Professor Projit Bihari Mukharji from the University of Pennsylvania began his talk on the bodily collectives with a present look at the Indian genome project. The purpose of this research is to determine biological differences within the Indian population. The ways in which they aim to conduct this research are very interesting and they have divided the population of India into communities. This began with people who are affiliated with the Hindu religious fold, making up 80% of the population of India, which is separated into four sociocultural castes and was a convenient way in which to start dividing the population. Eventually the researchers divided everyone into 4693 communities with in the country. The current push for research of this kind has stemmed from a long historical background of raciology, but recent understanding of the biology of race has led some to believe that medicine should be specialized according to race for it to be completely successful, and Muharji gave the example of Bidil a drug that is specifically made for African American\u2019s with heart conditions.<\/p>\n
As I mentioned before, there has been a long history of studying genetics throughout the population that extends far beyond the current genome project in India. However, much of the data that they have collected is outdated and while it can provide information historically the sets of data need further development in order to provide a comprehensive look into the entire population of India. Historically, the study of genetics starts with observation, but studying samples from a couple of people only shows something about that individual not the entire population of India, and even then, it can be difficult to obtain samples from people. Dr. Mukharji told stories about researchers trespassing in the cemeteries of tribal people and using their power with government officials to take the skeletons of recently deceased from their shallow graves. Although this seems morally wrong in every possible way, the researchers continued to do it in the name of science. In another case, researchers wanted to determine if Type B blood was more common in Indians, so they targeted an older Indian community and pretended to be practicing doctors in order to draw blood from the population and achieve a comprehensive sample. However, as previously mentioned, an individual\u2019s blood sample does not represent a group or race, it is unique to that person alone, nor do Hindu samples represent all Indians. Scientists have argued how to break up the population for decades, and it seems that they still have not reached a universal conclusion.<\/p>\n
At the end of the presentation someone asked about a national register of citizens and whether or not countries are moving in a direction where in order to gain citizenship, one must give their tissues to be a part of that comprehensive database. Although this would be a technocratic dream, my question is whether or not this is plausible? It seems that in the current state of our world citizenship is avoidable and therefore would we ever be able to have a comprehensive database of all people living in a given country?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Professor Projit Bihari Mukharji from the University of Pennsylvania began his talk on the bodily collectives with a present look at the Indian genome project. The purpose of this research is to determine biological differences within the Indian population. The ways in which they aim to conduct this research are very interesting and they have … <\/p>\n