Projit Bihari Mukharji’s lecture focused on the techniques used to genetically classify people in India, many of which being very unethical and the process as a whole being very racist in nature. He gave other examples of this biological racism by showing images of a certain drug that was targeted at black males as if the drug would somehow perform differently when ingested into a black persons body as opposed to someone of a different racial background. He spoke on the idea of “genomic sovereignty” meaning that human genomic material is a valuable resource, for both the country and its people. Having the entire composition of the human genomes within your country and believing that they are not all 100% similar as a US scientist once suggested, gives both a symbolic and a material strength to the country. It does this by providing both a sense of belonging and community, as well as giving a representation of the population and their differences based on whatever demographic might be the case. However, the means by which these data are collected are sometimes, as with the India case, unethical and lack much regard for humanity.
This idea that you can perform genome sequencing on an entire nation to form a map of “collective bodies” as Mukharji calls them, is becoming a more prevalent idea in the present day thanks to improvements in technology. But the current methods of this genetic data acquisition are vastly different today than they were during the period Mukharji focused on. I recently read an article that spoke of a similar concept being played out in Iceland, but for a different purpose. There are talks in the scientific community that gene sequencing could be the future of medicine. It could help us locate genes that ultimately lead to higher risks of disease so we have time to treat them effectively, or locate genes that could give a carrier immunity to a disease or condition. In Iceland, researchers conducted a study in which over 2,000 residents had their genes sequenced. Iceland is a particularly good place to conduct a study like this due to its isolation: it is one of a few places with a founder effect. This means that the sample size used in the study can be scaled up to the whole population without much error, due to most residents being able to trace their genes back to a handful of ancestors. They have found genes that have been linked to diseases like Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, to liver disease. The researchers hope that, one day, all human diversity will be able to explained through gene sequencing, and that our knowledge of disease and what causes someone to be predisposed to inherit or be resistant to it will greatly improve, if not be flawless in the future.
I find it incredibly interesting how much genes can tell us. Though it may have been an unethical practice at one time as far as how genetic information was collected in India as Mukharji’s talk showed, the information is invaluable today for scientists and doctors alike to make further strides in being able to save human lives.