The incorporate bodies of recombinant capital

Dialectical Anthropology

Volumn 26, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 1-17

  Thacker, Eugene ^a  

^a GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 1442358298     PISSN: 03044092     EISSN: 15730786     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1019954107882     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. For actual research articles, see S.N. Cohen, A.C.Y. Chang, H.W. Boyer, and R.B. Helling, "Construction of biologically functional bacterial plasmids in vitro," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 70 (1973): 3240-3244;
2. and J.F. Morrow, S.N. Cohen, A.C.Y. Chang, H.W. Boyer, H.M. Goodman, and R.B. Helling, "Replication and transcription of eukaryotic DNA in Escherichia coli," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 71 (1974): 1743-1747.
3. For a current, though un-critical, analysis of the history of biotechnology as an industry, see Cynthia Robbins-Roth, From Alchemy to IPO: The Business of Biotech (New York: Perseus, 2000).
4. On the history of biotechnology see Robert Bud's interesting work, The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994).
5. See James Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery and Structure of DNA, ed. Gunther Stent (New York: Norton, 1980). The Norton edition contains all the relevant research articles by Watson and Francis Crick as well.
6. On Latour's notion of translation, see We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993), 10-12.
7. While the recombinant DNA research during the 1970s instigated public outcry at scientists "playing God," and while such public anxieties led to some formalized, bioethical debate (for instance, the "Asilomar conferences" held in California in 1973 and 1975), what was left un-problematized was 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 recombinant DNA, see S. Wright, Molecular Politics: Developing American and British Regulatory Policy for Genetic Engineering, 1972-1982 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994).
8. For more information on the HGP, see their website at 〈http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/〉.
9. One of the best books on the government-supported HGP is The Code of Codes, ed. Daniel Kevles and Leroy Hood (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992).
10. Celera's website is at 〈http://www.celera.com〉; Incyte's is at 〈http://www.incyte. com〉; and Human Genome Sciences' is at 〈http://www.humangenomesciences.com〉. Each of these sites also contains press releases and links to relevant news articles.
11. The Human Genome Diversity Project was initiated in the early 1990s with the intention of gathering genetic samples from ethnically-distinct populations around the world. It caused a major controversy when it applied for a patent for a cell line from a New Guinea man, without the prior consent of either the individual or the community. It is now at Stanford University under the name of the Morris Institute for Population Studies.
12. See Nicholas Wade, "Genetic Code of Human Life is Cracked by Scientists." New York Times online (26 June 2000): 〈http://www. nytimes.com〉. The website for the White House 〈http://www.whitehouse. gov〉 also contains transcripts of the President's statements concerning genetics and biotechnology.
13. See Dan Schiller, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System (Cambridge: MIT, 2000).
14. See Michael Dawson and John Bellamy Foster, "Virtual Capitalism," in Capitalism and the Information Age, ed. Robert McChesney et al. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 51-69.
15. See Catherine Waldby, The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2000), 33-37. Waldby's concept of biovalue operates in the interstices between technique and knowledge-production in the ongoing management of biomedical bodies.
16. Cited in Aris Persidis, "Bioinformatics," Nature Biotechnology 17 (August 1999): 828-830.
17. For more on the field of bioinformatics, see Ken Howard, "The Bioinformatics Gold Rush," Scientific American (July 2000): 58-63.
18. Also see M.A. Andrade, and C. Sander, "Bioinformatics: from genome data to biological knowledge," Current Opinion in Biotechnology 8(6) (December 1997): 675-683;
19. and D. Benton, "Bioinformatics: Principles and Potential of a New Multidisciplinary Tool," Trends In Biotechnology 14(8) (August 1996): 261-272.
20. See Fredric Jameson, "Culture and Finance Capital," in The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998 (New York: Verso, 1998), 136-162.
21. For example, see Biospace 〈http://www.biospace.com〉
22. or Genome Web 〈http://www. genomeweb.com〉.
23. For a transcript, see "White House Press Release on Human Genome Project," White House Library website (14 March 2000): 〈http://www. whitehouse.gov〉.
24. See chapters one through three in Bud, The Uses of Life.
25. The BIO2000 website is at 〈http://www.biospace.com〉.
26. For a report on the convention see "Biotech Productivity: Myth or Method?" Biospace.com BIO 2000 Live (3 April 2000): 〈http://www. biospace.com〉.
27. For a critique of this reliance on informatics, see N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999), 1-25.
28. The Gene Trust website is at 〈http://www.dna.com〉.
29. See Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983).
30. On DNA chips or microarrays, see Andrew Marshall and John Hodgson, "DNA chips: An array of possibilities," Nature Biotechnology 16 (January 1998): 27-31,
31. and Karl Thiel, "The Matrix: A Revolution in Array Technologies," Biospace.com (7 June 1998): 〈http://www.biospace. com〉.
32. Both Keller and Kay, 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 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000),
33. and Lily Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000).
34. See Manuel DeLanda, "Non-Organic Life," in Incorporations, ed. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone, 1992).
35. For popular accounts of chaos theory and the sciences of complexity, see James Gleick's Chaos (New York: Penguin, 1988),
36. and Fritjof Capra's Web of Life (New York: Doubleday, 1997).
37. Fritjof Capra's Web of Life (Ibid., 133.