Projit\u00a0Mukharji’s talk entitled “Collecting Bodies, Bodily Collectives” explored the relationship between genome projects, the biologization\u00a0of race, and the ethics\/practices behind these projects. Much of Dr. Mukharji’s lecture focused on the coercion of indigenous Indian people. Mukharji identified the 4 major castes in Indian culture and briefly touched on the fact that there are 4, 693 different communities. Historically there’s been an attempt to categorize these communities based off of some biological factor (e.g. blood type & bones). The premise of the talk was interesting but, the very academic nature of it made certain parts feel inaccessible\/challenging to fully comprehend. For this response, I will focus on the questions I have regarding science used to further a racist agenda.<\/p>\n
Things like BiDil, a drug specifically targeted at African Americans with heart failure, capture the absurdity of much of the science used to justify racism. What differentiates the heart belonging to a white person from one belonging to a black person? Likely, nothing at all. The scariest part to me was that science like this persists today, in the status-quo. Largely, there’s a belief that science is true and factual. So when science is manipulated to serve a racist agenda, taking that as fact is much easier than using simply ideologies or beliefs. If individuals and groups are presented with seemingly credible, scientific findings I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to believe it. The question I found myself asking was, whose responsibility\u00a0is it to stop (or at least inform the public about) questionable science like this- especially when it’s deeply entrenched in cultural norms? Do we have to perform racial experiments to disprove science like this?<\/p>\n
While I can’t answer my own question, considering the ethics of the data collection used in some of the existing studies Dr. Mukharji mentioned was enraging & might be one entry point to\u00a0highlighting the questionable practices\u00a0employed. Indigenous groups were violated by scientists who blatantly stole and lied to community\u00a0members. Whereas, wealthier Indian groups like the Hindus were exploited using more subtle persuasion. While white and Christian individuals were not asked to contribute any blood or bone samples. The groups behind these projects first exploited populations and communities and then went on to use that information to further erect boundaries and exacerbate social constructs. I think that the ethical implications here are extremely questionable- and brings serious doubt to the credibility of their experiments. Which again made me wonder how entire databases like the Indian Genome Variation Database can have such wide acceptance and support.<\/p>\n
After the talk, an audience member asked about the connection of this racialization to population registries and creating an “ideal population”. Dr. Mukharji responded that yes there is a\u00a0push for similar things in India. The widespread nature and entrenchment of these ideologies across science and the culture feel somewhat foreign to me despite similar studies based in eugenics in the United States. The deep cultural beliefs and biases seem to be major driving forces in the continuation of these scientific pursuits.<\/p>\n
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Projit\u00a0Mukharji’s talk entitled “Collecting Bodies, Bodily Collectives” explored the relationship between genome projects, the biologization\u00a0of race, and the ethics\/practices behind these projects. Much of Dr. Mukharji’s lecture focused on the coercion of indigenous Indian people. Mukharji identified the 4 major castes in Indian culture and briefly touched on the fact that there are 4, 693 … <\/p>\n