”28
In a way, the possibility of any critical engagement with and intervention
in biotechnology is articulated in the space between the body (individual or
social) and “life itself” (be it biological or informatic). The examples of bioart
given earlier are not meant to be representative of the wide range of artworks
that deal with genetics and biotechnology today. But each of them arguably
points to real fissures in the social, cultural, and material effects of biotech-
nologies. This would seem to fulfill at least one aspect of Guattari’s post-
media: the ability to create a site for the exploitation of fissures. In this sense,
Guattari’s concept looks forward to more recent debates over “tactical media.”
For Geert Lovink and David Garcia, for instance, “tactical media are what
happens when the cheap ‘do it yourself’ media, made possible by the revolu-
tion in consumer electronics and expanded forms of distribution . . . are

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exploited by groups and individuals who feel aggrieved by or excluded from
the wider culture.”29 Although tactical media grew largely out of activities in
video activism and later in critical Internet culture, the question also applies
to biotechnologies: As both the knowledge and the tools of biotechnology
become more and more “consumer grade”—in educational media, kits for
classroom use, inexpensive lab equipment—will there also be “tactical media”
of biotechnology? As we have seen, CAE argues that there are and should be.
The group’s term contestational biology is meant to address such issues politi-
cally and technically. Its unique combination of activism, workshops, per-
formance, and lab biology show that contestational biology can be a new form
of praxis.
But there are also many challenges ahead for any kind of post-media, tac-
tical media, and contestational biology. As with the computer and network
paradigms, a significant learning curve is associated with biotechnologies. Cell
and molecular biology, biochemistry, and plant biology may be involved. In
addition, the techniques and technologies are changing often. Although some
techniques are more or less standards (e.g., gel electrophoresis), other tech-
niques are constantly changing (e.g., computer-driven gene sequencing).
Finally, collaboration raises new sets of challenges in working across disci-
plines, both eschewing the reductionism of antiscience positions and foster-
ing a critical view of biotechnology. The site in which such activities are
carried out—the art gallery, the science fair, the classroom, the lab—says a
great deal about the modus operandi of bioart.
In addition, all of these challenges are enframed by a basic distinction
between human user and nonhuman tool. The very idea of post-media or tac-
tical media implies a rift between human users and the tools themselves; “do
it yourself” and appropriation at once challenge us to think of technology dif-
ferently and ask us to dissociate “use” from “technology.” Alex Galloway sug-
gests a different approach to this problem. Instead of a reliance on a notion
of “use” dissociated from technology, “there are certain tactical effects that often
leave only traces of their successes to be discovered later by the ecologists of
media.”30 Galloway is, in part, discussing the Internet, in which the proper-
ties that define it (network topologies and connectedness) are also the prop-
erties that constitute its vulnerabilities (e.g., hacking and computer viruses).
An analogy can be made to biotechnology, which, as I have suggested, places
a great deal of emphasis on gene-based research, genetic drugs, and genetic
diagnostics. Despite efforts to the contrary, the central dogma or gene-centric

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approach still holds sway in biotech research, especially in the pharmaceuti-
cal sector. But the biology of the cell is much more than the activity of genes
or DNA; the “network” properties of gene expression, protein-protein inter-
actions, metabolic pathways, and cell signaling pathways suggest that
“command and control” in the living cell is inherently complex. Thus, the
very property that defines biological and genetic “life itself”—its network
properties—also serves conceptually to undermine the biotech industry’s
exaggerated emphasis on genes, gene targets, and DNA.31 In this regard, there
is much work to be done on both the science and culture fronts. In so-called
post-genomic research, this overwhelming complexity is quickly demonstrat-
ing how essential it is that nonreductionist approaches to molecular biology
become a part of medical application. And in the cultural sector, the icon of
DNA—and its attendant metaphors of command and control—still pervade
much science fiction and popular writing on science. Biotechnology is thus
never simply “life itself,” but rather the continual process of technically artic-
ulating something as self-evident as “life itself.”
In our contemporary scene, where the intersection of technology develop-
ment, unimpeded research and application, and economic imperative drive
the technosciences in the future of “health” and the “body,” all of the strate-
gies presented in this book—science fiction, biopolitics, general economies,
biomaterial labor, species beings, actant networks, and post-media dissen-
sion—have indeed become not only options but also in many ways necessi-
ties. The important point to make is that these practices and necessities need
not be specific to the advertisements of “Big Pharma” or the glowing media
reports of the human genome. With each of the projects described earlier,
“practice” or “research” is simultaneously political and technical. As practiced
by the groups considered here, these strategies are also critical gestures, ges-
tures commenting on the contingencies of the future and the necessity of
reimagining the present.

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 Appendix A: Biotechnology Fields and Areas of

Application

Agricultural biotechnology Also “ag-bio” for short. The use of biotechnologies

such as genetic engineering in the growth, development, and design of plants and
seeds. Agricultural biotechnology has a wide range of application, from genetically
modified (GM) foods to genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) for industrial use to
the production of fabrics such as cotton for clothing.

Biocomputing The use of biological components and processes for research in com-
puter science (making a “computer” out of DNA, for instance). Not to be confused
with bioinformatics or computational biology. Subfields include DNA computing,
membrane computing, and enzyme computing.

Bioinformatics The use of computer and information technologies for molecular

biology research. Software, databases, benchtop computers, and imaging and model-
ing are specific areas of application. Many fields, such as genomics and genetic screen-
ing are aided by bioinformatics, which, as its name indicates, is the integration of
biotechnology and information technology. Also sometimes called computational
biology.

Biological warfare The use of hazardous biological agents as weapons, either

for offensive uses or for defense and national security. Most developed nations have
or have had biological warfare programs. Overlaps to some degree with chemical
warfare and, increasingly, with bioterrorism, though the latter is distinguished by
its being more “low tech” and carried out by non-nation-state actors in low-level
conflict.
Biometrics The use of a range of scanning technologies to identify individuals by
their unique biological “signature” (iris scan, fingerprint scans, gait recognition, blood
tests). Biometrics research is also incorporating genetic technologies such as DNA
fingerprinting.

Biomimicry The study of the structural and functional aspects of natural forms for
application in industry (materials, chemicals, production). Overlaps with biomateri-
als science.

Biotechnology In the broadest sense, the use of biological components and

processes (occurring in nature) for ends that are medical, industrial, and economic.
Although biotechnological practices can be traced back to antiquity (livestock breed-
ing, agriculture, fermentation), the emergence of a “biotech industry” in the late 1970s
and early 1980s heralded a new phase in biotech, spurred forth by genetic engineer-
ing and the early efforts to map the human genome.

Cloning A set of techniques for artificially replicating the genetic material of a

cell or an organism from one generation to the next. Used most frequently
in the research lab, but also some limited usage in agriculture and transgenics.
There are different types of cloning, such as human therapeutic cloning from stem
cells.

DNA chips More often called microarrays, these chips are handheld devices with
DNA strands attached to a silicon or glass substrate, over which sample DNA may
be applied. Used in diagnostic settings for testing the presence or expression of a spe-
cific compound. Some overlap with the related fields of bioMEMS (micro-electrical-
mechanical systems) and microfluidics.

Gene therapy The use of genetically engineered DNA either to supplant the
lack of a gene or to repress the overexpression of a gene. Many gene therapy
techniques involve the use of two elements: a plasmid, or small circular DNA carry-
ing the desired gene, and a viral vector, or a hollowed-out viral shell used for delivery.
Human gene therapy clinical trials have met with both success and disastrous side
effects.

Genetically modified (GM) foods The use of genetic engineering to create seeds,
plants, and entire crops in agriculture, whose genetic makeup will enhance their pro-
ductivity (growth, pesticide resistance, overall output). GM foods form a part of agri-
cultural biotechnology (or “ag-bio”), which has had a significant and controversial
presence in the Western world.

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Genetic engineering A set of techniques for intervening in the process by which
genetic material is replicated and recombined in living organisms. The first genetic
engineering experiments in the early 1970s involved the use of specialized, naturally
occurring enzymes to cut and paste DNA sequences in bacteria. This DNA sequence
was called recombinant DNA. The biotech industry in its modern form started along-
side the first genetic engineering experiments, but the implications of the experiments
also raised controversial ethical issues.

Genetic screening The use of genomics-related tools to screen a patient’s DNA for
the presence or expression of certain disease-affiliated genes. New technologies such
as microarrays and digital computers have made genetic screening a much more quan-
tifiable, even statistical process. Genetic screening in medicine is not a form of fore-
casting, but in most cases is used to aid in the diagnosis of a prescription drug or
therapy.

Genomics The sequencing, assembly, annotation, and analysis of the entire genetic
makeup of an organism. Genome projects have been initiated for a wide range of model
organisms, including baker’s yeast, the roundworm, the fruit fly, the mouse, bacteria
and viruses, and, of course, the human being. Contemporary genomics is made possi-
ble largely by new computer and robotics technologies.

Medical genetics The use of biotechnological diagnostics tools in medical and clin-
ical settings. Includes genetic diagnostics, new reproductive technologies (NRTs), and
nontechnical services such as genetic counseling. Not all biotechnology research is
intended for medical application, though the most significant concentration has been
in two areas: testing (e.g., microarrays) and drug design.

Molecular biology The study of biological life at the molecular level. Often used
interchangeably with molecular genetics, a field that came to maturity during the
post–World War II era and that is associated with the names Francis Crick, James
Watson, François Jacob, Jacques Monod, and many others. Molecular biology emerged
from a complex interchange with the then-current fields of cybernetics and informa-
tion theory, from which the common tropes of the genetic “code” are derived.

Nanotechnology The study of the atomic and molecular properties of matter, with
the aim of being able to control matter at the atomic and molecular level. Subfields
include nanomedicine, nanobiotechnology, and environmental uses of nanotechnology.

New eugenics Term used by sociologists to describe the transformation in eugen-

ics outlook since the 1930s and World War II era. Unlike early eugenics, which was

Biotechnology Fields and Arease of Application

323
primarily a negative regulatory practice, the new eugenics promotes consumer choice
and enhancement through biotechnology.

New reproductive technologies (NRTs) The application of biotechnology toward

all aspects of biological reproduction. May include in vitro fertilization, surrogate
motherhood, research into artificial wombs, and the practice of preimplantation
diagnostics.

Pharmacogenomics The use of genomics and bioinformatics toward the develop-

ment of genetic drugs and therapies. Pharmacogenomics often emphasizes the promise
of custom-tailored, individualized drugs that will minimize side effects and adverse
drug reactions (ADRs). Pharmacogenomics is differentiated from pharmacogenetics, the
latter making use of genetic technologies to advance broadly the specificity of drug
activity at the genetic level.

Population genomics The use of genomics and related fields to study the genetic
makeup of particular populations, often identified according to biological, racial, and
ethnic characteristics. Population genomics is intended primarily to aid in medical
research and the study of disease, but it has also been utilized in other fields such as
archaeology and genealogy.

Proteomics The study of the sequence and structure of proteins, their function, and
their interactions with other proteins. Although the number of base pairs in the human
genome may be known, the total number of proteins is not. Proteomics is often split
between research that emphasizes sequence (amino acid sequence) and research that
emphasizes structure (protein-folding problems).

Regenerative medicine The study of the natural regenerative properties of the

body, with particular focus on stem cells and their medical-therapeutic potential.
Regenerative medicine overlaps a great deal with tissue engineering and is increas-
ingly employing techniques from genomics. Other areas related to regenerative
medicine focus not on stem cells but on chromosomal structures such as telomeres.

Structural genomics The study of the relationships between DNA or RNA

sequence, on the one hand, and amino acids and proteins, on the other. Structural
genomics is positioned between genomics and proteomics, or between the study of
sequence (in DNA) and the study of structure (in proteins).

Tissue engineering The study of how cells and tissues grow, differentiate, and
regenerate, with the aim of being able to grow tissues and entire organs in the lab for

Appendix A

324
purposes of transplantation. Tissue engineering is often considered to be a part of bio-
medical engineering broadly, and several bioartificial skin products are currently on
the market.

Transgenics The use of genetic engineering to create organisms whose genetic

makeup includes genes or DNA from another organism or organisms. Often used in
agriculture (pesticide-resistant plants), drug development (transgenic animals pro-
ducing enzymes), and laboratory testing (human disease genes in laboratory animals).

Biotechnology Fields and Arease of Application

325
 Appendix B: Techniques and Technologies in

Biotechnology Research

Artificial chromosomes The insertion of extra chromosomes into the nucleus of a

cell, either for the purposes of storage (in bacteria or microorganisms) or for the pur-
poses of genetic therapy. An advanced version of bacterial and yeast artificial chro-
mosomes (BACs and YACs).

Autoradiography A method by which a radio-labeled strand of DNA or RNA pro-

duces an image on photographic film. Can also be performed with entire chromo-
somes. Useful as a way of visually tagging or identifying molecules or regions on a
molecule such as DNA.

Bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) A linear recombinant DNA molecule

that replicates in bacteria. Usually of moderate size and most often used for cloning
specified DNA fragments. Also see yeast artificial chromosome (YAC).

Batch culturing A method by which a large amount of cells are cultured for a
specified period of time after inoculation onto the culture medium. They can then be
collected for processing and further study in the lab.

Bioconversion The use of microorganisms to convert a specific compound into a

valuable product through a set of enzymatic reactions. The process minimizes the
artificial or chemical synthesis steps in the production of a commercially viable
compound.

Biodegradation The breakdown of compounds through the use of microorganisms

and plants.
Biolistics The method of delivering DNA into animal and plant cells by DNA-
coated microprojectiles shot under high pressure and high velocity. Some form of
biolistics or pulsed projection is often used in cloning.

Bioreactor A growth chamber (most often stainless steel) for culturing cells and
microorganisms, usually used for the production of useful or valuable compounds. Also
called a fermenter.

Bioremediation The use of microorganisms and sometimes plants to convert con-

taminates or toxic substances in soil and water into nontoxic by-products.

Complementary DNA (cDNA) A complementary double-stranded DNA synthe-

sized in the lab from a single-stranded messenger RNA (mRNA), using the naturally
occurring enzymes reverse transcriptase and DNA polymerase. Such cDNA strands
represent the original DNA sequence from which the RNA was derived, minus the
excised sections (or introns). cDNAs were widely used in the sequencing of the human
genome.

Contig A collection of overlapping, shorter, cloned DNA fragments that are subse-
quently arranged in the appropriate chromosomal order. Contig regions are used exten-
sively in genomics as markers; a contig map shows the physical location of contig regions
along the chromosomes.

DNA fingerprinting The use of genetic screening technologies to identify an indi-

vidual by his or her unique genetic “signature.” DNA fingerprinting is often used in
legal cases, particularly to identify criminals, to decide paternity cases, in forensics,
to aid in bioconservation, or to exonerate criminals wrongly accused.

DNA library A collection of in vitro cloned DNA fragments, most often existing
within bacterial plasmid DNA and stored for further study. Related to expression
libraries.

Electroporation Akin to biolistics and microinjection, but making use of electri-

cal pulses, which temporarily open the cell membrane for the introduction of foreign
DNA.

Expression library A collection of DNA fragments inserted into a vector that has
a promoter sequence next to the insertion site, enabling the regulatory elements of
the vector to control (turn on or off) the expression of the inserted DNA fragment.

Appendix B

328
Fermentation The breakdown of organic compounds by cells or microorganisms in
the absence of oxygen to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP); in the biotech indus-
try, cells and microorganisms are cultured in fermenters (a bioreactor) to produce desir-
able compounds.

Gel electrophoresis A commonly used method for the separation of DNA or RNA
fragments according to their length. A gel (most often agarose—a thick, viscous sugar)
is used as a matrix through which DNA or RNA fragments are passed along an
electric current. The smaller fragments will pass through the dense gel matrix more
quickly than the longer fragments. DNA or RNA fragments can be measured, ana-
lyzed, and sequenced according to this method. Proteins can also be analyzed through
electrophoresis by similar methods.

Gene bank In its original use, a gene bank denoted a physical facility where plant
material—seeds, tubers, or cultured tissue—was stored. But the term now also refers
to computer databases that hold DNA, RNA, and protein information (such as
GenBank or the Protein Data Bank).

Gene sequencing machines Computer-based technologies for automating the gene

sequencing process, laid out principally in techniques such as restriction mapping and
gel electrophoresis. Scanning, visualizing, and analysis software is employed to arrange
large amounts of DNA fragments according to their sequence. Gene sequencing
machines were extensively used in the sequencing of the human genome.

Gene splicing The insertion of a DNA fragment into a vector and the transfer of
the vector (a recombinant molecule) into a host for propagation.

Genetic linkage map A map that indicates the genetic distances (physical distance
along a chromosomal region) between pairs of polymorphic (nonidentical) DNA
regions. Their position relative to the center of the chromosome affects the degree to
which “crossing over” occurs during cell division.

Hybridoma The use of tumor cells to enable indefinitely existing cell lines. An
“immortal” cell line produced from the fusion of B lymphocytes (which produce anti-
bodies) to lymphocyte tumor cells.

Karyotype A technique for visualizing chromosomes, in which homologous chro-

mosome pairs are separated during cell division and arranged numerically in a line.
Used for the detection of chromosomal abnormalities.

Techniques and Technologies in Biotechnology Research

329
Monocolonal antibody The particular antibody (specific for one antigenic deter-
minant) produced by a hybridoma clone (itself derived from a B lymphocyte cell).
Monocolonal antibodies are frequently used in the design and manufacture of drugs
and therapies.

Oligonucleotide synthesizer A combination of automated, wet-lab components

(solution containing denatured adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine molecules)
and computer or dry-lab components (computer software) for automating the oligonu-
cleotide synthesis process. Costly but efficient means of generating desired DNA
sequences for laboratory research (e.g., polymerase chain reaction [PCR] primers).

Pairwise sequence alignment A common technique in bioinformatics that

involves the successive alignment of a target sequence against the sequences in a com-
puter database. Basic scripts, data-mining utilities, and string-matching software
suggest the closest matches based on sequence homologies. The Web-based Basic Local
Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) performs a variety of alignments against the
GenBank database.

Physical map A map that indicates the distance in base pairs between markers or
gene fragments along a chromosome. Markers can be restriction enzyme–recognition
sites, sequence-tagged sites (STSs), and restriction fragment length polymorphisms
(RFLPs).

Plasmid An extrachromosomal, circular, double-stranded DNA molecule that repli-

cates independently of the chromosome. With genetic engineering techniques, foreign
DNA can be inserted into a plasmid. Most often found in bacteria, plasmids are fre-
quently used as delivery vehicles for foreign DNA inside vectors.

Plasmid library The use of genetic engineering techniques to store foreign DNA
fragments in a plasmid molecule in an in vitro state, most often in bacteria.

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) A method for the rapid and efficient amplifi-
cation of DNA fragments through successive stages of heating (denaturing) and
cooling (annealing) of DNA strands. The programmable machine that carries out this
procedure is a thermal cycler.

Primer A short, single-stranded DNA (oligonucleotide) that is hybridized to a com-

plementary DNA template, to which further free-floating nucleotides can be added.
Primers are used extensively in polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Appendix B

330
Recombinant DNA A DNA strand composed of fragments from different sources,
which have been joined together using the techniques of genetic engineering: cutting
(using restriction enzymes or ligases) and pasting (using polymerase enzymes).

Restriction endonuclease (or restriction enzyme) A class of enzymes that cut

DNA by recognizing a specific DNA sequence and cleaving the bonds at that loca-
tion. Class II enzymes are most often used in genetic engineering.

Restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) The occurrence of differ-

ent restriction enzyme cleavage sites for the same DNA region of different individu-
als of the same species. Each individual genome thus has a unique set of restriction
enzyme–recognition sites and can be used as markers in the sequencing of genomes.

Restriction mapping The use of restriction enzymes along with gel electrophore-
sis to sequence a DNA fragment. Restriction enzymes of different cutting sites are
applied to cloned DNA fragments. Gel electrophoresis separates the cleaved fragments
according to size. The sequence of the DNA molecule can be deduced by reading the
columns of the gel, each arranged by the particular restriction enzyme cleavage site.

Sequence-tagged site (STS) A short DNA fragment (200–300 base pairs) that is
known to be unique and is used as a marker in genetic linkage and physical mapping.

Southern blotting A method for transferring denatured DNA from an agarose gel
after gel electrophoresis to a special membrane for hybridization. Used to detect spe-
cific sequences based on the occurrence of DNA hybridization.

Structure prediction A set of techniques in bioinformatics that aims to analyze

the structure of proteins. Some techniques begin from the DNA sequence, whereas
others begin from the protein primary structure of an amino acid chain. Protein
sequence and the bonding characteristics of atoms play a part in determining the exact
structure of proteins (their secondary structure of motifs and the tertiary structure of
the whole protein).

Tissue culture Propagation of plant and animal cells in vitro. Can be used to regen-
erate whole plants from cultured cells or tissues.

Vector A DNA molecule used to transfer foreign DNA into a host organism. Exam-
ples include plasmids, cosmids, and bacteriophages. Viral or phage vectors are often
used as delivery vehicles in cloning.

Techniques and Technologies in Biotechnology Research

331
X-ray crystallography Method of visualizing molecules using X-rays to image the
three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in a molecule (of DNA or of a protein). The
diffraction pattern of X-rays passing through a crystal casts a shadow of the molecule.

Yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) A linear recombinant DNA molecule that

replicates in a yeast cell. YACs can contain large DNA fragments (up to 1 million
base pairs).

Appendix B

332
 Appendix C: A Brief Chronology of Bioinformatics

1890. The birth of bioinformatics? Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine is used in

the U.S. census. The Hollerith tabulating machine uses punched cards akin to the
Jacquard Loom (each person is a card), but also uses electricity to read, count, and sort
cards. Later, in 1896, Hollerith founds the Tabulating Machine Company, which
would later become IBM.

1933. Gel electrophoresis introduced, a standard technique for sequencing DNA.

1938–44. World War II research in mainframe computing advances with the separate
work of Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J. Prisper Eckert and John Mauchley, and
Vannevar Bush.

1942. Erwin Schrödinger gives a series of lectures under the title “What Is Life?” in
which he suggests that hereditary mechanisms operate via a “code script.”

1945. The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) is built by Eckert
and Mauchley at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering (University of Pennsyl-
vania). It is electronic and digital, makes use of novel storage devices, and is built on
von Neumann’s unique architecture.

1948. Norbert Wiener publishes Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal
and the Machine.

1949. Clande Shannon and Warren Weaver publish A Mathematical Theory of Commu-
nication, derived in part from Shannon’s MIT master’s thesis, “A Symbolic Analysis of
Relay and Switching.”
1950s. IBM leads the way in the transition from mainframe military computing to
business computing.

1951. Linus Pauling and Corey propose alpha-helix and beta-sheet motifs for proteins,
structures that would become instrumental in computer-based protein modeling.

1953. James Watson and Francis Crick publish papers on the structure of DNA,
explicitly using the language of information theory and cybernetics. Their research is
enabled by Rosalind Frankin’s X-ray crystallography imaging of DNA.

1954. John Backus at IBM develops the FORTRAN computer language.

1955. First protein sequence (bovine insulin) published by Fred Sanger.

1958. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is set up by President Eisen-
hower in response to the Soviet Sputnik launch. Among its aims is the development
of advanced communications networks (soon to become the basis for the Internet).

1961. François Jacob and Jacques Monod publish their paper “Genetic Regulatory
Mechanisms in the Synthesis of Proteins,” in which they apply the model of cyber-
netics to the workings of the cell. Their lac operon model is a modified form of the
cybernetic feedback mechanism.

1962. Paul Baran publishes “On Distributed Communications” for RAND, develop-
ing the concept of packet switching concurrent with Donald Davies (who coined the
term). Packet switching would soon become a fundamental concept in the nascent
Internet.

1962. Heinrich Matthai and Marshall Nirenberg publish their research “cracking the
genetic code,” showing how four base pairs combine to form twenty amino acids.

1965. Margaret Dayhoff and colleagues publish Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure,
among the first attempts to catalog protein sequences systematically.

1969. ARPA runs the first test of a computer network, ARPAnet, with interface
message processors (IMPs) placed at the four nodes (UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa
Barbara, and the University of Utah).

1970. The Needleman-Wunsch algorithm for sequence comparison is published and

subsequently patented.

Appendix C

334
1971. Intel announces the 4004 Microprocessor, a “computer on a chip.”

1973. First genetic engineering experiments published, incorporating “recombinant

DNA.”

1973. The Brookhaven Protein Data Bank (PDB) is announced.

1974. Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn develop the concept of connecting networks of
computers into an “internet” and develop the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

1975. Two-dimensional electrophoresis and the Southern blot technique are

developed.

1977. Techniques for sequencing DNA using restriction enzymes and electrophoresis
developed by Sanger and colleagues, known as the “Sanger method.”

1980s. The first biotech companies, Genentech and Cetus Corporation, are formed.

1980. The first DNA sequence is published (FX174).

1980. The first patent for a genetically altered microbe is granted in the landmark
case Diamond v. Chakrabarty. The decision is based in part on the then-contemporary
claims for software patents.

1980. IntelliGenetics, the first bioinformatics company, is founded. It markets the

PC/GENE software suite.

1981. The Smith-Waterman algorithm for sequence alignment is published and sub-
sequently patented.

1981. IBM introduces its personal computer (PC) to the market.

1982. The Genetics Computer Group (GCG) is formed at the University of

Wisconsin Biotechology Center.

1984–85. The first meetings concerning the Human Genome Project (HGP) take
place, under the rubric of the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of
California. It is formally launched in 1990.

1985. The FASTP algorithm is published and subsequently patented.

A Brief Chronology of Bioinformatics

335
1985. Microsoft announces its Windows operating system.

1985. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is introduced by researchers working at the

Cetus Corporation, including Kary Mullis.

1986. The term genomics is used to describe the study of entire genomes.

1986. The European Molecular Biology Laboratory develops the SWISS-PROT

protein database.

1987. The use of yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs) as storage and replication vechi-
cles is demonstrated.

1987. The genetic map of E. coli is published.

1988. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is established at

the National Cancer Institute in the United States.

1988. The first patent for a genetically modified (GM) animal is granted
(the OncoMouse or “Harvard Mouse,” owned by DuPont).

1988. The first automated gene sequencing machines are developed by Applied
Biosystems.

1988. The FASTA sequence alignment algorithm is published, and subsequently

patented.

1989. The Oxford Molecular Group is formed, among the first companies dedicated
to computer protein modeling.

1990s. A series of bioinformatics startups are formed, including Molecular Applica-

tions Group, InforMax, Incyte, Myriad, Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR),
Affymetrix, and Lion Bioscience.

1990s. A series of mostly university-based open source bioinformatics initiatives is

started, including Bioperl, BioJava, and Open Bioinformatics. The Linux operating
system for bioinformatics research used.

1990. The now-standard BLAST algorithm is published. It is subsequently ported for

the Web and is accessed daily by thousands of labs worldwide.

Appendix C

336
1990. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) develops GenBank,
the main repository for publicly available genome data.

1990. A study estimates that since 1980 more than 150 bioinformatics patents have
been granted, with another 400 pending.

1991. Tim Berners-Lee, at the research institute in Geneva, Centre Européenne pour
la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN), publishes the protocols that make up the World
Wide Web.

1995. The ExPAsy suite of Web-based bioinformatics tools is released by the Swiss
Bioinformatics Institute.

1996. The S. cerevisiae (yeast) genome is sequenced.

1996. The PROSITE database is released.

1996. Affymetrix produces commercial “GeneChip” microarrays, among the first com-
panies to market microarray devices.

1998. Celera Genomics is formed, with the intention of utilizing new technologies to
finish rapidly the sequencing of the human genome.

2000. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) establishes Art Unit 1631
(AU1631) specifically to determine bioinformatics patents. A year later the PTO’s
Federal Register Report announces that subsequent gene-based patents will be required
to demonstrate “substantial utility” of their products.

2000. Partnerships between the biotech and information technology sectors are
formed: Compaq and Celera, Sun and DoubleTwist, Myriad and Hitachi/Oracle, Apple
and Human Genome Sciences, Motorla, Lucent Technologies, and IBM’s life science
informatics division.

2000. Two surveys estimate that more than 200 bioinformatics databases are in exis-
tence, with more than 500 bioinformatics software applications for sale and more than
$160 million in software sales in the year 2000.

A Brief Chronology of Bioinformatics

337
 Appendix D: Biotechnology and Popular Culture; or,

Mutants, Replicants, and Zombies

You have seen these types of commercials before. Even before you see the pas-
toral green fields, laughing grandchildren, confident couples, and sunshine
smiles, you already know the commercials are selling you drugs—drugs for
the ailments of old age, drugs for a virile sex life, drugs for depression, even
drugs for kids with too much sugar and too many channels. The type of com-
mercials made by the pharmaceutical industry has, by the early twenty-first
century, become a genre in itself. But something is different about one par-
ticular commercial you are seeing now. For one, instead of an elderly man or
woman complaining about arthritis, you see Frankenstein’s monster. No, lit-
erally—he is there, all green, square head complete with bolts, right out of
Boris Karloff’s performance in the James Whale version from the 1930s. But,
unlike Karloff’s monster, this one is calm, gentle, talking to you about his
arthritic problems (“that was me . . . what a stiff!”). It seems, then, that even
monsters need their prescription drugs; this is a monster made by biotech-
nology, and it needs biotechnology to maintain itself. The monster, luckily,
has found a new drug called Osteo Bi-Flex, for osteoarthritis. Osteo Bi-Flex
enables the monster to enjoy his life, and we see him gardening, playing the
guitar (acoustic) for kids, and doing tai chi in the park. He is a happier
monster, leading a much more fulfilling, enriching life—thanks, of course, to
Osteo Bi-Flex. No more Karloffian stumbling, grumbling, and terrorizing.
The new monster of biotechnology is a bizarre kind of teratological pacifist.
The Osteo Bi-Flex commercial is an example of how layered the popular
discourse of biotechnology is; this commercial is an ad for a new drug, but it
also deconstructs the genre of the pharmaceutical commercial as well. In it,
we see all the stock shots we would expect to see in commercials for Viagra
or Celebrex: the initial “crisis” shot of an individual or couple experiencing
pain, discomfort, anxiety, embarrassment, followed by a sequence announcing
the drug, and concluding with idealized images of nature (gardening—there
is always someone gardening), tranquility, and joy. In a sense, the Osteo Bi-
Flex commercial demands to be read on several levels. It requires that viewers
recognize certain cultural signs (Frankenstein, the Karloff version) and that
they be able to comprehend the irony in the presentation (almost a mock com-
mercial), but, in the end, it is actually selling a product. It is actually quite
a good commercial for this reason alone.
Popular culture is arguably the site in which the ambiguities, anxieties,
and tensions of the biotech industry get played out. Of course, the films,
games, novels, and comics are often not totally aware that this is happening;
or rather, it happens on a level distinct from any authorial “intention.” Though
a number of cultural theorists have treated popular culture in relation to
biotechnology—works by Richard Doyle, Dorothy Nelkin, and Jon Turney
come to mind—we still lack a way of understanding the relationship between
biotechnology and popular culture that is unique to the concepts, technolo-
gies, issues, and knowledges specific to biotech. Cultural studies broadly
speaking can, of course, add much to the study of biotechnology in popular
culture, but too often such approaches are content to remain at the level
of representation that happens anterior to science. Approaches from film
studies are strong in their analysis of a particular medium, but it is rare that
biotechnology is given concerted attention other than simply being the
“content” of a film. The same may be said for the study of science fiction,
where biotechnology is often understood to be the technology replacing the
positions formerly held by nuclear technologies, information technologies, or
nanotechnologies.
What I offer here is not a new approach or anything as ambitious as a
methodology, but rather some loose, informal typologies. Clearly, there is
much work to be done in sorting out how, for instance, genre is modified as
we move from film to video games. But let us assume those problems and
take a kind of flyover view of biotechnology in popular culture. I will not
bother mentioning some of the more familiar themes in biotechnology-
inspired popular culture: the mad scientist, the instrumentality of nature, the
gothic in science fiction and horror, and the Frankenstein theme, seen in

Appendix D

340
movies as varied as Flesh for Frankenstein (by Andy Warhol), Young Franken-
stein, Weird Science, Multiplicity, and The Hulk.
Films “about” genetics and biotechnology are usually of two types: those
that contain, almost incidentally, genetics and biotechnology, but only to
motivate the action of the film, or those that use genetics and biotechnology
to raise larger “human” issues. Examples of the former might be Mimic, The
Sixth Day, and Species, as well as human-drama serials such as CSI or ER
(though the latter often does raise bioethical issues). Examples of the latter
might be Huxley’s famous novel Brave New World and the films Blade Runner
(a film that is about many things) and Gattaca.
But the intersection of biotechnology and popular culture has produced
many other kinds of progeny. First, consider the genre I call medical horror.
Medical horror includes films, novels, and other media within the horror genre
that have medicine, medical practices, or medical technologies as a central
part of their plots. A favorite of this genre is the “transplant horror” story,
encapsulated in films such as Eyes Without a Face, The Hands of Orlac, The Brain
That Wouldn’t Die, and, more recently, The Eye. In such films, we often see an
individual in an accident and in need of a transplant. By chance, the trans-
planted body part happens to be that of a psychotic killer. Upon transplanta-
tion, the body part then takes on a life of its own—or, rather, of its former
master. “Parasite horror” is another theme in this genre, in films such as The
Tingler, a William Castle production that features a parasite along the spinal
column that is fed on fear and can be defeated only by screaming. Other vari-
ants of this theme include David Cronenberg’s early films Shivers and Rabid,
which take tissue transplantation into psychosexual, B-movie eroticism, and
the Japanese thriller Parasite Eve, based on a novel of the same name, which
portrays the apocalyptic awakening of mitochrondrial DNA in humans.
Medical horror owes a great deal to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but equally
so to H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau (an early narrative about tissue
engineering), Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence series, and Robert Louis
Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (which not only is about
pharmaceuticals, but would go well with 1960s documentaries about Albert
Hoffman and LSD). In medical horror, the core elements of medical practice
are inverted, such that what previously guaranteed health now guarantees the
vulnerability of biology. Stories by J. G. Ballard, Michael Blumlein, Thomas
Disch, and Octavia Butler, and films such as The Elephant Man and The
Kingdom (as well as the more canonized literary works, such as Flowers for Alger-

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341
non and The Cancer Ward) take up the dark side of medicine, surgery, and
anatomical study within the context of the science fiction and horror genres.
A second genre might be called biohorror. Biohorror most often features
genetics and biotechnology as experiments gone wrong. The difference,
however, is that in biohorror what goes wrong is that everything works per-
fectly. An engineered virus, for instance, “goes wrong” not because it does not
work, but because it works too well. The molecular level takes on a life of its
own, with aims that are often counter to those of the human hosts they
inhabit. Greg Bear’s novels Blood Music and Darwin’s Radio and Joan Slon-
cziewski’s Brain Plague are variations on this theme, as are Greg Egan’s Ter-
anesia and Michael Crichton’s nanotechnology-inspired Prey. Biohorror
narratives always involve some sort of extreme but ambivalent transformation.
Biohorror is often accompanied by morphological transformation of the
human host, as in Cronenberg’s version of The Fly, or by unrecognizable meta-
morphosis, as in John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing (the original, The Thing
from Another World, is equally good and might be read as the first transgenic
biotech film). Biohorror also has social and cultural dimensions, as exhibited
in Octavia Butler’s “xenogenesis” trilogy and her story “Bloodchild.”
The mention of Butler’s work raises another focus within biohorror, which
is the human-alien hybrid, most often via some sort of virus that follows the
logic of alien flesh. Day of the Triffids and Invasion of the Body Snatchers portray
carnivorous plants and clones in a manner not unlike zombie films. Sometimes
biohorror results not in the death of the human host, but in a metamorpho-
sis into the posthuman or superhuman. Hence, the predilection of comics (and
subsequently films) based on superheros. The X-Men mythos is given a par-
ticularly genetic twist in the film versions, and Spider-Man and The Hulk
utilize genetics to frame social and psychoanalytic issues of fathers, families,
and authority. Biotech encounters pharmaceuticals and reproductive tech-
nologies in Cronenberg’s The Brood, whose unique “psychoplasmics” tech-
nologies manifest psychological pathologies as literal growths on the body of
the mother figure in the film.
Finally, another genre worth mentioning is the zombie-epidemic genre. Actu-
ally, this genre combines two already familiar genres: the zombie movie in
horror films and the medical thriller novel (represented by the novels of
Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, and Richard Preston). The former was estab-
lished largely in the United States with George Romero’s “living dead” trilogy,

Appendix D

342
films that are political satire much more than horror. In Italy, the extensive
tradition of horror film there led to Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, Aldo Lado’s Short
Night of Glass Dolls, and Armando Crispino’s Autopsy. However, the zombie
film is much older than this. In the late 1920s, Bela Lugosi starred in White
Zombie, followed by Jacques Tournier’s I Walked with a Zombie, both of which
emphasize the colonial context of Haiti and the practices of voodoo. This
context has meant that, even for later directors such as Romero, the zombie
is indelibly linked to the “silent majority” and slave labor. This connection is
further evidenced by mid-twentieth-century films such as Hammer Studio’s
Plague of Zombies.
The other genre that informs the zombie-epidemic story is the medical
thriller, or outbreak novel (many of which are made into films). The Androm-
eda Strain, Coma, and Outbreak are examples in film, and the novels Vector, The
Cobra Event, and The Hot Zone are examples in fiction (the last of these is non-
fiction, though written in a fictional style). These narratives usually feature
either a naturally occurring or top-secret military experiment that “gets
loose,” starting a chain of reactions that a “virus hunter” or scientist-protag-
onist must stop, in the process navigating government bureaucracies, civilian
victims, and an often conservative military or government bureaucracy or
both. However, the outbreak genre itself harkens back to novels such as Daniel
Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and Mary Shelley’s underappreciated The
Last Man. The narrative motifs of contagion, apocalypse, and survival are
established in such works.
Although many zombie films are predicated on the supernatural (e.g.,
Fulci’s The Beyond and City of the Walking Dead), zombie-epidemic films are
predicated on science, biology, and epidemiology. I have already mentioned
Romero’s The Crazies and 28 Days Later, and to them I might add films such
as the campy Omega Man (starring Charlton Heston as the “last man” and sci-
entist), the Japanese thriller Cure, the “virus as serial killer” film Cabin Fever,
and indie director Georg Koszulinski’s film Blood of the Beast. A different, but
related variant of the zombie-epidemic genre is the cult film C.H.U.D. (Can-
nibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers), which combines environmen-
tal toxiciology with references to homelessness. In Italy, the tradition of
“mondo” exploitation films spawned Ruggero Deodato’s disturbing Cannibal
Holocaust, a critique of both capital consumption and the visual consumption
of images. Finally, more “high-brow” examples, such as Albert Camus’s novel

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343
The Plague and Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, are exemplary in their
ability to raise a host of complex social, psychological, and even metaphysi-
cal issues.
The zombie-epidemic genre is, of course, not limited to film and fiction.
In the video game medium, the Resident Evil series has explored the zombie-
epidemic genre the most, and the film versions build on the action basis of
the video games, with minimal plot devoted to the top-secret, underground,
corporate biotech firm doing bioweapons research. Other games, such as Half-
Life and Doom, feature creatures that are the result of biotechnology gone hor-
ribly wrong, but their significance is limited to their being target practice.
Contemporary comics such as Criminal Macabre, Necrowar, and Y: The Last Man
continue to explore the epidemic theme in relation to other fields, from
medieval history to cosmology.
These are just some of the unique, hybrid genres that have developed in
science fiction and horror in relation to biotechnologies. However, a great deal
of the studies of biotechnology and popular culture, although extremely valu-
able in their own right, often presuppose the anteriority of science to science
fiction, an assumption that ends up reducing science fiction to a “reaction” or
“response” to a previously existing scientific phenomenon. This is the case in
a great many examples, as the preponderance of genetics and nanotechnology
themes in current films indicate. A more complex cultural studies approach,
however, would also have to resist this characterization, for the role of culture
is not simply to “mop up” after science has done its job (the sort of “oh, so
that’s what was going on” approach to cultural analysis).
It is not difficult to think of examples of the reverse, when science fiction
actually preceded, served as the ground for, or even predicted science (in the
most relativistic sense, Ovid practiced transgenics). But perhaps the point
should not be one of priority or origins, but of discovering a critical and nec-
essary relationship between biotechnology and culture. Perhaps it is precisely
in this zone that we find an ethics and a politics of biotechnology, though not
simply the pragmatic kind of bioethics of maxims, but a more exploratory,
foundational sort of ethics that ultimately questions foundational concepts
such as “life itself.”
Popular culture cannot do this, and we would be naive to think that, for
instance, Italian B horror films can serve as the ethical model of the future.
But this is the point: popular culture is at its best precisely when it is unaware,
or even only half-aware, of the issues it is raising. Clearly, if you want to learn

Appendix D

344
about the science of genetics, then watching The Hulk is not your best bet.
But in the recombinations of pharmaceutical ads, science fiction films, video
games, television soap operas, music videos, comics, and reality TV, biotech-
nology is presented in an incredibly polyvalent manner. Perhaps it can even
be argued that popular culture is the site in which to understand biotechnol-
ogy not just as a set of techniques, therapies, and services, but rather as a way
of thinking about the body socially, economically, and politically as well.

Biotechnology and Popular Culture; or, Mutants, Replicants, and Zombies

345
 Notes

Introduction

1. The quotation given in the section heading is from “Weakling Avenger” by

Darkthrone, ©2001 Moonfog Productions. Quoted in Girolamo Cardano, “Medical
Metaphors in Renaissance Political Theory,” Socius 4 (April 1994), p. 31.

2. Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin
Nicolaus (New York: Penguin, 1973), pp. 91, 86.

Chapter 1

1. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), p. 64.

2. Saskia Sassien, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: New Press, 1998),
p. xxv.

3. Malcolm Waters, Globalization (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 5.

4. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System (New York: Academic, 1974),
p. 15.

5. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (New York: Blackwell, 1996), p.
67. Castells also notes, in a few unexplored passages, the effects of the information
technology paradigm on biology: “Technological convergence increasingly extends to
growing interdependence between the biological and microelectronics revolutions,
both materially and methodologically. Thus, decisive advances in biological research,
such as the identification of human genes or segments of human DNA, can only
proceed because of massive computing power” (p. 63). Although such statements tend
to ignore the instrumental role that midcentury cybernetics and its related fields had
in the development of a biotech “industry,” Castells does note the significance of
biotech within globalization. See pp. 47–50.

6. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2000), pp. 289–294.

7. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, p. 21.

8. See Waters, Globalization, pp. 17–21.

9. Some, such as Castells (and, arguably, Hardt and Negri), make this the basis for
their analyses, whereas others such as Sassien attempt to temper the undue reliance
on information technologies by contrasting them or reintegrating them into physical
space and geopolitical relationships.

10. Certainly, this is the very point of contention for critics of globalization, for, in
many cases, the material conditions of labor, immigration, and tensions within nation-
states are far from having been overcome. In addition, the various antiglobalization
movements have in many cases appropriated information and media networks to make
their own voices heard, creating a kind of “tactical media” out of the very tools that
underlie the globalizing process.

11. A common practice since the late 1990s has been to create foreign subsidiary com-
panies to handle separate parts of the product-development process, such as clinical
trials or marketing. For an industry perspective, see Jennifer van Brunt, “Borderless
Biotech,” Signals Magazine, December 13, 2000, online at http://www.signalsmag.com.

12. See Eugene Thacker, Biomedia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

2004).

13. Michael Fortun, “The Human Genome Project: Past, Present, and Future
Anterior,” in Science, History, and Social Activism: A Tribute to Everett Mendelsohn, eds. E.
Allen Garland and Roy M. MacLeod (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), p. 355.

14. See Jackie Stevens, “PR for the ‘Book of Life,’” The Nation (special edition),
November 21, 2001.

Notes

348
15. On the institutional politics of the HGP, see Robert Cook-Deegan, The Gene Wars
(New York: Norton, 1994).

16. See Francis Collins, Michael Morgan, and Ari Patrinos, “The Human Genome
Project: Lessons from Large-Scale Biology,” Science 300 (April 11, 2003): 286–290.

17. For industry reports on bioinformatics, see Oscar Gruss Co., “Trends in
Commercial Bioinformatics,” Oscar Gruss Biotechnology Review (March 13, 2000),
available at http://www.oscargruss.com; and Silico Research Limited, Bioinformatics
Platforms, Research Report/Executive Summary (November 2000), available at
http://www.silico-research.com.

18. Georges Canguilhem, “The Concept of Life,” in A Vital Rationalist: Selected

Writings, ed. François Delaporte (New York: Zone, 2000), p. 316.

19. See Lily Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life?: A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), and Evelyn Fox Keller, Refiguring Life:
Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

20. On classical information theory, see Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, The
Mathematical Theory of Communication (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1965). For
a summary of information theory in relation to molecular biology, see Kay, Who Wrote
the Book of Life? pp. 91–102.

21. Michel Foucault, “Candidacy Presentation: Collège de France, 1969,” in Ethics:

Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. 1, trans. Robert
Hurley et al., ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: New Press, 1997), pp. 7–8. As Foucault
notes, “It [the knowledge of heredity] developed throughout the nineteenth century,
starting from breeding techniques, on through attempts to improve species, experi-
ments with intensive cultivation, efforts to combat animal and plant epidemics, and
culminating in the establishment of a genetics whose birth date can be placed at the
beginning of the twentieth century” (p. 7).

22. Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1975–1976, ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey (New
York: Picador, 2003), p. 243.

23. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert
Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978), p. 137.

Notes

349
24. Ibid., 1: 245.

25. Foucault, “The Birth of Biopolitics,” in Ethics, p. 73.

26. Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” p. 246.

27. We have seen this in the modern events surrounding “emerging infectious
disease,” but it already exists in the push toward the computerization of health care
(“infomedicine”) and the use of information technologies to mediate doctor-patient
relationships (“telemedicine”).

28. Ian Hacking, “Biopolitics and the Avalanche of Printed Numbers,” Humanities in
Society 5 (1982), p. 281.

29. Ibid., p. 287.

30. I am grateful to Alex Galloway for this encapsulation.

31. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1: 139.

32. Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” pp. 246–247.

33. Michel Foucault, “The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century,” in Power:
The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. 3, trans. Robert Hurley et al., ed.
James D. Faubion (New York: New Press, 2000), p. 95. “Security” is as much an eco-
nomic and cultural notion as it is a military one; the most evident militaristic example
currently is the recent scare over bioterrorism (the budgetary boost in the U.S. biowar-
fare research program). But biopolitics also remains consonant with neoliberalism in
its notion of a medical-economic security in the form of health insurance, home care,
outpatient services, and the development of biological “banking” institutions (sperm
and ova banks, blood banks, tissue banks, etc.).

34. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-
Roazen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 11.

35. Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp. 289–294.

36. For example, in a short book review published in Le Monde in 1976 (just after the
publication of Discipline and Punish), Foucault criticizes what we might now call “pop
science” books, which, in a monumental sweep, move from the minutiae of the mol-

Notes

350
ecule to the structure of human societies. See Michel Foucault, “Bio-histoire et bio-
politique,” in Dits et écrits 1954–1988, ed. Daniel Defert, François Ewald, and Jacques
Lagrange (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), pp. 94–97. In particular, Foucault notes that we
should be cautious in too easily moving from the molecule to the masses, as if the line
between biology and culture were really a matter of homogeneity and scale. He notes
that diversity and diversification is the key to understanding contemporary biopoli-
tics, that “the species must not be defined by a prototype but by a set of variations”
(p. 96, my translation). In this short article Foucault also makes an explicit connec-
tion to genetics. In genetics, the population is not just defined by their manifest,
visible characteristics, but, “molecular biology has permitted the repair of factors
dependent on the immunological structure and the enzymatic equipment of cells—
characteristics whose condition is rigorously genetic” (p. 96, my translation).

37. As Ian Hacking has shown in his thorough historical study, statistics is well
known to have grown out of biology as a particular field of application (biology as
statecraft, as it were). Likewise, scientific method was central to Lamarck in the very
concept of a science of life, or bio-logy, and the ability to quantifiably account for the
biological was the central promise of the life sciences and biology. Add to this another,
equally relevant development: that of the beginnings of digital computers and soft-
ware. In order to examine fully the changes Foucault broadly points to during the late
eighteenth through the nineteenth century, we would have to take into account the
work of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. Perhaps, then, the real nexus for biopol-
itics is not just in the development of statistics or in the life sciences, but in the
biotechnical nexus between statistics and biology, informatics and genetics, Babbage
and Darwin, Lovelace and Lamarck.

38. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, trans. Martin Milligan
(New York: Prometheus, 1988), p. 71.

39. Ibid., p. 71. This basic formulation remains in Marx’s later works, but it is largely
subsumed under the discussion of commodities and labor power. However, in the first
volume of Capital, for instance, Marx further qualifies the estrangement of labor by
noting how it must emerge from the treatment of the body as property. See Capital,
vol. 1 (New York: Penguin, 1990), p. 271.

40. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 71, emphasis in original.

41. Ibid., p. 72.

42. Ibid., p. 76.

Notes

351
43. Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin
Nicolaus (New York: Penguin, 1973), p. 272, emphasis in original.

44. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1: 290.

45. In this sense, Marx relies a great deal on Hegel—Hegel the philosopher but also
Hegel the biologist. It is not difficult to see Hegel’s organicism behind Marx’s empha-
sis on the “species being,” and indeed the sections of the 1844 manuscripts on
estranged labor can be read side by side with the sections on Hegel’s introduction to
Phenomenology of Spirit.

46. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 81 (italics removed).

47. Marx further notes that productive activity is estranged because it is external to
the human subject (it does not directly benefit the subject), because within the capi-
talist system it is necessary or “coerced” labor (labor as an immediate “means of life”),
and because it belongs to someone else (the capitalist) and is thus further rendered as
property. See Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 74.

48. Ibid., pp. 77–78, emphasis in original.

49. Nick Dyer-Witheford’s work on the biopolitical dimensions of Marx’s notion of

“species being” is an important contribution in this area. Dyer-Witheford makes a
helpful distinction between “human commodities” (consumers-subjects), “chosen
peoples” (fundamentalism), and “commoners” (collective dissent movements). See
Dyer-Witheford’s paper “1844/2004/2044: The Return of Species Being” submitted
to Historical Materialism (Jan. 2004). However, although Dyer-Witheford reads the
“species being” in the broader context of the antiglobalization movement, my use of
Marx’s term remains rooted in the way that the biotech industry recontextualizes
biology as a type of labor power. My main point of interest is the strange and
frustrating “nonhuman” character of biomaterial labor.

50. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 75, emphasis in original.

51. Marx, Capital, 1: 283. Marx makes a similar statement elsewhere in Capital: “We
mean by labor-power, or labor-capacity, the aggregate of those mental and physical
capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being,
capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use-value of any kind”
(p. 270). And again: “Labor-power exists only as a capacity of the living individual.
Its production consequently presupposes his existence” (p. 274).

Notes

352
52. In the 1844 manuscripts Marx notes: “Admittedly animals also produce. They
build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only
produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly,
while man produces universally” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 77). And
again, though somewhat more ambiguously, in Capital: “We presuppose labor in a
form in which it is an exclusively human characteristic. A spider conducts operations
which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to
shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst
architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before
he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labor process, a result emerges which had
already been conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally”
(1: 283–284). There is much to explore in such passages regarding the contemporary
research into the “self-organization” and complexity of ant swarming, wasp nest build-
ing, bird flocking, and so on.

53. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 76, emphasis in original.

54. Ibid., p. 77, emphasis in original.

55. These two meanings of the term are encapsulated by Marx: “just as nature pro-
vides labor with the means of life in the sense that labor cannot live without objects
on which to operate, on the other hand, it also provides the means of life in the more
restricted sense—i.e., the means for the physical subsistence of the worker himself.”
Ibid., p. 72, emphasis in original.

56. Ibid., pp. 75–76, emphasis in original. In volume 1 of Capital, Marx speaks of
the instruments of labor in a way that recalls his earlier formulation of the “inorganic
body,” in effect placing the inorganic body of the 1844 manuscripts within the context
of capitalism: “Leaving out of consideration such ready-made means of subsistence as
fruits, in gathering which a man’s bodily organs alone serve as the instruments of his
labor, the object the worker directly takes possession of is not the object of labor but
its instrument. Thus nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, which he annexes
to his own bodily organs” (1: 285).

57. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 70.

58. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 84.

59. Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” p. 243.

Notes

353
60. Ibid., p. 243.

61. Foucault, “The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century,” in Ethics, pp.
95–96.

62. Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude, trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James
Cascaito, and Andrea Casson (New York: Semiotext[e], 2004), p. 82. Virno contin-
ues, stating that “capitalists are interested in the life of the worker, in the body of that
worker, only for an indirect reason: this life, this body, are what contains the faculty,
the potential, the dynamis” (pp. 82–83). The concept of “biomaterial labor” discussed
more fully in chapters 3 and 4 differs from Virno’s interpretation of Foucauldian
biopolitics, principally in that it suggests that the biotech industry operates beyond
post-Fordism and is able effectively to separate the prior indissociability of life and
labor. Genes, enzymes, and cell perform a specific type of biological labor in the lab,
apart from the body.

63. Even in the early, so-called humanist Marx, the human subject exists in a con-
flicted relation to nature. On the one hand, in the human-nature relation, production
is fully integrated with “life activity” insofar as all production is direct use value. On
the other hand, the very act of appropriation, of working upon nature, immediately
objectifies nature, thereby objectifying the human subject’s “inorganic body.” At some
points, Marx seems to want to preserve some essential, even extraeconomic relation
between human and nature, but at other points (especially in his commentaries on
Hegel) he acknowledges that this “knowledge of estrangement” is in fact part of the
human condition.

64. The phrase living dead labor is an homage to the subgenre of zombie-epidemic
films, which, in many ways, are the most astute critique of the biotech industry. See
appendix IV.

65. For more on the Mo-cell line, see Lori Andrews and Dorothy Nelkin, Body Bazaar:
The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age (New York: Crown, 2001), pp.
25–31. Also see E. Richard Gold, Body Parts: Property Rights and the Ownership of Human
Biological Materials (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996), pp.
23–33.

66. For more on the OncoMouse, see Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_

Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouseTM: Feminism and Technoscience (New York:
Routledge, 1997), pp. 87–85. On transgenics generally, see J. A. H. Murray, ed.,
Transgenesis (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1992).

Notes

354
67. For more on mammalian bioreactors, see Andrew Kimbrell, The Human Body Shop:
The Cloning, Engineering, and Marketing of Life (Washington, D.C.: Gateway, 1997), pp.
207–225. On medical transgenics generally, see R. B. Church, ed., Transgenic Models
in Medicine and Agriculture (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1990).

68. In fact, biological estrangement extends to human beings in its more conven-
tional context as well. The controversy surrounding the patenting of cell lines is an
example. When a biopsy is taken from a patient and then cultured into a cell line and
patented, the patient’s biology continues to “work” independently of the patient and
appears as a kind of body-outside-the-body (in a strange way, a biotechnical instance
of an “out of body experience”).

Chapter 2

1. See Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press,

1967), pp. 20–22.

2. See Francis Crick’s papers published during the 1960s, such as “The Genetic Code,”
Scientific American 207 (1962): 66–75; “The Recent Excitement in the Coding
Problem,” Progress in Nucleic Acids Research 1 (1963): 163–217; and “Towards the
Genetic Code,” Discovery 23.3 (1962): 8–16.

3. See their landmark paper, François Jacob and Jacques Monod, “Genetic Regula-
tory Mechanisms in the Synthesis of Proteins,” Journal of Molecular Biology (1961):
318–59. Also see Jacob’s The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity (New York: Pantheon,
1974), pp. 267–298.

4. See their paper, Heinrich Matthai, Oliver W. Jones, Robert G. Martin, and
Marshall Nirenberg, “Characteristics and Composition of RNA Coding Unit,” Pro-
ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 48 (1962): 1580–1588. Also see Marshall
Nirenberg, “The Genetic Code II,” Scientific American 208 (1963): 80–94.

5. See Lily Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000); and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Toward a History
of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1997).

6. See Claude Shannon’s Ph.D. dissertation, “An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics,”
Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 15, 1940.
See also John von Neumann’s lectures, republished as The Computer and the Brain (New

Notes

355
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 68–70. Von Neumann, along with
Alan Turing, was partially responsible for introducing biological concepts into
computer science, thereby providing the discourse of artificial intelligence with a
biological dimension.

7. As Judith Butler notes, “the anatomical is only ‘given’ through its signification,
and yet it appears to exceed that signification, to provide the elusive referent in
relation to which the variability of signification performs. Always already caught
up in the signifying chain by which sexual difference is negotiated, the anatomical
is never given outside its terms and yet it is also that which exceeds and compels
that signifying chain, that reiteration of difference, an insistent and inexhaus-
tible demand.” Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter (New York: Routledge, 1993),
p. 90.

8. Bioinformatics is one of the more fascinating subdisciplines within biotech, spawn-

ing innovative, research-based approaches involving genetic algorithms and distrib-
uted computing. Computer companies such as Compaq and IBM have been involved,
the latter having spent $100 million in starting its life science initiative around
2000–2001. In addition, in science industry publications such as Nature Biotechnology
and Biospace.com, there is a growing demand for individuals with both molecular
biology and computer programming backgrounds for bioinformatics jobs.

9. For more on bioinformatics, see D. Benton, “Bioinformatics: Principles and Poten-

tial of a New Multidisciplinary Tool,” Trends in Biotechnology 14.8 (August 1996):
261–272; Diane Gershon, “Bioinformatics in a Post-Genomics Age,” Nature 389 (Sep-
tember 27, 1997): 417–418; Brendan Horton, “The Breakdown on Bioinformatics,”
Nature 388 (August 7, 1997): 603–605; Ken Howard, “The Bioinformatics Gold
Rush,” Scientific American (July 2000): 58–63; N. M. Luscombe, D. Greenbaum, and
M. Gerstein, “What Is Bioinformatics? A Proposed Definition and Overview of the
Field,” Methods of Informatic Medicine 40 (2001): 346–358; Aris Persidis, “Bioinfor-
matics,” Nature Biotechnology 17 (August 1999): 828–830; and Paolo Saviotti et al.,
“The Changing Marketplace of Bioinformatics,” Nature Biotechnology 18 (December
2000): 1247–1249.

10. The immediate technical predecessors to bioinformatics databases were the first
attempts to “enumerate” genetic and protein molecules as informational sequences.
For early examples of this approach applied to protein classes, see Margaret Dayhoff
et al., Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure, vol. 1 (Silver Spring, Md.: National Bio-
medical Research Foundation, 1965). For an application to individual protein mole-
cules, see R. W. Holley and D. M. Powers “The Base Sequence of Yeast Alanine

Notes

356
Transfer RNA,” Science 147 (1965): 1462–1465; and Fredrick Sanger and E. O. P.
Thompson, “The Amino-Acid Sequence in the Glycyl Chain of Insulin,” Biochemical
Journal 53 (1953): 353–366; 366–374.

11. The first computer databases of genetic and protein data were established in the
1980s and 1990s, as personal computing made database management (and, later,
online services) more affordable for university-based research labs. See E. E. Abola
et al., “Protein Data Bank,” in Crystallographic Databases, ed. F. H. Allen et al.
(Cambridge: Data Commission of the International Union of Crystallography, 1987),
pp. 107–132. Also see F. C. Bernstein, “Protein Data Bank: A Computer-Based Archival
File for Macromolecular Structures,” Journal of Molecular Biology 112 (1977): 535–542.

12. See Persidis, “Bioinformatics.”

13. See Jon Agar, “History of Science on the World Wide Web,” British Journal for
the History of Science 29 (1996): 223–227.

14. BLAST has become somewhat of a standard in bioinformatics research, provid-

ing a comprehensive cross-database search that includes all data associated with the
public genome project as well as bibliographic data on related research (not unlike a
library search) and data from other biological databases such as the Protein Data Bank.
See S. F. Altschul et al., “Basic Local Alignment Search Tool,” Journal of Molecular
Biology 215 (1990): 403–410.

15. On the development of lab technologies for biotech, see John Hodgson, “Gene
Sequencing’s Industrial Revolution,” IEEE Spectrum (November 2000): 36–42. On
PCR, see Paul Rabinow, Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996).

16. Although early online databases were public domain, biotech corporations’ serious
interest brought about privatized databases, which can be accessed through company
subscriptions. Many of the databases discussed here exist exclusively online because
this approach facilitates more efficient uploading of new data into a centralized
information resource. For examples of research, see A. Bairoch and B. Broeckmann,
“The SWISS-PROT Protein Sequence Data Bank,” Nucleic Acids Research 19 (1991):
2247–2249; and Michael Krawczak et al., “Human Gene Mutation Database—A Bio-
medical Information and Research Source,” Human Mutation 15 (2000): 45–51.

17. The issue of cross-platform compatibility and standardization of file formats has
become pressing in the bioinformatics industry. Although software companies want

Notes

357
to protect their interests, a number of researcher-led groups have attempted to initi-
ate protocols for bioinformatics research. The effort to establish these “ontology” stan-
dards seems to involve more than technical configuration; it points to the central
problem in bioinformatics in managing “information” across both “wet” and “dry”
media or platforms (in vitro and in silico). See Clare Samson, “Finding a New Lan-
guage for Bioinformatics,” Nature Biotechnology 15 (November 1997): 1253–1256.

18. See the reports from Oscar Gruss Co., “Trends in Commercial Bioinformatics,”
Oscar Gruss Biotechnology Review (March 13, 2000), available at http://www.
oscargruss.com; and Silico Research Limited, Bioinformatics Platforms, Research Report/
Executive Summary (November 2000), available at http://www.silico-research.com.

19. See Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), Pharma-

ceutical Industry Profile 2003 (Washington, D.C.: PhRMA, 2003).

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid. PhRMA is one of the leading pharmaceutical industry organizations world-
wide. Of course, its reports reflect the political and health-care-related ideologies of
the pharmaceutical industry, and it is thus also a powerful lobbying body surround-
ing issues such as Medicare.

22. See Philip Dean, Paul Gane, and Edward Zanders, “Pharmacogenomics and Drug
Design,” in Pharmacogenomics: The Search for Individualized Therapies, ed. Julio Licino
and Ma-Li Wong (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2002), pp. 143–158.

23. For an example, see Klaus Lindpaintner, “The Importance of Being Modest:
Reflections on the Pharmacogenetics of Abacavir,” Pharmacogenomics 3.6 (2002):
835–838.

24. The study, published in November of 2000, can be accessed at http://

www.genewatch.org. It was also published on The Guardian Web site at http://
www.guardianunlimited.co.uk.

25. Urs Meyer, “Introduction to Pharmacogenomics: Promises, Opportunities, and

Limitations,” in Pharmacogenomics: The Search for Individualized Therapies, ed. Julio
Licino and Ma-Li Wong (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2002), p. 3. For more
on pharmacogenomics, see D. S. Bailey, A. Bondar, and L. M. Furness, “Pharmacoge-
nomics: It’s Not Just Pharmacogenetics,” Current Opinion in Biotechnology 9 (1998):
595–601; Thomas Bumol and August Watanabe, “Genetic Information, Genomic

Notes

358
Technologies, and the Future of Drug Discovery,” Journal of the American Medical Asso-
ciation 285 (2001): 551–555; Brian Claus and Dennis Underwood, “Discovery Infor-
matics: Its Evolving Role in Drug Discovery,” Drug Discovery Today 7.18 (September
2002): 957–966; W. E. Evans and M. V. Relling, “Pharmacogenomics: Translating
Functional Genomics into Rational Therapeutics,” Science 286.5439 (1999): 487–491;
G. S. Ginsburg and J. J. McCarthy, “Personalized Medicine: Revolutionizing Drug
Discovery and Patient Care,” Trends in Biotechnology 19.12 (2001): 491–496; M. W.
Linder and R. Valdes Jr., “Pharmacogenetics in the Practice of Laboratory Medicine,”
Molecular Diagnosis 4 (1999): 365–379; Roy Pettipher and Lon Cardon, “The Appli-
cation of Genetics to the Discovery of Better Medicines,” Pharmacogenomics 3.2 (2002):
257–263; and A. D. Roses, “Pharmacogenetics and the Practice of Medicine,” Nature
405 (2000): 857–865.

26. The phrase has also been used recently by Donna Haraway, Sarah Franklin, and
Nikolas Rose. The use here certainly builds on their work, but is also meant to refer
specifically to this dual political and ontological aspect of fields such as bioinformat-
ics and pharmacogenomics, which integrate biology and information in novel ways.

27. Nikolas Rose, “The Politics of Life Itself,” Theory, Culture, and Society 18.6 (2001),
p. 13. Rose notes how this “molecular politics” is also related to the reformulation of
“risk” in the genetic context and, furthermore, how this genetic risk impacts the way
individuals frame their own health and lifestyles.

28. Sarah Franklin, “Life Itself: Global Nature and the Genetic Imaginary,” online at
the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/
sociology/soc048sf.html. As Franklin states, “the very concept of ‘genetic information’
is a collapse of matter and message at the heart of the contemporary life sciences.”
Franklin’s focus is primarily the “genetic imaginary,” or the complex social process
through which genetic “life itself” is imagined, such as seen in the film, merchandise,
spin-off documentaries, and museum exhibits surrounding Jurassic Park.

29. See S. L. Teitelbaum, “Bone Resorption by Osteoclasts,” Science 289 (September

1, 2000): 1504; and D. S. Yamashita and R. A. Dodds, “Cathepsin K and the Design
of Inhibitors of Cathepsin K,” Current Pharmaceutical Design 6.1 (January 2000): 1–24.

30. See the press releases at the Human Genome Sciences Web site, http://
www.hgsci.com.

31. Interestingly enough, this claim was made not only in Human Genome Sciences’
press releases, but also in an advertisement for Apple computers, available at

Notes

359
http://www.apple.com. Michael Fannon, Vice President for Human Genome Sciences,
states that “the Power Macintosh platform gives us the computational power we need,
coupled with maintainability and ease of use that, to this day, have never been repli-
cated on other platforms.”

32. See the press releases from Celera Genomics, available at http://www.celera.com.

33. PhRMA, Pharmaceutical Industry Profile 2003, p. 15.

34. U.S. PTO no. 5,501,969 and U.S. PTO no. 5,861,29, respectively. These patents
can be viewed online at http://www.uspto.gov.

35. For more on the techniques of pharmacogenomics, see Thomas Lengauer, Bioin-
formatics: From Genomes to Drugs (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2002). Also see
the articles in Julio Licino and Ma-Li Wong, eds., Pharmacogenomics: The Search for Indi-
vidualized Therapies (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2002).

36. Georges Canguilhem, “The Concept of Life,” in A Vital Rationalist, ed. François,
Delaporte, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Zone, 2000), p. 303.

37. Ibid. Canguilhem’s proposition needs to be qualified, of course, for it can quite
easily be argued that Plato’s theory of forms and the faculty of reason in the Timaeus—
in its analogizing between anatomy and the Platonic idea—is equally valid as a can-
didate for the philosophy of biology. However, Canguilhem extends his analyses of
Aristotle to point to the way in which both the study of the concept and the study of
organic life were circumscribed within a more rigorous, analytical framework. “It was
Aristotle the naturalist who based his system for classifying animals on structure and
mode of reproduction, and it was the same Aristotle who used that system as a model
for his logic” (p. 303).

38. For a review of this phenomenon, see my article “Shattered Body, Shattered Self,”
Afterimage 29.5 (March–April 2002).

39. “Le concept et la vie” was first published in Revue philosophique de Louvain 64 (May
1966): 193–223.

40. Canguilhem, “The Concept of Life,” p. 303.

41. Ibid., pp. 316–317.

Notes

360
42. Ibid., p. 316.

43. As Canguilhem notes in a separate essay, “it is not only the history of anatomy
and physiology that begins with Aristotle but also the history of what was long called
‘natural history,’ including the classification of living things, their orderly arrange-
ment in a table of similarities and differences, study of their kinship through mor-
phological comparison, and, finally, study of the compatibility of different modes of
existence.” Ideology and Rationality in the Life Sciences, trans. Arthur Goldhammer
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), p. 133.

44. “It must then be the case that the soul is substance as the form of a natural body
which potentially has life, and since this substance is actuality, soul will be the actu-
ality of such a body.” See Aristotle, De anima (On the soul), trans. Hugh Lawson-
Tancred (New York: Penguin, 1986), book II, section 1, p. 157.

45. The other famous example Aristotle mentions is the analogy of the eye: “For if
the eye was an animal, then sight would be its soul, being the substance of the eye
that is in accordance with the account of it. . . . So just as pupil and sight are the
eye, so, in our case, soul and body are the animal.” De anima, book II, section 1,
p. 158.

46. Georges Canguilhem, “The Epistemology of Biology,” in A Vital Rationalist, p.

80, 81.

47. Ibid., p. 68. Canguilhem cites Georges Cuvier’s notion of “modes of life,” which
is instructive in the context of contemporary bioinformatics and computational
biology: “This flux [of biological life] is composed of molecules, which change indi-
vidually yet remain always the same type. Indeed, the actual matter that constitutes
a living body will soon have dispersed, yet that matter serves as the repository of a
force that will compel future matter to move in the same direction.” Georges Cuvier,
Rapport historique sur les progress des sciences naturelles depuis 1789 jusqu’à ce jour (Paris:
De L’imprimerie impériale, 1810), p. 70.

48. Georges Canguilhem, “The Question of Normality in the History of Biological

Thought,” in Ideology and Rationality in the Life Sciences, p. 128.

49. Canguilhem, “The Epistemology of Biology,” p. 67.

50. Canguilhem, “The Question of Normality,” p. 141.

Notes

361
51. Canguilhem, “The Epistemology of Biology,” p. 69. The passage is from Bichat’s
Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort.

52. The concept of “animation” has a wide range of evocative associations in the
age of computer animation and computer graphics interface. It also, interestingly
enough, serves as the main criteria for “life” in many science fiction films, when the
conventional criteria of anatomical structure or material composition fail; consider the
Cold War “alien invasion” films such as Day of the Triffids or Invasion of the Body Snatch-
ers, or more contemporary films such as The Abyss, Alien, or The Thing.

53. Georges Canguilhem, “Vie,” Encyclopedia universalis (Paris: Encyclopedia Univer-

salis France, 1973), 16: 764–769.

54. Canguilhem’s approach looks for two things methodologically: “thematic conser-
vation” across disparate disciplines and paradigms (e.g., Aristotelian hylomorphism
in the work of eighteenth-century naturalism and nineteenth-century physiology), and
what Canguilhem calls “scientific ideology,” or the ways in which discursive exchanges
in the sciences both inform those sciences and take them astray into sociology, poli-
tics, economics, and culture.

55. Canguilhem, “The Epistemology of Biology,” p. 87.

56. Ibid., p. 88.

57. See Stuart Kauffman, The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolu-
tion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 298–312.

58. Canguilhem, “The Epistemology of Biology,” p. 88.

59. Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn Fawcett
(New York: Zone, 1989), p. 278.

60. Even prior to these developments, molecular biology research during the 1960s
had already emphasized the network-based, systemswide activity of genes and pro-
teins; François Jacob and Jacques Monod’s famous research on genetic regulatory
mechanisms is an important example in this regard.

61. In an everyday context, this definition of information is operative in the handling

of e-mail; a portion of a network utility ensures that the e-mail of 4 kb sent in London
arrives as an e-mail of 4 kb in Seattle.

Notes

362
62. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1965), p. 8. Shannon reiterates this point when
he notes that “the fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at
one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point” (p. 31).
In information theory terms, “semantic aspects . . . are irrelevant to the engineering
problem” (p. 31).

63. Evelyn Fox Keller, Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1995). As Fox Keller notes, “the notion of geneti-
cal information that Watson and Crick invoked was not literal but metaphoric” (p. 19).

64. By the time of Watson and Crick’s much-lauded 1953 papers, the language of
informatics in molecular biology was already quite developed, such that the two could
note how, in a molecular form such as DNA, “many different permutations are pos-
sible, and it therefore seems likely that the precise sequence of the bases is the code
which carries the genetical information.” See James Watson and Francis Crick,
“General Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid,” Nature 171 (1953):
964–967. Fox Keller thus argues that, contra Shannon and Weaver, for Watson and
Crick, “if ‘genetical information’ is to have anything to do with life, it must involve
meaning.” Refiguring Life, p. 94.

65. The quotation given in the section heading is from “Madrigal III” by Ulver,
©1997 Magic Arts Publishing. Quoted in Henry Cornelius, “Occult Medicine and
the Political Context of Enlightenment Mathematics,” Medical Sociology 21.1 (1994),
p. 78.

66. The prevalence of the central dogma is one of the curious instances in the history
of molecular biology. Any cursory understanding of genes and proteins cannot but
help to recognize the inherently complex nature of genetic function. Although Jacob
and Monod’s research did contribute to the understanding of mRNA and its cousins,
it was, more important, a statement concerning the nonlinear, multiagential nature
of gene function. Indeed, during the same period in which some researchers were
working on “cracking the genetic code,” biologists such as C. H. Waddington, Richard
Lewontin, and Stuart Kauffman were performing studies showing how the complex-
ity of genetic function required new, nonreductive approaches in biology. Yet it is dif-
ficult not to see the specter of the central dogma still very much alive in the biotech
industry, with its emphasis on pills and “silver bullet” therapies. This emphasis makes
sense economically—it would be difficult to market a therapy based on complexity
and much easier to market a drug—but in many cases it does not make sense med-
ically, as the low rate of current positive drug response and ADRs attest.

Notes

363
67. See the GeneWatch UK report Pharmacogenetics: Better, Safer Medicines?
GeneWatch Briefing no. 23 (July 2003), available at http://www.genewatch.org.

68. Canguilhem, “The Question of Normality,” p. 131.

69. Ibid., p. 132.

70. Canguilhem, “The Epistemology of Biology,” p. 84.

71. Indeed, this may be one explanation for why a number of bioinformatics compa-
nies did not survive the dotcom bust of the 1990s. Companies that began with great
fanfare—such as DoubleTwist—have since gone under, perhaps owing to the fact
that they limited themselves to the information technology–based services of database
management. The most successful bioinformatics companies have focused either
on software development or on the creation of entire “drug discovery suites” or
packages.

72. Marx’s specific example, infused with the ideology critique developed by him and
Engels, is as follows: “Let us now accompany the owner of some commodity, say our
old friend the line weaver, to the scene of action, the market. His commodity, 20 yards
of linen, has a definite price, £2. He exchanges it for the £2, and then, being a man
of the old school, he parts for the £2 in return for a family Bible of the same price.
. . . The process of exchange is therefore accomplished through two metamorphoses of
opposite yet mutually complementary character—the conversion of the commodity
into money, and the re-conversion of the money into a commodity.” Capital, trans.
Ben Fowkes (New York: Penguin, 1990 [orig. 1867]), 1: 199–200.

73. Even without discussing the biotech industry, Marx already begins to think of
labor and exchange in biological, or at least, physiological, terms: “the whole process
accomplishes nothing more than the exchange of the product of his labor for the
product of someone else’s.” Ibid., 1: 200.

74. Ibid., 1: 198, 200, 199.

75. Ibid., 1: 200.

76. Ibid., 1: 204.

77. Ibid., 1: 248, 249.

Notes

364
78. Ibid., 1: 251.

79. Ibid., 1: 253.

80. Ibid., 1: 262.

81. Marx abbreviates this paradox: “Capital cannot therefore arise from circulation,
and it is equally impossible for it to arise apart from circulation. It must have its
origin both in circulation and not in circulation.” Ibid., 1: 268.

82. Many Marxian critics have provided variations on Marx’s original formula, so I
feel obliged to do the same, especially because I have absolutely no mathematical apti-
tude. In the context of pharmacogenomics, Marx’s M-C-M¢ formula is really more of
an M-I[C]-M¢ formula, in which I is the information of value generated in the drug-
development process (e.g., genetic sequence, protein data, biomarkers) and I[C]
denotes the way in which material commodities such as drugs in the body are always
enframed by the genetic-informatic paradigm of “life itself.”

83. Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, p. 276.

84. Ibid., p. 283.

85. The former found its way from Newtonian mechanics into eighteenth-century
physiology, in which milieu designated a fluid medium or suspension that enabled
physically distinct entities to interact (fluid, ether). The latter connotation came to
designate the sum total of outside circumstances (temperature, air pressure, light,
water) in nineteenth-century geographical science. For Canguilhem, biosemiotics’
combination of these connotations, along with the then-emerging field of biochem-
istry and genetics, contributed to the more complex distinction between milieu and
environment.

86. As Canguilhem points out, von Uexküll actually adds a third distinction, which
is the environment as understood scientifically, bringing the discussion into the
phenomena-noumena distinction set out by Kant: “Let us take the terms Umwelt,
Umgebung, and Welt. . . . Umwelt designates the behavioral milieu that is proper to a
given organism; Umgebung is the simple geographical environment; and Welt is the
scientific universe.” Georges Canguilhem, “The Living and Its Milieu,” trans. John
Savage, Grey Room 3 (spring 2001), p. 19. The article was originally published as “Le
vivant et son milieu,” in La conaissance de la vie (Paris: Vrin, 1952).

Notes

365
87. Ibid., pp. 19–20.

88. Ibid., p. 19. Canguilhem continues: “The cell is a milieu for intracellular ele-
ments; it lives in an interior milieu that is either on the scale of the organ or the organ-
ism, which organism itself lives in a milieu that is for it, in a sense, what the organism
is for its component parts.”

89. Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, Environment (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 38.

90. Ibid., p. 100.

91. Canguilhem, “The Living and Its Milieu,” p. 21.

Chapter 3

1. See the press release “White House Press Release on Human Genome Project,”
March 14, 2000, White House Library Web site, http://www.whitehouse.gov.

2. Most molecular biologists distinguish between “junk DNA” and “noncoding”

regions. The latter are regions that do not directly code for a protein, but that may
play a part, however indirectly, in protein synthesis or, as stated, in the maintenance
of the structural and sequential integrity of DNA itself. The former is often thought
to be of archaeological or evolutionary interest, kind of like a genetic “fossil” buried
in our genomes. Other hypothesis concerning introns (the junk DNA) suggest that
they play a role only in the development of the embryo and are subsequently
inactivated.

3. See Ken Howard, “The Bioinformatics Gold Rush,” Scientific American (July 2000):
58–63. Also see the Celera press release “Celera Genomics Completes Sequencing
Phase of the Genome from One Human Being,” April 6, 2000, available at
http://www.celera.com.

4. See Howard, “The Bioinformatics Gold Rush.”

5. Francis Collins, Michael Morgan, and Aristides Patrinos, “The Human Genome
Project: Lessons from Large-Scale Biology,” Science (April 11, 2003), p. 290.

6. Ibid.

Notes

366
7. Samuel Broder, G. Subramanian, and Craig Venter, “The Human Genome,” in
Pharmacogenomics: The Search for Individualized Therapies, ed. Julio Licino and Ma-Li
Wong (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2002), pp. 9–34.

8. Broder, Subramanian, and Venter state that the “analysis of genomic sequence pro-
vides several clues towards predicting pathogenic potential of a microbe. The phe-
nomenon of lateral transfer of genetic material in microbes is one of great interest and
has been shown to contribute to genomic diversity in free-living bacteria and to a
lesser extent in obligate bacteria. . . . These observations have substantial implications
for the development of new anti-microbial agents, and the selection of the best anti-
microbial agents for any host. This is a template for conceptualizing individualized
medicine of the future.” Ibid., p. 19.

9. Ibid., p. 29.

10. In the years following the IHGSC and Celera publications, there have been con-
tentious debates concerning access to genome data and efforts to open the sharing of
information and knowledge within the scientific community.

11. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Bantam, 2003), book 4, p. 537.

12. As Marx notes, the aim of the liberal economists is to “present production—see
e.g. Mill—as distinct from distribution etc., as encased in eternal natural laws inde-
pendent of history, at which opportunity bourgeois relations are then quietly smuggled
in as the inviolable natural laws on which society in the abstract is founded.” Grun-
drisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York:
Penguin, 1973), p. 87.

13. Ibid., p. 83.

14. Ibid., p. 84.

15. Both the HGP and the HGDP adopted this technique. See chapter 4 for more.

16. See Francis Crick, “The Genetic Code,” Scientific American 207 (1962): 66–75.
Also see Lily Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 128–144.

Notes

367
17. Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press,
1967), p. 21. Schrödinger also states that “the chromosome structures are at the same
time instrumental in bringing about the development they foreshadow” (p. 22).

18. Ibid., p. 22.

19. See Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and
the Machine (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996 [orig. 1948]); and Claude Shannon
and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1965). Wiener was concerned primarily with information as related to
systemic regulation (through feedback loops) and with the larger social implications
of cybernetics and the grouping of humans and machines under the categories of infor-
mation and negative feedback. Shannon, working at Bell Labs, was concerned prima-
rily with a technical question: how to transmit a message at point A to point B with
the greatest accuracy and lowest probability of error, contributing in part to develop-
ments in telecommunications that are evident in today’s “wired” condition of global
networks.

20. For Shannon, “noise” is a type of information, albeit an unsuccessful type, whereas
for Wiener noise is the opposite of information. See Wiener, Cybernetics, pp. 60–94,
and 155–168; Shannon and Weaver, Mathematical Theory of Communication, pp. 8–16,
and 31–35.

21. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Litera-
ture, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 2.

22. Ibid., pp. 1–13.

23. For their original research papers on DNA’s structure, see James Watson and
Francis Crick, “A Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid,” Nature 171 (1953): 737–738;
and “General Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid,” Nature 171
(1953): 964–967. See also Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? pp. 128–179.

24. The most explicit example is the “central dogma” of molecular biology in the
1950s and 1960s. See Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? pp. 173–175.

25. For examples of research in systems biology, see Hiroaki Kitano, ed., Foundations
of Systems Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), as well as information about
the work pioneered by Leroy Hood at the Institute for Systems Biology, available at
http://www.systemsbiology.org.

Notes

368
26. See also Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald, Exploding the Gene Myth (Boston: Beacon,
1997). As they state, “the language that geneticists use often carries considerable ide-
ological baggage. Molecular biologists, as well as the press, use verbs like ‘control,’
‘program,’ or ‘determine’ when speaking about what genes or DNA do. These are all
inappropriate because they assign far too active a role to DNA. The fact is that DNA
doesn’t ‘do’ anything; it is a remarkably inert molecule. It just sits in our cells and
waits for other molecules to interact with it” (p. 11).

27. Susan Oyama, The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 14.

28. I use the term genetic reductionism here to cover a range of critiques and analyses
of molecular genetics and biotech, all of which question the reductive science implicit
in current fields such as genomics. For a wide range of approaches, see Evelyn Fox
Keller, Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology (New York: Columbia
Univeristy Press, 1995); Richard Lewontin, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA
(New York: Harper-Collins, 1992); and Dorothy Nelkin and Susan Lindee, The DNA
Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1995).

29. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 86, italics removed. Living labor, for Marx, is implicit in all
of labor’s forms, though in qualitatively different ways. In a sense, the challenge posed
to capital is how to maximize the living labor in waged labor. But, as Marx notes, in
the process of quantifying and objectifying living labor, something of living labor is
unavoidably lost. The moment living labor transforms itself into labor power for sale
(the moment living labor produces only exchange values in commodities), something
of living labor escapes. Capital must somehow revive living labor in wage labor, must
somehow make the dead live: “Objectified labor ceases to exist in a dead state as an
external, indifferent form on the substance, because it is itself again posited in a
moment of living labor; as a relation of living labor to itself in an objective material,
as the objectivity of living labor” (p. 360, emphasis in original).

30. Ibid., p. 360, emphasis in original.

31. “Labor is the living, form-giving fire; it is the transitoriness of things, their tem-
porality, as their formation by living time.” Ibid., p. 361.

32. Antonio Negri, Marx beyond Marx, trans. and introduced by Harry Cleaver,
Michael Ryan, and Maurizio Viano (Brooklyn: Autonomedia/Pluto, 1991), pp. 67–68,
emphasis in orginal.

Notes

369
33. Nick Dyer-Witheford, Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-
Technology Capitalism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), p. 65.

34. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 693.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., pp. 690–706.

37. See Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and
Its Consequences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999).

38. Friedrich Kittler, “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter,” in Literature, Media, Informa-

tion Systems, ed. John Johnson (Amsterdam: G&B Arts, 1997), pp. 28–49.

39. See C. J. Date, An Introduction to Database Systems, 8th ed. (New York: Addison-
Wesley, 2003) p. 240. See also Gary G. Bitter, ed., Macmillan Encyclopedia of Comput-
ers (New York: Macmillan, 1992); and Peter Rob and Carlos Coronel, Database Systems:
Design, Implementation, and Management (Belmont, Mass.: Wadsworth, 1993).

40. For early accounts on the development of bioinformatics databases, see M. A.

Andrade and C. Sander, “Bioinformatics: From Genome Data to Biological Knowl-
edge,” Current Opinion in Biotechnology 8.6 (December 1997): 675–683. See also
Howard, “The Bioinformatics Gold Rush.”

41. See Charles Cantor, “The Challenges to Technology and Informatics,” in The Code
of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project, ed. Daniel Kevles and
Leroy Hood (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 98–111.

42. Joan Fujimura and Michael Fortun, “Constructing Knowledge across Social
Worlds: The Case of DNA Sequence Databases in Molecular Biology,” in Naked Science:
Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge, ed. Laura Nader (New
York: Routledge, 1996), p. 170.

43. An example of this tension is in bioinformatics applied to databasing. On the one

hand, the consensus view is that “genes” actually do very little and are but one com-
ponent among many that contribute to given biochemical processes. On the other, a
great many of the database tools in bioinformatics focus on or are predicated on the
centrality of genes and DNA as their starting point. For examples of this tension from

Notes

370
the perspective of computer science, see Pierre Baldi, The Shattered Self (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 2000).

44. Inscribing technologies also form a unique relationship to bodies and to death.
Whereas Kittler describes literature as evoking a zone of fantasy that extends from it,
mechanical media are themselves constituted by the phantasmic, by the tension
between realism or simulation, and the understood logic of representation. Thus, there
are ghost voices on the airwaves, ghost images in the shadow play of film, and psychic
“automatic writing.” As Kittler states, “media always already provide the appearance
of specters.” “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter,” p. 41.

45. Ibid., p. 46.

46. Ibid., p. 32.

47. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 99. “Thus production, distribution, exchange and consump-
tion form a regular syllogism; production is the generality, distribution and exchange
the particularity, and consumption the singularity in which the whole is joined
together” (p. 89). Further, Marx notes how, in classical political economy, production
is seen to be driven by “general natural laws,” whereas distribution among the classes
is a result of “social accident” (p. 89).

48. “That exchange and consumption cannot be predominant is self-evident. Like-

wise, distribution as distribution of products; while as distribution of the agents of
production it is itself a moment of production. A definite production thus determines
a definite consumption, distribution, and exchange as well as definite relations between
these different moments. Admittedly, however, in its one-sided form, production is itself
determined by other moments.” Marx, Grundrisse, p. 99, emphasis in original.

49. The productive aspects of consumption and distribution are further elaborated by
Marx in the Grundrisse. Whereas consumption seems to be the mere endpoint of the
production process, production “produces consumption (i) by creating the material
for it; (ii) by determining the manner of consumption; and (iii) by creating the
products, initially posited by it as objects, in the form of a need felt by the consumer”
(p. 92). Much of these propositions has been elaborated by thinkers such as Jean
Baudrillard, Guy Debord, and Herbert Marcuse, albeit in significantly different
ways. Likewise, whereas distribution seems to be the mere allocation of goods, “before
distribution can be the distribution of products, it is: (i) the distribution of the
instruments of production, and (ii), which is a further specification of the same

Notes

371
relation, the distribution of the members of the society among the different kinds of
production” (p. 96).

50. Both the Celera and public-consortium projects constructed their databases from
genetic samples of selected individuals, taken as representative of the population as a
whole. It was often noted that Celera chose individuals of varying ethnic backgrounds
to ensure a comprehensive sampling. For an account of the process, see J. Craig Venter,
“The Sequence of the Human Genome,” Science 291 (February 16, 2001): 1304–
1351.

51. The HGDP is now housed at the Morris Institute for Population Studies at Stan-
ford University. Information on the controversy sparked by the HGDP can be found
at the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) archives online at
http://www.rafi.org.

52. See Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (Toronto:
Between the Lines Press, 1997).

53. Clive Trotman, “Introns-Early: Slipping Lately?” Trends in Genetics 14.4 (April
1998): 132–134. Science fiction writer Greg Bear has taken up the implications on
the evolutionary, “introns-early” theory in his novel Darwin’s Radio (New York: Bal-
lantine 1999), suggesting that the “fossilized” DNA is there waiting to be reactivated
to initiate another phase shift in human evolution.

54. The quotation given in the section heading is from “Raining Murder” by Dark-
throne, ©2001 Moonfog Productions. Quoted in Arnaud Villeneuve, “Medicine,
Materiality, and Spectacle in Industrialized Paris,” in Decadent Biology: Science Studies
and the 19th Century, ed. Claude Louis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993),
p. 189.

55. Bataille’s particular take on political economy has been discussed at length in
other studies. Suffice it to say that considering his interests in the anthropological sig-
nificance of expenditure, ritual, and uselessness, Bataille approaches political economy
from the vantage point of excess rather than utility. His starting point is therefore
abundance, and thus the central problematic of political economy becomes how to
deal with excess, or how to expend. For further analysis of Bataille’s political economy,
see Denis Hollier, Against Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995); and
Julian Pefanis, Heterology and the Postmodern: Bataille, Baudrillard, and Lyotard
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991).

Notes

372
56. See the essays “The Notion of Expenditure” and “Base Materialism and Gnosti-
cism” in Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess, Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan
Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1985).

57. Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure,” pp. 141, 142.

58. Steven Shaviro, Connected, or What it Means to Live in the Network Society
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 220–221.

59. See Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York:
Zone, 1991).

60. Ibid., 1: 21. Bataille reiterates this position more directly when he states that “on
the surface of the globe, for living matter in general, energy is always in excess; the
question is always posed in terms of extravagance. The choice is limited to how the
wealth is to be squandered” (p. 23, italics removed).

61. Lev Manovich, “Database as a Symbolic Form,” Nettime list (December 14, 1998),
http://www.nettime.org. A fuller account is given in Manovich’s The Language of New
Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 218–236.

62. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 693.

63. Ibid., p. 706.

64. Ibid., pp. 703–704.

65. See Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity
(New York: Touchstone, 1994); and Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The
Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995).

66. See Evelyn Fox Keller, The Century of the Gene (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2000).

Chapter 4

1. Many press releases and news items can be found at the Rural Advancement Foun-
dation International (RAFI) archives Web site at http://www.rafi.org. Also see

Notes

373
Patricia Kahn, “Genetic Diversity Project Tries Again,” Science 266 (November 4,
1994): 720–722.

2. The idea for the HGDP came to Cavalli-Sforza as a postdoc at Cambridge Uni-
versity under the eugenicist Ronald Fisher, who was then applying mathematical tech-
niques to studying Mendelian laws in human characteristics such as height, weight,
and intelligence (e.g., IQ scores). Fisher’s book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selec-
tion, published in 1930, reiterated late-nineteenth-century fears about the degenera-
tion and deterioration of the population from the overbreeding of the lower classes.
Cavalli-Sforza soon became a leading figure in population genetics. In the 1980s, he
and his colleagues collected DNA samples in Africa to use statistics to study human
genetic differences in select populations. For an excellent analysis of the HGDP, see
Jennifer Reardon, “The Human Genome Diversity Project: A Case Study in Co-
production,” Social Studies of Science 31.3 (2001): 357–388.

3. See Debra Harry (no, not that one), Biocolonialism: A New Threat to Indigenous Peoples,
a report from the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (1998), available at
http://www.foel.org/LINK/LINK93/biocolonialism.html.

4. See Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (Toronto:
Between the Lines, 1997), pp. 65–85. Also see the GeneWatch report Privatising
Knowledge, Patenting Genes: The Race to Control Genetic Information, GeneWatch Briefing
no. 11 (June 2000), available at http://www.genewatch.org.

5. See Reardon, “The Human Genome Diversity Project.”

6. The former HGDP is now based at Stanford University’s Morris Institute for Pop-
ulation Studies.

7. Other organizations instrumental in lobbying against biopiracy include the

Foundation for Economic Trends (FET) and the Institute for Science in Society
(I-SIS).

8. On bioinformatics, see Ken Howard, “The Bioinformatics Gold Rush,” Scientific

American (July 2000): 58–63. Also see chapter 1 in this book.

9. On pharmacogenomics, see Julio Licino and Ma-Li Wong, eds., Pharmacogenomics:

The Search for Individualized Therapies (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2002). Also
see chapter 1 in this book.

Notes

374
10. For instance, Affymetrix’s “GeneChip” technology, Incyte’s “LifeSeq” databases,
Perkin-Elmer’s automated genetic sequencing computers.

11. On bioinformatics and post-genomics, see Diane Gershon, “Bioinformatics in a

Post-Genomics Age,” Nature 389 (September 27, 1997): 417–418.

12. For reportage on the human genome projects, see the news articles “Genetic Code
of Human Life Is Cracked by Scientists,” New York Times, June 26, 2000; “Special
Issue: Genome—The Race to Decode the Human Body,” Newsweek (April 10, 2000);
and “Special Issue: Cracking the Code,” Time (July 3, 2000).

13. On developments in population genetics, see Aravinda Chakravarti, “Population

Genetics—Making Sense out of Sequence,” Nature Genetics 21 (January 1999): 56–60.
Also see Steve Olson, “The Genetic Archaeology of Race,” The Atlantic Online (April
2001), http://www.theatlantic.com.

14. For example, the two most common genetically based components of difference
include SNPs, or the minute sequence differences from one individual to another, and
HAPs, or the physical arrangement of SNPs on a chromosome. See Nicholas Wade,
“In the Hunt for Useful Genes, a Lot Depends on Snips,” New York Times, August 11,
1998, available at http://www.nytimes.com.

15. See Vicki Brower, “Mining the Genetic Riches of Human Populations,” Nature
Biotechnology 16 (April 1998): 337–340; and Gary Taubes, “Your Genetic Destiny for
Sale,” MIT Technology Review (April 2001): 41–46.

16. Both the Gene Trust and the First Genetic Fund borrow the rhetoric of invest-
ment banking to contextualize genetic research as long-term investments, benefitting
not just the individual, but the species as a whole. GenBank is one of the first online
databases to be established by the U.S. government–funded HGP. The Gene Trust
Web site makes this explicit in its Web-based advertising (e.g., the DNA you donate
now could save lives in the future).

17. A Web site dedicated to HAP research is Hapcentral, http://www.hapcentral.com.

Along with the myriad of genomics databases now online, a centralized,
U.S. government–funded SNP database exists at the Whitehead Institute,
http://www.genome.wi.mit.edu/SNP/human/index.html.

18. See Michael Fortun, “Towards Genomic Solidarity: Lessons from Iceland and
Estonia,” Open Democracy (October 7, 2003), available at http://www.opendemocracy.net.

Notes

375
19. See Taubes, “Your Genetic Destiny for Sale.”

20. See the UK BioBank Web site at http://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk.

21. WMA, “Declaration on Ethical Considerations Regarding Health

Databases,” adopted by the WMA General Assembly (2002), available at
http://www.wma.net/e/policy/d1.htm.

22. Michael Fortun, “Experiments in Ethnography and Its Performance,” on the

Mannvernd Web site at http://www.mannvernd.is.

23. Ibid.

24. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert
Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978), pp. 141–142.

25. Ibid., 1: 147, 148 (italics removed).

26. Much of this analysis is predicated on textbooks in population genetics,

including A. J. Ammerman and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, The Neolithic Transition
and the Genetics of Populations in Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1984); Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, The History and Geography of Human Genes
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and
F. Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diasporas (Menlo Park, Calif.: Addison-Wesley,
1995).

27. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages (New York: North Point,
2000), p. 25.

28. Quoted in Reardon, “The Human Genome Diversity Project,” p. 362. The full
reference is Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1951 [orig. 1937]), p. 138.

29. See Reardon, “The Human Genome Diversity Project,” pp. 361–362. Also see
Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 164–175.

30. See Elaine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750
(New York: Zone, 1998), pp. 25–39.

Notes

376
31. See Zakiya Hanafi, The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous
in the Time of the Scientific Revolution (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000). See
also Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, pp. 201–215.

32. See Cavalli-Sforza, The History and Geography of Human Genes.

33. Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages, p. 20.

34. See Dudley Wilson, Signs and Portents: Monstrous Births from the Middle Ages to the
Enlightenment (New York: Routledge, 1993). See Daston and Park, Wonders and the
Order of Nature, pp. 177–190.

35. See G. H. Hardy, “Mendelian Proportions in a Mixed Population,” Science 28

(1908): 49–50. Also see the sections in Daniel Hartl and Andrew Clark, Principles of
Population Genetics (Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates, 1997). The Hardy-
Weinberg principle is by no means universal to all population genetics approaches,
but it is being taken here as emblematic of the kind of complicated interweaving of
statistics and culture that constitutes the field.

36. See Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages, pp. 66–73.

37. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1: 137.

38. Ibid., 1: 137, 139.

39. Ibid., 1: 139.

40. Ibid., 1: 139, emphasis in original.

41. Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1975–76, trans. David Macey, ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana (New York:
Picador, 2003), p. 243.

42. “The great eighteenth-century demographic upswing in Western Europe, the

necessity for coordinating and integrating it into the apparatus of production, and the
urgency of controlling it with finer and more adequate power mechanisms cause ‘pop-
ulation,’ with its numerical variables of space and chronology, longevity and health,
to emerge not only as a problem but as an object of surveillance, analysis, interven-
tion, modifications, and so on.” Michel Foucault, “The Politics of Health in the

Notes

377
Eighteenth Century,” in Power: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984,
vol. 3, trans. Robert Hurley et al., ed. James Faubion (New York: New Press, 2000),
p. 95.

43. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1: 142.

44. Malthus notes that “it follows necessarily that the average rate of the actual
increase of population over the greatest part of the globe, obeying the same laws as
the increase of food, must be totally of a different character from the rate at which it
would increase if unchecked. The great question, then, which remains to be considered,
is the manner in which this constant and necessary check upon population practically
operates.” Thomas Malthus, “A Summary View of the Principle of Population,” in An
Essay on the Principle of Population (New York: Penguin, 1985 [orig. 1798]), p. 242.

45. Regarding threats to the population, Malthus observes that “a foresight of the
difficulties attending the rearing of a family acts as a preventive check; and the actual
distresses of some of the lower classes, by which they are disabled from giving the
proper food and attention to their children, act as a positive check.” An Essay on the
Principle of Population, p. 89.

46. Thomas Malthus, Principles of Political Economy (New York: Augustus M. Kelly,
1964 [2d ed. 1836]), p. 313.

47. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, pp. 313–314.

48. Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), p. 1.

49. Ibid., p. 52.

50. Ibid., p. 1.

51. Ibid., p. 5.

52. Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” p. 246.

53. See Michel Foucault, “Security, Territory, and Population,” in Ethics: Subjectivity
and Truth: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984, vol. 1, trans. Robert
Hurley et al., ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: New Press, 1997), pp. 67–72.

Notes

378
54. Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” p. 246.

55. Ibid., p. 255.

56. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in 19th
Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 8.

57. More information on the IHSD can be found at the deCODE Web site at
http://www.decode.com.

58. See the Mannvernd Web site at http://www.mannvernd.is.

59. On the concept of “endocolonialism,” see Paul Virilio, The Art of the Motor
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), pp. 99–133.

60. See Kari Steffanson and Jeffrey Gulcher, “The Icelandic Healthcare Database and
Informed Consent,” New England Journal of Medicine 342.24 (June 15, 2000). Other
articles are available through the deCODE Web site (see note 57).

61. Accounting for approximately 0.1 percent of the total genome (or roughly one
million base-pair variations per individual), these SNPs are thought to contribute to
a range of phenotypic characteristics, from the physical markers that make one person
different from another to the susceptibility to single base pair mutation conditions
(such as sickle-cell anaemia or diabetes).

62. For an example of a HAP database, see Genaissance’s Web site at http://www.
genaissance.com. For the SNP database, see http://www.genome.wi.mit.edu/SNP/
human.

63. The quotation given in the section heading is from “Madrigal IV” by Ulver,
©1997 Magic Arts Publishing. Quoted in G. B. Della Porta, “Vitalism and the Role
of Physicians in Early Modern Expansionism,” Renaissance Studies 4 (2002), p. 19.

64. See Harry, “Biocolonialism.” Also see Jeremy Rifkin, The Biotech Century:
Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1998).

65. On postcolonialism and technoscience, see Donna Haraway,

Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouseTM: Feminism and
Technoscience (New York: Routledge, 1997); and Sandra Harding, Is Science

Notes

379
Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1998).

66. See Vandana Shiva, “Biodiversity, Biotechnology, and Profits,” in Biodiversity:

Social and Ecological Perspectives, ed. Vandana Shiva (New Jersey: Zed Books, 1991), pp.
43–58.

67. Ibid., 44–45.

68. Troy Duster, Backdoor to Eugenics (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 40. Duster
notes two significant trends in modern genetic screening practices: first, the fact that
“genetic screening programs, already in place throughout most of the United States,
can be distinguished from all previous health screening in the degree to which ‘risk-
populations’ to be identified have frequently been linked to ethnicity and race” (p. 5),
and, second, “state and national registries for information received from newborn
genetic screening programs are already in place, collecting data on the chromosome
and genetic trait status of millions of infants” (p. 5).

69. See Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1995). Also see Haraway, Modest_Witness.

70. Frantz Fanon, “Medicine and Colonialism,” in A Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon
Chevalier (New York: Grove, 1965), pp. 121, 125.

71. Fanon paraphrases this more familiar view of colonial intervention: “Colonialism
obviously throws all the elements of native society into confusion. The dominant
group arrives with its values and imposes them with such violence that the very life
of the colonized can manifest itself only defensively, in a more or less clandestine way”
(ibid., p. 130). This view has, of course, been complicated more recently by Homi
Bhabba’s psychoanalytic reading of the colonial encounter.

72. Ibid., pp. 134, 139. Fanon also notes that “in centers of colonization the doctor
is nearly always a landowner as well” (p. 133).

73. Ibid., p. 122. In his psychological analysis, Fanon notes the attitude of the colo-
nial doctor that produces this debt: “This is what we have done for the people of this
country; this country owes us everything; were it not for us, there would be no
country” (p. 122).

74. Ibid., pp. 140–141.

Notes

380
75. Ibid., p. 142.

76. Ibid., p. 140.

77. In light of recent trends to emphasize the role of information technology and
computers in biotech, Fanon’s comments are especially prescient: “All the efforts
exerted by the doctor, by his team of nurses, to modify this state of thing encounter,
not a systematic opposition, but a ‘vanishing’ on the part of the patient.” Ibid.,
p. 129.

78. Ibid., pp. 144–145.

79. Fortun, “Towards Genomic Solidarity.”

80. Fanon, “Medicine and Colonialism,” p. 142.

Chapter 5

1. See S. N. Cohen, A. C. Y. Chang, H. W. Boyer, and R. B. Helling, “Construction

of Biologically Functional Bacterial Plasmids in Vitro,” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 70 (1973): 3240–3244; and J. F. Morrow, S. N. Cohen, A. C. Y.
Chang, H. W. Boyer, H. M. Goodman, and R. B. Helling, “Replication and Trans-
portation of Eukaryotic DNA in Escherichia coli,” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 71 (1974): 1743–1747.

2. For a current, though uncritical, analysis of the history of biotechnology as an

industry, see Cynthia Robbins-Roth, From Alchemy to IPO: The Business of Biotechnology
(New York: Perseus, 2000). On the history of biotechnology from an industrial stand-
point, see Robert Bud, “Biotechnology in the Twentieth Century,” Social Studies of
Science 21 (1991): 415–457.

3. On the notion of translation, see Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 39–43.

4. Although the recombinant DNA research during the 1970s instigated public
outcry at scientists “playing God,” and although such public anxieties led to some
formalized, bioethical debate (for instance, the Asilomar conferences held in Califor-
nia in 1973 and 1975), left unexamined were the direct connections between research
science, governmental sanctioning, and bioscience business (patenting, marketing,
investment). For more on the social and political controversies brought up by

Notes

381
recombinant DNA, see Susan Wright, Molecular Politics: Developing American and
British Regulatory Policy for Genetic Engineering, 1972–82 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994).

5. Daniel Bell, The Coming of the Post-industrial Society (New York: Basic, 1999),
p. 126.

6. Ibid., p. 127.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., pp. 127, 128.

9. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (New York: Blackwell, 1996),
p. 67.

10. Castells, for instance, includes a few descriptive pages on biotechnology, but they
are subsumed under a broader chapter on changes in microelectronics and informa-
tion technologies during the 1970s; Castells thus takes the biotech industry as a subset
of microelectronics, of which it is not. See ibid., pp. 47–51.

11. Karl Marx. Capital, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Penguin, 1990 [1867]), 1:
493 n. 4.

12. Ibid., 1: 283, 285, 517.

13. See Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans.
Martin Nicolaus (New York: Penguin, 1973), pp. 690–706.

14. Marx, Capital, 1: 494.

15. “The machine, therefore, is a mechanism that, after being set in motion,
performs with its tools the operation as the worker formerly did with similar
tools. Whether the motive power is derived from man, or in turn from a machine,
makes no difference here.” Ibid., 1: 495.

16. Ibid., 1: 497.

17. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 705.

Notes

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18. Marx, Capital, 1: 501.

19. “As soon as a machine executes, without man’s help, all the movements required
to elaborate a raw material, and needs only supplementary assistance from the worker,
we have an automatic system of machinery, capable of constant improvement in its
details . . . a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and whose demonic
power, at first hidden by the slow and measured motions of its gigantic members,
finally bursts forth in the fast and feverish whirl of its countless working organs.”
Marx, Capital, 1: 503.

20. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 692, italics removed.

21. Ibid., p. 693.

22. Marx, Capital, 1: 270, 274.

23. Ibid., 1: 271, 272. What changes in each step is the role that human labor power
plays in the production process. For Marx, human labor power is affected by technol-
ogy in two primary ways. First, it is affected by the relationship between modes of
production and natural resources, or between the body and natural forces. There is, in
a sense, a physics to industrialism, encapsulated in the technologies of the steam
engine or the weaving loom. Water, steam, animals, and a range of other natural ele-
ments serve as the raw motive force for production. These forces begin to replace direct
human labor power. The “inorganic body” Marx speaks of in the 1844 manuscripts
becomes an “objective organization of production.” Second, human labor power is
affected by the mechanical forces that displace skilled labor or manual labor in the
utilization of natural forces: value becomes transformed from a use value to the value
of a product for exchange and labor becomes differentiated between labor to produce
a product, and labor to produce machines (to produce products).

24. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 693.

25. Marx, Capital, 1: 274.

26. “Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and
lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” Ibid., 1: 342.

27. “Owing to its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of labor confronts
the worker during the labor process in the shape of capital, dead labor, which domi-
nates and soaks up living labor-power.” Ibid., 1: 548.

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28. But we should remember that, for Marx, living labor is always the capacity for
labor power, the potential for labor to enter into the labor-capital relation and there-
fore become “objectified labor.” Thus, there is some blurring between living labor and
labor power, for in capitalism the former is always determined by the latter. Living
labor, in capitalism, seems to have its telos in labor power. Why, then, make the
distinction at all? Because, quite simply, living labor is not labor power.

29. Antonio Negri, Marx beyond Marx, trans. Harry Cleaver, Michael Ryan, and
Maurizio Viano (Brooklyn: Autonomedia/Pluto, 1991), p. 113.

30. See Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically (San Francisco: AK, 2000), pp.
65–71.

31. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 266.

32. Nick Dyer-Witheford, Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-

Technology Capitalism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), p. 65.

33. Negri, Marx beyond Marx, p. 67.

34. Ibid., p. 70.

35. Raniero Panzieri, “The Capitalist Use of Machinery: Marx versus the Objec-
tivists,” posted online at http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/panzieri.html. Previ-
ously published in translation in Working Class Autonomy and the Crisis, ed. Ed Emery
(London: Red Notes Collective, 1979).

36. Ibid.

37. Maurizio Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labor,” in Radical Thought in Italy, ed. Paolo
Virno and Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 133.
Hardt and Negri echo, for the most part, Lazzarato’s definition when they state that
“since the production of services results in no material and durable good, we define
the labor involved in this production as immaterial labor—that is, labor that produces
an immaterial good, such as a service, a cultural product, knowledge, or communica-
tion.” See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2000), p. 290.

38. Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labor,” p. 142; and Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 30.

Notes

384
39. Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labor,” p. 145.

40. Ibid., p. 135.

41. Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 298.

42. Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labor,” p. 145.

43. Negri, Marx beyond Marx, p. 72.

44. See chapters 1 through 3 in Robert Bud, The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnol-
ogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

45. For a critique of this reliance on informatics, see Katherine Hayles, How We Became
Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 1–25.

46. The quotation given in the section heading is from “Madrigal IV” by Ulver,
©1997 Magic Arts Publishing. Quoted in T. B. von Hohenheim, “The ‘Nature’ of
Power Relationships in Early Modern Occult Science,” Cultural Anthropology 13
(1988), p. 35.

47. For more information on the HGP, see the Web site http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis.
See also Daniel Kevles and Leroy Hood, eds., The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social
Issues in the Human Genome Project (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

48. Each of these companies’ Web sties also contains press releases and links to rele-
vant news articles. But the situation should be explicated in all its complexity. That
is, although in one sense the bottom line for biotech startups is economics, it would
be inaccurate to create of this situation a dichotomy in which a greedy biotech cor-
poration invades the public good of the federal genome project. The practice of “patent
then publish” has been a motto of university-based research for some time, and major
pharmaceutical companies have a long-standing tradition of developing products
based on academic research. In addition, we need to also ask how “public” the HGP
really is. Like the Manhattan Project before it, the HGP is a project of Western “big
science,” carried out by laboratories and research institutes mostly in the United States
and Europe. Within the United States, speculations on the availability of genetic drugs
restrict such expensive treatments to a very small sector of the health-care-paying
public. And, as most researchers concede, we are very far away from a medicine utopia

Notes

385
in which genetically designed drugs and gene therapies are commonplace medical
practices.

49. See Dan Schiller, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999).

50. See Michael Dawson and John Bellamy Foster, “Virtual Capitalism,” in Capital-
ism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution,
ed. Robert McChesney, et al. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), pp. 51–69.

51. See Catherine Waldby, The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman
Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2000). Waldby’s concept of biovalue operates in the
interstices between technique and knowledge production in the ongoing management
of biomedical bodies.

52. Cited in Aris Persidis, “Bioinformatics,” Nature Biotechnology 17 (August 1999):

828–830.

53. For more on the field of bioinformatics from a technical (yet readable) standpoint,
see Andreas Baxevanis, et al., ed., Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of
Genes and Proteins (New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001).

54. See Fredric Jameson, “Culture and Finance Capital,” in The Cultural Turn: Selected
Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 136–161.

55. For example, see the industry news portals Biospace, at http://www.biospace.com,
and GenomeWeb, at http://www.genomeweb.com.

56. For a transcript, see “White House Press Release on Human Genome Project,”
March 14, 2000, White House Library Web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov.

57. The Gene Trust Web site is at http://www.dna.com. It is noteworthy that both
James Watson and Jim Clark (of Netscape renown) are on the board of the Gene Trust,
exemplifying in their dual presence the biological and informatic aspects of much
biotech research.

58. See Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (New York: Semiotext[e], 1983).

59. On DNA chips or microarrays, see Andrew Marshall and John Hodgson, “DNA
chips: An Array of Possibilities,” Nature Biotechnology 16 (January 1998): 27–31; and

Notes

386
Michael Ramsey, “The Burgeoning Power of the Shrinking Laboratory,” Nature Biotech-
nology 17 (November 1999): 1061–1062.

60. For a summary of this concept, see Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically, pp.
66–69.

61. See Lily Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000). Evelyn Fox Keller and Richard Lewontin, as
well as others, have for many years posed critical challenges to the DNA-centric view
in genetics and biotechnology. See Evelyn Fox Keller, The Century of the Gene (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000); Richard Lewontin, Biology as Ideology:
The Doctrine of DNA (New York: Harper-Collins, 1992); Lynn Margulis and Dorian
Sagan, What Is Life? (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995); Susan Oyama, The
Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2000).

62. See Manuel De Landa, “Non-organic Life,” in Zone 6: Incorporations, ed. Jonathan
Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone, 1992), pp. 128–167. For popular
accounts of chaos theory and the sciences of complexity, see James Gleick, Chaos (New
York: Penguin, 1988); and Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Understanding of Living
Systems (New York: Doubleday, 1997).

63. De Landa, “Non-organic Life,” p. 133.

Chapter 6

1. Much has been written about Romero’s zombie films from the perspective of film
and cultural studies. For my purposes here, it is interesting to note how the zombies
in film are portrayed biopolitically as a kind of mob rule. However, the ideological
content of this zombie/mob changes throughout Romero’s films. For instance, Night
of the Living Dead configures zombies as a kind of lynch mob (for the protagonist),
whereas Dawn of the Dead (which takes place in a shopping mall) portrays zombies as
the new consumers of the 1980s. Day of the Dead presents perhaps the most complex
representation of the zombies—at once masses of immigrants, but also the civilian
populace “fenced out” of military governance.

2. “Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling

of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxic Weapons and on Their Destruction,” Article
I.2. Available online at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Web site,
http://www.fas.org. For more on international bioweapons policy and regulation, see

Notes

387
Malcolm Dando, The New Biological Weapons: Threat, Proliferation, and Control (Boulder,
Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2001).

3. Just a few years prior to the making of The Crazies, a not-yet-known author named
Michael Crichton published a thriller called The Andromeda Strain, which was subse-
quently made into a technically innovative film, in effect jump-starting the subgenre
of the “outbreak” film.

4. For a more informal comment on these topics, see my article “Body Horror Is
Back (Because It Never Left),” Mute Magazine online (September 24, 2003), at
http://www.metamute.com.

5. The full title is the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and
Response Act of 2002 (H.R. 3448), available online via the White House Web site,
http://www.whitehouse.gov.

6. See, for instance, the press release “President’s Budget Includes $274 Million to
Further Improve Nation’s Bio-surveillance Capabilities,” January 29, 2004, at the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services Web site, http://www.hhs.gov.

7. Giorgio Agamben has analyzed the way in which the structure of the exception
pervades sovereignty and its double, “bare life.” For Agamben, sovereign power is
defined by its relation to the exception, not by its ability to enforce a rule. The excep-
tion—not the contract—is therefore the basis of sovereign power, in which the excep-
tion, or state of emergency, becomes the rule by which power is exercised. See Giorgio
Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998).

8. For example, see WHO, “Global Public Health Response to Natural Occurrence,
Accidental Release or Deliberate Use of Biological and Chemical Agents or Radio-
nuclear Material That Affect Health,” Fifty-fifth World Health Assembly, agenda item
13.15, WHA55.16 (May 18, 2002), available at http://www.who.int.

9. Further information about the CDC’s disease surveillance systems such as the
NEDSS can be found at the CDC Web site, http://www.cdc.gov.

10. See BMA, Biotechnology Weapons and Humanity (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic,
1999), pp. 53–68. There is also a large body of U.S. military reports from the 1970s
and 1980s on the use of genetic engineering as a bioweapon. For example, see U.S.

Notes

388
Army, Biological Warfare Threat Study, USA CMLS Threat Section (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, October 6, 1983).

11. Richard Preston, The Hot Zone (New York: Anchor, 1995), p. 19. Such descrip-
tions—which also often appear in reputable magazines and newspapers—serve to
heighten the level of body anxiety regarding biowar. They overlap a great deal with
their fictional counterparts in the novels of Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, and others.

12. See BMA, Biotechnology Weapons and Humanity, pp. 30–33.

13. One result has been tighter controls on biological substances used in science
research. The U.S. Bioterrorism Act (Title II, Subtitle A, sections 201–204) outlines
protocols for regulating the circulation of potentially hazardous biological substances.
These tighter controls have led, some argue, to negative restrictions on life science
research. See Daniel Kevles, “Biotech’s Big Chill,” MIT Technology Review (August
2003): 40–50.

14. The Nova special was reported by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William
Broad, the same authors who published the book Germs: Biological Weapons and
America’s Secret War (New York: Touchstone, 2001). What is surprising is that although
the book spends a considerable amount of time discussing the U.S. complicity in
the biowar problem, the Nova special devotes nearly all of its time to discussing
the Soviet bioweapons program of the 1980s, making almost no mention of the U.S.
programs.

15. For a fascinating account of “biowar” in antiquity, see Adrienne Mayor, Greek Fire,
Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World
(New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2003), as well as James Poupard and Linda Miller,
“History of Biological Warfare: Catapults to Capsomeres,” Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences 666 (1992): 9–19. Also see Mark Wheelis, “Biological Warfare
before 1914,” in Biological and Toxic Weapons: Research, Development, and Use from the
Middle Ages to 1945, ed. Erhard Geissler, and John Ellis van Courtland Moon (Oxford
and Stockholm: Oxford University Press and Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute, 1999),pp. 8–34.

16. See chapters 3 and 5 in Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs.

17. See Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (New York:
Penguin, 1972), pp. 151–156.

Notes

389
18. Ibid., p. 155.

19. On the Black Death, see Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (New York: Harper,
1971). Also see Robert Gottfried, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in
Medieval Europe (New York: Free Press, 1983).

20. Gabriele de Mussis, “The Arrival of the Plague,” in The Black Death, ed. and trans.
Rosemary Horrox (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 14–26.

21. As might be expected, the dominant interpretation of the Black Death in Europe
was that of divine retribution. The excerpt from de Mussis’s chronicle reads thus: “The
dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about
by the disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege.
But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the hope
that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. . . . And soon the rotting
corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so over-
whelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of
the Tartar army. Moreover one infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect
people and places with the disease by look alone.” Ibid., p. 17.

22. This monitoring includes surveillance of imported goods and checks for acts of
sabotage within processing plants and distribution of food inside the United States.

23. See Miller, Engleberg, and Broad, Germs, pp. 18–33.

24. For news updates, see the Organic Consumers Association at http://
organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm.

25. See Mark Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I,” in Biological and Toxin
Weapons: Research, Development, and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945, pp. 35–62.

26. See Friedrich Frischknecht, “The History of Biological Warfare,” European Mole-
cular Biology Organization Report 4 (2003): 547–52. Also see BMA, Biotechnology,
Weapons, and Humanity, pp. 22–30.

27. See Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I.”

28. See Olivier Lepick, “French Activities Related to Biological Warfare, 1919–45,”
in Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development, and Use from the Middle Ages to
1945, pp. 70–90.

Notes

390
29. The text of the Geneva Protocol is available from a number of online sources,
including Bradford University’s Department of Peace Studies at http://www.
bradford.ac.uk/acad/sbtwc/keytext/genprot.htm.

30. See Sheldon Harris, “The Japanese Biological Warfare Programme: An Overview,”
in Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development, and Use from the Middle Ages to
1945, pp. 127–152.

31. See Sheldon Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–45 and the
American Cover-up (New York: Routledge, 2002).

32. See Leonard Cole, Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare Tests over Populated
Areas (Lanham, M.d.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988).

33. See Gradon Carter and Graham Pearson, “British Biological Warfare and Bio-
logical Defense, 1925–45,” in Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development, and
Use from the Middle Ages to 1945, pp. 185–188.

34. See Cole, Clouds of Secrecy. Also see B. J. Bernstein, “The Birth of the U.S. Bio-
logical Warfare Program,” Scientific American 255 (1987): 94–99.

35. See Cole, Clouds of Secrecy.

36. See Mark Wheelis and Malcolm Dando, “On the Brink: Biodefense, Biotechnol-
ogy, and the Future of Weapons Control,” Chemical and Biological Weapons Convention
Bulletin 58 (December 2002): 3–7.

37. See Frischknecht, “The History of Biological Warfare,” pp. S48–49. See also
former Soviet bioweapons researcher Ken Alibek’s book Biohazard (New York:
Random House, 1999).

38. See BMA, Biotechnology, Weapons, and Humanity, pp. 56–60.

39. The most comprehensive history of eugenics is Daniel Kevles’s In the Name of
Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1995).

40. On the impact of American eugenics on gender, sexuality, and race, see Nancy
Ordover, American Eugenics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

Notes

391
41. See Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, pp. 113–22.

42. See Daniel Kevles, “Out of Eugenics: The Historical Politics of the Human
Genome,” The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project, ed.
Daniel Kevles and Leroy Hood (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992),
pp. 3–37.

43. For a critique of the new eugenics, see Critical Art Ensemble, “Eugenics: The
Second Wave,” Ctheory (1998), available at http://www.ctheory.net.

44. See Miller, Engleberg, and Broad, Germs, pp. 199–202.

45. See Poupard and Miller, “History of Biological Warfare,” pp. 11–13, and Wheelis,
“Biological Warfare before 1914,” pp. 17–27.

46. Cited in Poupard and Miller, “History of Biological Warfare,” p. 12.

47. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in 19th
Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 9.

48. See Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity
(New York: Norton, 1997), pp. 462–492. Particular examples of the former are
Columbus in Haiti, Cortez in central Mexico, the Spanish conquest of Paraguay. Exam-
ples of the latter are the British in sub-Saharan Africa and the French in the Congo
and West Africa.

49. Ibid., p. 481.

50. For an analysis from the industry perspective, see Jennifer van Brunt, “Who’s
Going to Pay for Global Health?” Signals Magazine (October 24, 2003), available at
http://www.signalsmag.com.

51. There are many contemporary accounts by medical missionaries, but for histori-
cal views see Meera Abraham, Religion, Caste, and Gender: Missionaries and Nursing
History in South India (Sandvika, Norway: BI Publications, 1996); and Michael
Gelfand, Christian Doctor and Nurse: The History of Medical Missions in South Africa from
1799–1976 (Dereham, United Kingdom: Aitken, 1984).

52. See Frantz Fanon, “Medicine and Colonialism,” in A Dying Colonialism, trans.
Haakon Chevalier (New York: Grove, 1965), pp. 121–147.

Notes

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53. See Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer, Pure War (New York: Semiotext[e], 1997),
pp. 91–102.

54. For an overview, see the anthology John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., In
Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND,
1997).

55. See Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf, eds., InfoWar: Ars Electronica 1998
(Linz, Austria: Springer, 1998).

56. See Virilio and Lotringer, Pure War, pp. 94–95.

57. The WHO’s Global Outbreak and Response Network, inaugurated in 2000,
played an instrumental role in managing the 2003 SARS outbreak.

58. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert
Hurler (New York: Vintage, 1978), p. 142.

59. Michel Foucault, “Security, Territory, and Population,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and
Truth: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley
et al., ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: New Press, 1997), p. 71.

60. Foucault, “The Birth of Biopolitics,” in Ethics, p. 73.

61. Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1975–76, trans. David Macey, ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana (New York:
Picador, 2003), p. 266.

62. Agamben, Homo Sacer, pp. 14–17.

63. Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” p. 26.

64. Ibid., p. 27.

65. Ibid., p. 37.

66. See Foucault, “The Birth of Biopolitics.”

67. Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” p. 39.

Notes

393
68. Ibid., p. 249.

69. Ibid., pp. 239–240.

70. “Sovereign power’s effect on life is exercised only when the sovereign can kill.
The very essence of the right of life and death is actually the right to kill: it is at this
moment when the sovereign can kill that he exercises his right over life.” Ibid., p.
240.

71. “Thus life, not death, becomes the focus of a new kind of power. . . . It is the
power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die. The right of sovereignty was the right to take life
or let live. And then this new right is established: the right to make live and to let
die.” Ibid., p. 241.

72. Ibid., p. 254.

73. Ibid., p. 60.

74. Ibid., p. 246.

75. For a historical study of hospital technologies, see Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles,
Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century (Reading, United Kingdom:
Addison-Wesley, 1997).

76. Scott Montgomery, “Codes and Combat in Biomedical Discourse,” Science as

Culture 2.3 (1991), p. 374.

77. Ibid., p. 375.

78. Foucault, “Society Must be Defended”, pp. 246, 252.

79. Ibid., p. 137.

80. Ibid., pp. 92–96.

81. For an overview see FAS, “Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks,” available at
http://www.fas.org.

82. See Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, “Anthrax Attacks Pushed Open an Ominous
Door,” Los Angeles Times (September 22, 2002).

Notes

394
83. See FAS, “Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks.”

84. See Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, “U.S. Germ Warfare
Research Pushes Treaty Limits,” New York Times, September 4 2001.

85. See the press release “Bayer to Supply Government by Year-End with 100 Million
Tablets for $95 Million,” available at http://www.news.bayer.com.

86. In 2001, there was also a patent-access litigation lawsuit against Bayer and two
other companies for allegedly paying competitors to keep them from introducing
generic versions of Cipro on the market. It is estimated that Cipro sales for Bayer
average $1 billion yearly.

87. See Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer, Crepuscular Dawn, trans. Mike Taormina
(New York: Semiotext[e], 2002), pp. 135–136.

88. Ibid., p. 135. Virilio’s three types of bombs roughly correspond to three techni-
cal revolutions in speed: “So, these are the three characteristics for the three revolu-
tions. The revolution in physical transportation came first: movement and acceleration
up to supersonic speeds. The revolution in transmissions, which comes second, is the
revolution of live transmission. It is the cybernetic revolution. It is the ability to reach
the light barrier, in other words, the speed of electromagnetic waves in every field,
not only television and tele-audition, but also tele-operation. Finally, the revolution
in transplants, the last revolution, introduces this technology of transmission inside
the body by means of certain techniques. After the revolution in transportation and
the revolution in transmissions, now with the twenty-first century begins the revolu-
tion in intra-organic transplants” (p. 99).

89. Ibid., p. 136.

90. Ibid., pp. 154 (italics removed), p. 146.

91. The quotation given in the section heading is from “Sin Origin” by Darkthrone,
©2001 Moonfog Productions. Quoted in F. Jollivet Castelot, “Nosology, Necrology,
and Medicine in Medieval Plague Poetry,” Medicine, Literature, and Language 2.2
(1999), p. 32.

92. See Wheelis and Dando, “On the Brink.” Also see their article “Back to
Bioweapons?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59.1 (January–February 2003): 40–46.

Notes

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93. See Plato, The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic, 1991), book V, sec-
tions 457–461.

94. See Emily Martin, Flexible Bodies: The Role of Immunity in American Culture from the
Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS (Boston: Beacon, 1994), pp. 127–142.

95. See Jennifer Brower and Peter Chalk, The Global Threat of New and Reemerging
Infectious Diseases (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2003).

96. See the news articles by Brian Krebs, “ ‘Good’ Worm Fixes Infected Computers,”
Washington Post online, August 18, 2003, at http://www.washingtonpost.com, and
Paul Roberts, “Blaster Worm Continues to Spread,” PC World, August 12, 2003, at
http://www.pcworld.com.

Chapter 7

1. See Catherine Arnst and John Carey, “Biotech Bodies,” Business Week (July 1998):
56–63; and Nancy Parenteau, “The Organogenesis Story,” Scientific American (April
1999): 83–84. For more on tissue engineering in general, see Lawrence Bonassar and
Joseph Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering: The First Decade and Beyond,” Journal of Cel-
lular Biochemistry 30–31 (1998): 297–303; and David Mooney and Antonios Mikos,
“Growing New Organs,” Scientific American (April 1999): 60–65.

2. In modern embryology, after conception the embryo begins cellular multiplication

and division until at a certain stage the cells begin to “differentiate”—that is, what
were once general embryonic cells (embryonic stem cells) begin to specify their
structure, shape, and function. Thus, those stem cells that differentiate to become
neural cells are often branch shaped, whereas those stem cells that go on to become
muscle cells are often spindle shaped, and so forth. For further information on stem
cell research and the latest news on policy changes, see the NIH Web site at
http://www.nih.gov.

3. See Robert Lanza, Robert Langer, and W. L. Chick, eds., Principles in Tissue Engi-
neering (New York: Landes, 1997); and Charles Patrick, Antonios Mikos, and Larry
McIntire, eds., Frontiers in Tissue Engineering (New York: Pergamon, 1998).

4. Tissue engineering pioneers Robert Langer and Joseph Vacanti have defined tissue
engineering as “an interdisciplinary field that applies the principles of engineering
and the life sciences toward the development of biological substitutes that restore,

Notes

396
maintain, or improve tissue function.” See Robert Langer and Joseph Vacanti, “Tissue
Engineering,” Science 260 (1993), p. 920. In this and other articles by tissue engi-
neering researchers, common themes are how to apply the data generated in genomics
(and proteomics) toward a more sophisticated understanding of cell structure and func-
tion, and the need for further research in biomaterials (or various types of scaffolding
structures in which to “seed” cells). The implication is that the combination of
development-enhancing biomaterials and a thorough knowledge of the genetic basis
of cell structure and function would pave the way for the ability to (re)generate tissues
and even organs in vivo.

5. See Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn Fawcett
(New York: Zone, 1989).

6. On cyberspace and the problems of corporeality or “the meat,” see William

Gibson’s Neuromancer (New York: Ace, 1984). Case, the protagonist and hacker in
Gibson’s now-classic work of cyberpunk science fiction, contrasts the infinite com-
plexity and luminosity of the cyberspatial matrix with the base, low necessities of the
flesh. In this sense, Neuromancer can be seen as one of the key participants in a branch
of technoculture that tends more often than not toward a technophilia laced with tran-
scendental implications, something also found, for example, in the robotics and arti-
ficial intelligence work of Hans Moravec.

7. Bonassar and Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering: The First Decade and Beyond,” p. 297.

8. See Aris Persidis, “Tissue Engineering,” Nature Biotechnology 17 (May 1999):

508–510.

9. Bonassar and Vacanti define cells and materials (the latter also referred to as the scaf-
fold or matrix) as the critical components for tissue engineering because of their inter-
action: “The cellular component is necessary for the generation of new tissue through
production of extracellular matrix and is responsible for the long-term maintenance
of this matrix. The scaffold material provides mechanical stability of the construct in
the short term and provides a template for the three-dimensional organization for the
developing tissue.” Bonassar and Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering: The First Decade and
Beyond,” p. 299. What is interesting about this description from the point of view
of ontogeny is how Bonassar and Vacanti split form and function between the scaf-
fold/matrix and the cells. Even though the biodegradable scaffold eventually disinte-
grates as the new tissue or organ literally takes shape, Bonassar and Vacanti suggest
that the cells themselves—although functional—cannot realize their own form. The

Notes

397
larger question this raises is whether both form and function are latent in the cell itself
or whether the phenomenon of cellular function arises as an interaction of many bio-
molecular systems acting in concert.

10. Research for this chapter was done between 1998 and 2001 and initially written
in 2001. As Bonassar and Vacanti state, “When used currently, the term tissue engi-
neering has come to imply some combination of cells, scaffold material, and bioactive
peptides used to guide the repair or formation of tissue.” Bonassar and Vacanti, “Tissue
Engineering: The First Decade and Beyond,” p. 298. For more on the techniques of
tissue engineering and developments in specific areas of research, consult Lanza,
Lauger, and Chick, Principles in Tissue Engineering; and Particle, Mikos, and McIntire,
Frontiers in Tissue Engineering.

11. See Langer and Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering,” and Mooney and Mikos, “Growing
New Organs.”

12. For research on universal donor cells, see R. J. Armstrong and C. N. Svendsen,
“Neural Stem Cells: From Cell Biology to Cell Replacement,” Cell Transplantation 9.2
(2000): 139–152; N. Ende et al., “Pooled Umbilical Cord Blood as a Possible Uni-
versal Donor for Marrow Reconstitution and Use in Nuclear Accidents,” Life Sciences
69.13 (2001): 1531–1539; and Roger Pedersen, “Embryonic Stem Cells for Medi-
cine,” Scientific American (April 1999): 68–73.

13. See Robert Langer, “Tissue Engineering: Status and Challenges,” E-biomed 1
(March 7, 2000): 5–6, and Mooney and Mikos, “Growing New Organs.”

14. See Mooney and Mikos, “Growing New Organs”; and M. Stading and R. Langer,
“Mechanical Shear Properties of Cell-Polymer Cartilage Constructs,” Tissue Engineer-
ing 5.3 (1999): 241–250.

15. For research on biodegradable polymer scaffolds, see V. Hasirci et al., “Versatil-
ity of Biodegradable Biopolymers: Degradability and an in Vivo Application,” Journal
of Biotechnology 86.2 (2001): 135–150; D. von Heimburg, et al., “Influence of Differ-
ent Biodegradable Carriers on the in Vivo Behavior of Human Adipose Precursor
Cells,” Plastic Reconstructive Surgery 108.2 (2001): 411–420; and P. X. Ma and R.
Zhang, “Microtubular Architecture of Biodegradable Polymer Scaffolds,” Journal of
Biomedical Materials Research 56.4 (2001): 469–477.

16. For research on bioreactors in tissue engineering, see E. J. Doolin et al., “Effects
of Microgravity on Growing Cultured Skin Constructs,” Tissue Engineering 5.6 (1999):

Notes

398
573–582, and S. P. Hoerstrup et al., “New Pulsatile Bioreactor for in Vitro Forma-
tion of Tissue Engineered Heart Valves,” Tissue Engineering 6.1 (2000): 75–79.

17. For research on growth factors in tissue engineering, see H. von Recum, et al.,
“Growth Factor and Matrix Molecules Preserve Cell Function on Thermally Respon-
sive Culture Surfaces,” Tissue Engineering 5.3 (1999): 251–265; Y. Tabata et al. “De
Novo Formation of Adipose Tissue by Controlled Release of Basic Fibroblast Growth
Factor,” Tissue Engineering 6.3 (2000): 279–289; and L. Weiser et al. “Effect of Serum
and Platelet-Derived Growth Factor on Chondrocytes Grown in Collagen Gels,” Tissue
Engineering 5.6 (1999): 533–544.

18. See Mooney and Mikos, “Growing New Organs”; and Patrick, Mikos, and
McIntyre, eds., Frontiers in Tissue Engineering.

19. See A. I. Caplan, “Stem Cell Delivery Vehicle,” Biomaterials 11 (1990): 44–46; and
J. Gao et al., “Tissue-Engineered Fabrication of an Osteochondral Composite Graft Using
Rat Bone Marrow–Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells,” Tissue Engineering 7.4 (2001):
363–371. Stem cells are discussed in more detail in chapter 8, where the relation of the
concept of “regeneration” is related to technical modes of configuring biological time.
Although stem cell research is often mentioned in the media apart from tissue engi-
neering, the two fields have for some time been converging, especially as research into
the ability to control cell differentiation offers tissue engineering more concrete ways of
directing cell aggregates into viable living tissue structures. For more on this topic, see
“Special Report: Tissue Engineering,” Scientific American (April 1999), pp. 86–89. For our
purposes here, I discuss stem cells only as they relate to tissue engineering—principally
as another option for cell sourcing in the initial steps of tissue engineering techniques.
For general information on stem cells and stem cell research (as well as for related news
concerning policy, etc.), consult the NIH Web site at http://www.nih.gov.

20. See especially the landmark article by James Thomson et al., “Embryonic Stem
Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts,” Science 282 (1998): 1145–1147.

21. See C. R. Bjornson et al., “Turning Brain into Blood: A Hematopoietic Fate
Adopted by Adult Neural Stem Cells in Vivo,” Science 283 (1999): 534–537.

22. See Pedersen, “Embryonic Stem Cells for Medicine.”

23. For example, see Terrence Deacon et al., “Blastula-Stage Stem Cells Can Differ-
entiate into Dopaminergic and Serotonergic Neurons after Transplantation,” Experi-
mental Neurology 149 (1998): 28–41.

Notes

399
24. See Bonassar and Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering: The First Decade and Beyond.”

25. Ibid., p. 299.

26. Pedersen, “Embryonic Stem Cells for Medicine,” p. 72.

27. Robert Langer and Joseph Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering: The Challenges Ahead,”
Scientific American (April 1999), p. 86.

28. David Stocum, “Regenerative Biology and Medicine in the 21st Century,”
E-biomed 1 (March 7, 2000), p. 17.

29. See Caplan, “Stem Cell Delivery Vehicle”; and Mooney and Mikos, “Growing
New Organs.”

30. See Langer, “Tissue Engineering: Status and Challenges.”

31. See Mooney and Mikos, “Growing New Organs.” Also see the research in Lonnie
Shea et al., “DNA Delivery from Polymer Matrices for Tissue Engineering,” Nature
Biotechnology 17 (June 1999): 551–554.

32. Of course, the gap between the hypothetical and the experimental is constantly
changing with a field as new as tissue engineering. Nevertheless, that relationship
is not simply one of hypotheses that are later fulfilled in experiment; alternative
approaches or unexpected research results often take the field in new directions. An
example, mentioned previously, is the use of stem cells in tissue engineering, where
early techniques for synthesizing bioartificial tissues were based on the capacity of bio-
materials science to engineer nonorganic living tissue equivalents. For an early experi-
mental application of tissue engineering, see I. V. Yannas et al., “Design of an
Artificial Skin I: Basic Design Principles,” Journal of Biomedicine Materials 14 (1980):
65–81. For examples of speculation on the future of tissue engineering, see the special
issues of Scientific American (April 1999) and MIT Technology Review (April 2001).

33. See Bonassar and Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering: The First Decade and Beyond”;
and Persidis, “Tissue Engineering.”

34. Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, pp. 54–61.

35. Ibid., pp. 65–86.

Notes

400
36. Ibid., p. 51.

37. Ibid., pp. 91–101.

38. Ibid., p. 91.

39. Ibid., p. 89.

40. For a popular-press overview on disease research and genetic medicine, see “Special
Issue: The Future of Medicine,” Time (January 11, 1999). For example, the basis of
much gene therapy is that in many genetically based disorders, the body is inhibited
by a lack of a certain gene (which would play a central part in the production of needed
proteins for the body’s sustenance). The role of gene therapy is then to intervene by
providing the needed molecules, which would then be taken up and incorporated by
the body on the molecular level, thereby restoring it to an equilibrium state. Although
this theory was successful early on, it has since run into a number of complications,
primary among them a lack of consideration of the network of molecular elements
and processes involved, a lack that exists because of a centralized focus on the indi-
vidual’s DNA as the causal source. That is, gene therapy has been operating on a model
similar to Bernard’s, in which the problem, on the genetic level, is the excess or
deprivation of a given gene or DNA sequence. Much is at stake in this therapeutic
notion of medicine, including the historically specific, scientifically engaged, and
dynamic production of a set of criteria that will constitute a medical-biological norm
in a particular scientific-medical context (e.g., medical genetics, drug design, patho-
biology, and so on).

41. See Arthur Kroker, Spasm: Virtual Reality, Android Music, Electric Flesh (New York:
St. Martin’s, 1993), pp. 36–46.

42. See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1995), pp. 7–13.

43. Michel Foucault, “The Birth of Biopolitics,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth: The
Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984, Vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley et al., ed.
Paul Rabinow (New York: New Press, 1997), p. 73.

44. See chapter 3 for the role of biopolitics in genomics and population genomics.

45. The primary challenges for tissue engineering research lie in this relationship
between a highly individualized medicine and a universalized medicine. For

Notes

401
individualized tissue engineering, the incomplete knowledge about the genetic and
molecular factors in cellular development, differentiation, and decay has been a sig-
nificant obstacle in fulfilling the vision of growing an organ on demand from a patient-
specific cell sample. Likewise, tissue engineering’s goal of establishing a modular
approach to cell and tissue transplant using either universal donor cells (immuno-
repressed stem cells) or off-the-shelf organs (tissue structures generated from univer-
sal donor cells) faces the obstacles surrounding the maintenance of viable cell and tissue
structures in environments that may compromise immunorepression. For comments
on individual versus universal models in tissue engineering, see Langer and Vacanti,
“Tissue Engineering: The Challenges Ahead,” pp. 86–89; Pedersen, “Embryonic Stem
Cells for Medicine,” pp. 68–73; and Sophie Petit-Zeman, “Regenerative Medicine,”
Nature Biotechnology 19 (March 2001): 201–206.

46. The quotation given in the section heading is from “Rust” by Darkthrone, ©2003
Moonfog Productions. Quoted in Donnolo Sabbati, “Alchemical Metaphors in Early
Modern Surgical Treatises,” Journal of Modern Languages 24 (1999), p. 6.

47. See Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (New York: Semiotext[e], 1983), pp. 38–49; and
Seduction (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), pp. 37–52.

48. On the historical-social aspects of anatomy, see Jonathan Sawday, The Body Embla-
zoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture (New York: Routledge,
1995). On the role of hospital technologies in modern medicine’s enframing of the
body, see Joel Howell, Technology in the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early
Twentieth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

49. Kroker, Spasm, pp. 36–45.

50. See Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1993), pp. 10–12.

51. Ibid., pp. 34–43. Also see Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science
Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 1–24.

52. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, p. 81.

53. See Latour, Pandora’s Hope, pp. 122–123.

54. See Mooney and Mikos, “Growing New Organs,” p. 65.

Notes

402
 Chapter 8

1. See Boyce Rensberger, Life Itself: Exploring the Realm of the Living Cell (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 62–80.

2. Quoted in Sophie Petit-Zeman, “Regenerative Medicine,” Nature Biotechnology 19

(March 2001): 201–206.

3. Lawrence Bonassar and Joseph Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering: The First Decade and
Beyond,” Journal of Cellular Biochemistry 30–31 (1998), p. 297.

4. David Mooney and Antonios Mikos, “Growing New Organs,” Scientific American
(April 1999), p. 65.

5. See Stephen Hall, “The Recycled Generation,” New York Times Magazine, January
30, 2000.

6. See Petit-Zeman, “Regenerative Medicine.” See also David Stocum, “Regenerative

Biology and Medicine in the 21st Century,” E-biomed 1 (March 7, 2000): 17–20.

7. See Robert Langer and Joseph Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering,” Science 260 (1993):
920–926.

8. Mooney and Mikos, “Growing New Organs.”

9. See Catherine Arnst and Johnathan Carey, “Biotech Bodies,” BusinessWeek, July 27,
1988, pp. 56–63. Also see Nancy Parenteau, “The Organogenesis Story,” Scientific
American (April 1999): 83–84.

10. See the news article “Bionic Bodies Special: Test Tube Thumb,” BBC News online,
November 4, 1998, at http://news.bbc.co.uk.

11. For a survey of techniques in regenerative medicine, see Charles Patrick,

Antonios Mikos, and Larry McIntire, eds., Frontiers in Tissue Engineering (New York:
Pergamon, 1998).

12. See Mooney and Mikos, “Growing New Organs.”

13. See Roger Pedersen, “Embryonic Stem Cells for Medicine,” Scientific American
(April 1999): 68–73. Two central articles that describe stem cells are Michael

Notes

403
Shamblott, “Derivation of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Cultured Human Primordial
Germ Cells,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95 (1998): 13726–13731;
and James Thomson et al., “Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human
Blastocysts,” Science 282 (1998): 1145–1147. For background information on stem
cells see the NIH stem cells primer at http://www.nih.gov. Also see the testimony by
Lori Andrews before the President’s Council on Bioethics, “Stem Cell Research:
Current Law and Policy with Emphasis on the States,” Session 4, July 24, 2003, at
http://www.bioethics.gov.

14. See Gretchen Vogel, “Harnessing the Power of Stem Cells,” Science 283 (March
1999): 1432–1434.

15. On multipotency in stem cells, see “Derivation of Pluripotent Stem Cells,”

Shamblott et al., and Thomson et al., “Embryonic Stem Cell Lines,” as well as the
background information at the NIH Web site.

16. See Bonassar and Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering: The First Decade and Beyond”;
and Mooney and Mikos, “Growing New Organs.”

17. For a survey of stem cell research in regenerative medicine, see the following
research articles: C. R. Bjornson et al., “Turning Brain into Blood: A Hematopoietic
Fate Adopted by Adult Neural Stem Cells in Vivo,” Science 283 (1999):534–537;
L. D. K. Buttery et al., “Differentiation of Osteoblasts and in Vitro Bone Formation
from Murine Embryonic Stem Cells,” Tissue Engineering 1.7 (February 2001): 89–100;
Robert Phillips et al., “The Genetic Program of Hematopoietic Stem Cells,” Science
(June 2, 2000): 1635–1640; Maya Schuldiner et al., “Effects of Eight Growth Factors
on the Differentiation of Cells Derived from Human Embryonic Stem Cells,” Proceed-
ings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 (2000): 11307–11312; Dale Woodbury
et al., “Adult Rat and Human Bone Marrow Stromal Cells Differentiate into
Neurons,” Journal of Neuroscience Research 61.4 (August 2000): 2–7.

18. See also Robert Langer, “Tissue Engineering: Status and Challenges,” E-biomed 1
(March 7, 2000): 5–6; and Petit-Zeeman, “Regenerative Medicine.”

19. See Bonassar and Vacanti, “Tissue Engineering: The First Decade and Beyond.”

20. See Nicholas Wade, “Teaching the Body to Heal Itself,” New York Times online,
November 7, 2000, at http://www.nytimes.com.

Notes

404
21. For example, in the cellular basis of aging or cancer cures. See Hall, “The Recy-
cled Generation.”

22. See Kathryn Brown, “The Human Genome Business Today,” Scientific American
( July 2000): 50–59.

23. For example, see the industry news articles “Gero-technology Companies Turn
Back the Hands of Time,” Biospace.com, March 28, 2000, at http://www.biospace.com,
and “Merger Makes Curis a Contender in Regenerative Medicine,” Biospace.com, March
31, 2000, at http://www.biospace.com.

24. Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione (On generation and corruption), trans. Harold
H. Joachim, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Modern
Library, 2001), book I, chap. 2, p. 478.

25. Ibid., book I, chap. 3, p. 479.

26. Somites are segmented blocks of tissue in the animal embryo that in vertebrates
give rise to the vertebral column, ribs, and striated muscle.

27. Brian Goodwin and Ricard Solé, Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology
(New York: Basic, 2000), p. 61.

28. Ibid., pp. 61–62.

29. Susan Squier, “Life and Death at Strangeways: The Tissue Culture Point of View,”
in Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, and Ethics, ed. Paul Brodwin (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2000), p. 28.

30. Ibid., p. 28.

31. Catherine Waldby, “Stem Cells, Tissue Cultures, and the Production of Biovalue,”
Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness, and Medicine 6.3
(2002), p. 310.

32. Aristotle, Politica (Politics), trans. Benjmain Jowett, in The Basic Works of Aristo-
tle, ed. McKeon, book I, chap. 9, p. 1139. Aristotle had already identified the differ-
ence between what Marx would later call use value and exchange value. The latter, for
Aristotle, constitutes the art of accumulating wealth in itself. See book I, chap. 9 of
the Politics.

Notes

405
33. Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer, Pure War, trans. Mark Polizzotti (New York:
Semiotext[e], 1997), p. 136.

34. See ibid., pp. 35–36. Also see The Virilio Reader, ed. James Der Derian (London:
Blackwell, 1998), pp. 117–133.

35. See Virilio and Lotringer, Pure War, pp. 64–65.

36. Examples of the former include the cyborg integration of human and machine in
McLuhan’s “mechanical bride” (the automobile), and examples of the latter include
the pervasive sensory coverage of Debord’s “society of the spectacle.” For further exam-
ples, see Paul Virilio, The Art of the Motor, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1995), pp. 99–132.

37. Paul Virilio, The Information Bomb, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2000),
pp. 2–3.

38. Karl Marx, Capital, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Penguin, 1990 [orig. 1867]),
1: 336.

39. Ibid., 1: 339.

40. Ibid.

41. Antonio Negri, “The Constitution of Time,” in Time for Revolution, trans. Matteo
Mandarini (New York: Continuum, 2003), p. 29.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid., p. 36, emphasis in original.

44. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, Univer-
sity Press, 2000), pp. 289–294. See also Maurizio Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labor,” in
Radical Thought in Italy, ed. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota, 1996), pp. 133–147.

45. Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp. 354–359.

46. The quotation given in the section heading is from “I, Voidhanger” by
Darkthrone, © 2001 Moonfog Productions. Quoted in J. Bohme, “Biology, Necrology,

Notes

406
and the Relation between Magic and Medicine in the Early Renaissance,” Early Modern
Studies Quarterly 2.2 (1989), 34–42.

47. Negri, Time, p. 102.

Chapter 9

1. Donna Haraway, “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics of Inappro-

priate/d Others,” in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula
Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 296.

2. Ibid., p. 298.

3. Haraway suggests that in order to begin refiguring nature, two movements must
occur: first, the separatist divisions between the human and technological must
become sites of critique and complexification (which also implies problematizing
rationalist, progressive histories of technology and agentially biased views on tech-
nology as tool). Second, in the multitudinous zones wherein nature and culture inter-
sect, traditional notions of the agential, autonomous subject need to be resituated
within a field that is at once larger (a network) and more specified (discrete, contex-
tual elements).

4. The point here is both political and ontological. In the ontological question, these
entities, when denaturalized and not accepted within their normative contexts, are
indeed monstrous, cyborg creations, often literal fusions of genetic flesh and computer
circuits. The issue here is not phenomenological—How do we as subjects relate to
these creations? How do we as subjects fill these passive empty objects with our sense
experience?—or postmodernist (the body is not disappearing or a determinstic product
of language). The issue is critical—How is subjectivity both installed in one sector of
a situation (e.g., the patient) and liquidated from another (the body-object)? When
we consider a cyborg entity such as the DNA chip, the point is not to recuperate it
into models of the modern subject, but rather to ask how it networks itself, as a dis-
crete, natural-technical, material-semiotic unit, into the processes of technoscience.

5. See the essays “Regimes, Pathways, Subjects” and “Entering the Post-media Era,”
in Félix Guattari, Soft Subversions, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. David Sweet and Chet
Wiener (New York: Semiotext[e], 1996), pp. 112–131 and 106–112. On Guattari’s
approaches to the question of subjectification, see Molecular Revolution, trans.
Rosemary Sheed (New York: Penguin, 1984).

Notes

407
6. Guattari’s perspective is contextualized by the present age of information tech-
nologies. In more detail, the three “paths” include: (1) Pathways of power, where the
mode of exercise is from the outside (outside-in). Its main object is land (territorial-
izing), and the historical example is early-modern Christianity’s organization of knowl-
edge in monastic and religious institutions (“Age of European Christianity”). (2)
Pathways of knowledge, where the mode of exercise is from within the subject (inside-
out). Its main object is the map (deterritorialization), and the historical examples
are the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution in the emergence of modern
capitalism (“Age of Capitalist Deterritorialization of Modes of Knowledge and
Technique”). (3) Pathways of self-reference, where the mode of exercise is self-
transformation (infolding and outfolding). Its main object is the self that becomes
other (change, process, transformation), and the historical examples are the liberatory
possibilities in information technologies (“Age of Planetary Computerization”). See
Guattari, “Regimes, Pathways, Subjects,” pp. 114–117.

7. Ibid., p. 124.

8. As Guattari states, “our project, on the contrary, is to attempt to rethink these

three necessarily interwoven paths/voices. No engagement with the creative phyla of
the third path/voice is tenable unless new existential territories are concurrently estab-
lished.” Ibid., p. 125.

9. See ibid., pp. 125–126. The two characteristics Guattari emphasizes in relation to
postmedia subjectivities are “processual” character and its “singularization.” By
“processual,” he means that human-media subjectivities should resist calcification into
either well-worn dichotomies (subject/object, human user/nonhuman tool), or the
standardization characteristics of the information technology economy (proprietary
ownership, obsolescence, restricted access). By “singularization,” he means that part
of what subjectivity should mean is not the right to be the same (your essence, your
identity, your statistical data), but rather the right to be singular, different, and always
different from your self.

10. Haraway, “The Promises of Monsters,” p. 298.

11. The Tissue Culture and Art Project Web site is at http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au.

12. The SymbioticA Web site is at http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au.

13. If this question can be addressed, then perhaps Haraway’s program for cyborgs,
monsters, and material-semiotic nodes can provide a theoretical framework to discuss

Notes

408
“bioinformatic bodies.” This framework would mean considering discrete elements—
such as DNA chips, automated sequencers, online biological databases, tissue-
engineered organs, and so on—as material-semiotic nodes that play a central role
in the means whereby these bioscientific discourses and practices are refiguring the
“natural” body.

14. As artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr note on the SymbioticA Web site, “the Semi-
Living ear was constructed out of degradable/absorbable biopolymers and seeded with
human chondrocytes (cartilage tissue). The ear confronts the viewer with the notion
of the body as fragmented and as consisting of communities of cells (tissues/organs)
collaborating together. These communities can be sustained alive and grow separated
and independent to the body with the support of an artificial support system. The ear
belongs to a new class of object/being in the continuum of life—that of the Semi-
Living. The Semi-Living are constructed of living and non-living materials, and are
new autonomous entities located in the fuzzy border between the living/non-living,
grown/constructed, born/manufactured, and object/subject.”

15. The property of one’s own body is constitutive of modern political theory; in
Locke, for instance, ownership over one’s own body is a citizen’s fundamental right.
The topic takes a different turn in Marx, however, for whom this very right serves as
the basis for the selling of labor power in waged labor.

16. See E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2000).

17. See Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald, Exploding the Gene Myth (Boston: Beacon,
1997); Richard Lewontin, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA (New York: Harper-
Collins, 1992); and Jeremy Rifkin, The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remak-
ing the World (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1998).

18. The SubRosa Web site is at http://www.cyberfeminism.net. As the group states

in its manifesto (available online), “SubRosa is a reproducible cyberfeminist cell of
cultural researchers committed to combining art, activism, and politics to explore and
critique the intersections of the new information and biotechnologies in women’s
bodies, lives, and work.”

19. The Expo EmmaGenics brochure includes advertisements for devices such as the
“Palm XY” (a wireless “mate finder”), the “Zygote Monitor” (for televising embry-
onic development for home videos), and even recipes for human caviar.

Notes

409
20. See Paul Rabinow, “Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Bioso-
ciality,” in The Science Studies Reader, ed. Mario Biagioli (New York: Routledge, 1999),
pp. 407–417.

21. The Biotech Hobbyist Web site is at http://www.biotechhobbyist.org.

22. The CAE Web site is at http://www.critical-art.net.

23. See CAE, Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies, and New Eugenic Consciousness
(Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1998), pp. 3–6.

24. CAE, The Molecular Invasion (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2002), pp. 59–76.

25. Ibid., p. 3.

26. Ibid., p. 111, emphasis in original.

27. The quotation given in the section heading is from “Madrigal IV” by Ulver, ©
1997 Magic Arts Publishing. Quoted in Robert Flud, “The Non-Modern Intersti-
tiality of the Animal in the Mythos of Norwegian Black Metal,” Journal of Popular
Culture Studies 31 (October 2000): 12–26.

28. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert
Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978), p. 159.

29. David Garcia and Geert Lovink, “The ABC of Tactical Media,” posted to Nettime,
May 16, 1997, at http://www.nettime.org. The Next 5 Minutes festival is dedicated
to exploring tactical media practices and promotes “tactical media labs” worldwide,
at http://www.n5m.org.

30. Alex Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 2004), p. 175. One of Galloway’s examples is computer viruses,
which exploit the very property that enable networks to exist: their horizontality and
connectedness, coupled with the near-monopolistic nature of Windows operating
systems.

31. For instance, see Albert-László Barabási and Zoltán Oltavi, “Network Biology:
Understanding the Cell’s Functional Organization,” Nature Reviews 5 (February 2004):
101–113; Rita Colwell, “Future Directions in Biocomplexity,” Complexity 6.4 (2000):
21–22; H. Jeong, “The Large-Scale Organization of Metabolic Networks,” Nature 407

Notes

410
(October 5, 2000): 651–654; Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for
the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995);
Pierre Legrain, “Protein-Protein Interaction Maps: A Lead Towards Cellular Func-
tions,” Trends in Genetics 17 (2001): 346–352. For more, see chapter 6 of my book Bio-
media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Such alternative approaches
can be grouped broadly into three categories: network science approaches (which study
networks broadly and take biological networks as a special case), systems biology
approaches (which are rooted more in the life sciences and high-technology sectors),
and biocomplexity approaches (which are grounded in both theoretical and empirical
research).

Notes

411
 Index

Actants, 271 Biomaterial labor, 39–40, 44–47, 126–127,

Agamben, Giorgio, 26–27, 388n7 197–204, 206, 298, 300–301
Anatomopolitics, 22–23, 230–232. See also Biomedia, 10, 267
Biopolitics Biopolitics, 21–28, 38, 148–153, 212,
Anthrax attacks (2001), 236–242 228–235, 262–263. See also Anatomopolitics
Aristotle, 67–70, 287–289 Bioreactors, 198. See also Biomaterial labor
Arnold, David, 152, 224 Biotech Hobbyist, 313–315
Biotechnical speed, 294
Bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC). See Biotechnology
Plasmid library and globalization, xv–xvii, xix, 3–7, 47–49
Bataille, Georges, 122–124, 126–127, 372n55 as an industry, 173–175, 186–187, 198, 203,
Baudrillard, Jean, 266 237, 239–241, 381n4, 385n48
Bell, Daniel, 176–177 and labor, 40 (see also Biomaterial labor)
Bioart, 307 and popular culture, 51, 209–211, 277–278,
Biocolonialism, 157, 161–162, 164, 224–225 302–303, 339–345
Biodiversity, 162–163 Bioterrorism, 212–213, 237–238. See also
Bioinformatics, xvi, 52–53, 54–60, 65, 78–80, Biological warfare
120–122 Bioterrorism Act of 2002 (U.S.), 211–212,
and capital, 81–86 237
and databases, 17–18, 55–57, 106–108, 112 Biowar, 213–214. See also Biological warfare
(see also Databases) Black Death, 217–218
Biological exchange, 6–11. See also Human Bowker, Geoffrey, 105
Genome Project (HGP) Bunting, Heath, 313
Biological security, 212, 244
Biological warfare, 213–227, 243 Canguilhem, Georges, 19, 60, 67–73, 87–89,
Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), 210, 258–260, 361n43, 361n47
221, 242–243 Castells, Manuel, 5, 177, 347n5
Cavalli-Sforza, Luca, 133, 142, 144–145, Global genome, 48
164–165, 374n2 Globalization, theories of, 4–7. See also
Celera Genomics. See Human Genome Project Biotechnology, globalization and
(HGP) Goodwin, Brian, 289
Contestational biology, 317, 319 Governmentality, 25
The Crazies (Romero), 209–210 Gruinard Island, N-bomb tests, 221
Crick, Francis, 20, 51, 67, 73, 76, 97, 98 Guattari, Félix, 306–307, 408n6, 408n9
Critical Art Ensemble, 315–318
Cybernetics, 70–71, 99–100, 102 Hacking, Ian, 25, 150–151, 351n37
Haraway, Donna, 305–306, 308
Data patient, 193–196 Hardt, Michael, 5, 39–40, 177, 185,
Databases, 17–18, 105–112 298
Delanda, Manuel, 205 Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, 145–146
DNA chip, 117–118 Hayles, N. Katherine, 97–98
Duster, Troy, 163, 380n68 Honorific body, 212–213
Dyer-Witheford, Nick, 104, 183, 352n49 Horrific body, 212–213
Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP),
Emerging infectious diseases, 244 116–117, 133–134, 167
Eugenics, 143, 222–223 Human Genome Project (HGP), 11–21, 91–94,
108–109, 111, 187–188
Fanon, Frantz, 168–172
Fortun, Michael, 12, 112, 140, 172 Icelandic Health Sector Database (IHSD).
Foucault, Michel, 21–28, 140–141, 148–149, See Population genomics
228, 229–230, 235–236, 262, 349n21, Immaterial labor, 5, 27, 39–40, 177, 184–185,
350n33, 350n36 198, 298
Fox Keller, Evelyn, 20, 73, 130, 205 Industrialism, 178–180
Franklin, Rosalind, 67 Information
Franklin, Sarah, 60 in biology, 8–10, 19–20, 28, 52, 70–71,
87–88, 98–101, 126, 363n64, 363n66
Galton, Francis, 222 in biotechnology, 26, 48, 79–80, 85–86, 162,
Galloway, Alex, 319 201–202, 204
Garcia, David, 318 in biowar, 245–246
Genbank, 8, 55 Information theory, 71, 99–100, 102
Gene Expression Markup Language (GEML), Infowar, 225–226
120–122 Inorganic body, 34–35, 36
Gene Trust, 193–194 International Human Genome Sequencing
General economy, 124 Consortium (IHGSC). See Human Genome
Genetic bomb, 239 Project (HGP)
vs. genome message, 241
Genetic distance, 146–147 Jacob, François, 19, 51–52, 102
Genetic engineering, 109, 173–174 Jameson, Fredric, 189–190
Geneva Protocol (1925), 220 Jeremijenko, Natalie, 313, 314
Giddens, Anthony, 4, 6 Junk DNA, 91–92, 119–120

Index

414
Kay, Lily, 20, 52, 99, 205 Political economy
Kevles, Daniel, 223 classical, 26, 78, 95–96, 102–104, 115–116,
Kittler, Friedrich, 106, 113–114 124, 150
Kroker, Arthur, 261, 267 general economy, 124
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), 198, 199.
Labor, 30–31, 33, 38, 44–45, 103–104, See also Biomaterial labor
181–183, 200, 296–297, 369n29, 383n23. Population, 23–24, 26, 140, 145–146,
See also Biomaterial labor 150–152, 228–229, 262–263
Latour, Bruno, 269–270, 271, 308 Population genetics, 141–145
Lazzarato, Maurizio, 184–185, 198 Population genomics, 136–140, 153–160
Lewontin, Richard, 89 Porter, Roy, 224
Life activity, 33, 35 Postindustrial society, 176–177
Life itself, 28–29, 46, 53, 60–61, 67, 75–77, Post-media, 307
125, 126, 202, 244
Lovink, Geert, 318 Rabinow, Paul, 312–313
Racism, in biopolitics, 233–234
Malthus, Thomas, 150 Recombinant capital, 187, 190–193
Manovich, Lev, 126 Regeneration, in biology, 286–287
Martin, Emily, 243 Regenerative bodies, 265–269, 283–285,
Marx, Karl, 30–36, 81–83, 95–96, 102–104, 294–295
115–116, 126–127, 177–183, 201, 206, Regenerative medicine, 198, 261–262,
296–297, 298–299, 353n52, 353n56, 275–277, 279–283, 290–291
354n63 Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg, 52
Matthaei, Heinrich, 52, 67 Rose, Nikolas, 60
McLuhan, Marshall, 261
Milieu, 88–89 Sassien, Saskia, 5
Mo-cell line, 40–41. See also Biomaterial labor SB-462795 (cathepsin-K inhibitor), 62–65
Mode of regeneration, 299 Schrödinger, Erwin, 51, 97
Monod, Jacques, 19, 51–52, 102 Shannon, Claude, 52, 71, 73, 97, 98, 102
Shiva, Vandana, 163
Negri, Antonio, 5, 39–40, 103, 177, 183, 185, Smith, Adam, 95–96
200, 297–298 Sociobiology, 311
Networks, 5, 6, 9 Sovereignty, in biopolitics, 229–230, 233
Nirenberg, Marshall, 52, 67 Species being, 30–36, 37, 38
Squier, Susan, 291
Oncomouse, 41–42. See also Biomaterial labor Star, Susan Leigh, 105
Oyama, Susan, 98 Stem cells, 255–257, 280–282, 399n19
SubRosa, 311–313
Panzieri, Raniero, 184 SymbioticA, 308–310
Pharmacogenomics, 58–59. See also
Bioinformatics Tactical media, 314–315, 318–319
Plasmid library, 17–18, 109–112. See also Thucydides, on the plague, 217
Databases Tissue Culture & Art Project. See SymbioticA

Index

415
Tissue engineering, 251–252, 253–258,
271–272, 282. See also Regenerative
medicine
t-PA clotbuster protein, 4. See also Biomaterial
labor
28 Days Later (Boyle), 210–211

Unit 731 ( Japan), 220

U.S. biological warfare program, 221, 242–243

Virilio, Paul, 225, 239–240, 292–294, 395n88

Virno, Paolo, 37, 354n62
von Neumann, John, 52, 102
von Uexküll, Jacob, 88
Vulnerable biologies, 228–229

Waldby, Catherine, 189, 292

Wallerstein, Immanuel, 5
War, in biopolitics, 234–235
Waters, Malcolm, 5, 6
Watson, James, 20, 51, 67, 98
Wiener, Norbert, 97, 98, 102, 368n19
Wilkins, Maurice, 67

X-Men (Singer), 277–278, 302–303

Zombies, 209, 211, 387n1

Index

416