May 06, 2015 | Good Science/People’s Science: An Exploration of Science and Justice

As part of the Science and Justice Research Center’s efforts to develop analytics for understanding and enacting ‘science and justice,’ we hosted a half-day long symposium that features the work of Charis Thompson (Chancellor’s Professor and Chair of Gender & Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley) and Ruha Benjamin (Assistant Professor in the Center for African American Studies, Princeton University).  In their respective works (Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Science, University of California Press; People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier, Stanford University Press), Thompson and Benjamin provided us with an excellent starting point for our collective efforts to conceptualize and enact ‘science and justice.’

This event included a morning reading group and an afternoon presentation by the two speakers, followed by discussion with a response from Julie Harris-Wai (Assistant Professor, UC San Francisco and Associate Director of CT2G).

Part 1: Introductions by Jenny Reardon & Tala Khanmalek
Part 2: Charis Thompson
Part 3: Ruha Benjamin
Part 4: Julie Harris-Wai, respondant
Part 5: Q/A session

Audio of Full Event:

Speakers:
Ruha Benjamin (Assistant Professor, Center for African American Studies and Faculty Associate in the History of Science Program, Princeton)
Charis Thompson (Chancellor’s Professor and Chair of Gender & Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley; Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics)
Respondent: Julie Harris-Wai (Assistant Professor, UC San Francisco; Associate Director, Center for Transdisciplinary ELSI Research in Translational Genomics | CT2G)

This event was co-sponsored by UCSC Departments of Politics, History of Consciousness, Feminist Studies, WiSE, and Sociology.

The event is also sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender, Politics of Biology and Race Working Group, and Gender and Women’s Studies Department as well as UCSF’s Center for Transdisciplinary ELSI Research in Translational Genomics (CT2G).

Organized in part by Visiting Scholar Tala Khanmalek.

 

May 14, 2014 | Broadening Participation in Science and Engineering: Social and Intellectual Diversity

At this panel discussion, we will discuss how cultural values shape what research questions are asked and how research is conducted. Science and engineering have long been portrayed as merely merit-based domains, or, as historians of science have called it, a ‘culture of no culture’. The demographic within these fields is commonly viewed as unrelated to the quality of knowledge produced, and therefore only a concern in so far as funding agencies mandate it to be. Drawing on specific examples we will examine how research questions change depending on who is asking them, teasing apart the complex relations between research agendas and the socio-cultural identities of scientists and engineers. Investigating these questions will contribute to a better understanding of the importance of diversity within STEM fields. Furthermore, a shared examination of the experiences of inclusion and exclusion will help develop a better grasp of how to pursue social equity within science and engineering fields. Finally, it will also produce insights about what kind of knowledge is produced and for whom.

Moderator:

Ruth Müller a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Policy Group, Lund University, Sweden and lecturer in Gender Studies, Biology & Science-Technology-Society, at the University of Vienna, focuses her research on the relations between research policy, institutional frameworks and scientific work practices, currently in the fields of climate science and epigenetics. Müller is interested in critical reflection of contemporary academic work practices and social movements in this area, such as the slow science movement. Dr. Ruth Müller joins UC Santa Cruz for a second Visiting Scholarship with the Science & Justice Research Center.

Panelists:

Faye Crosby, Provost of Cowell College, Chair of Council of Provosts, and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UCSC specializes in social justice. Her research interests looks at the relation between objective (i.e., consensual) and subjective reality; she has looked at individual attitudes in the context of social change and stability. Crosby's current work investigates the bases of people's reactions to affirmative action and has launched a new series of studies on how people can undertake non-revolutionary changes in rules that come to be revealed as unfair. She is also examining other ways, such as mentoring, of enhancing the peaceful evolution of work organizations.

Barbara Gee, has 35 years of experience in the computer industry, where she has held leadership positions in all functional areas. She has worked for HP, Silicon Graphics, TiVo, and other well known tech companies. In addition, Barb has served in leadership roles in the non-profit sector (including Huckleberry Youth Programs), and prior to joining the Anita Borg Institute was the Executive Officer of Human Resources for the Oakland Unified School District. She has also served on the San Mateo County Commission on the Status of Women, the Board of Global Exchange, and is an Advisory Board member of the STEM Academy at McClymonds High School in Oakland California. Barb currently serves as the Vice President of Programs for ABI, where she oversees the execution and development of programs focused on increasing the participation of women in technical roles, with the belief that when the inventors of technology mirror those who use it, society gains. Barb received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley, and her Masters in Management at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T.

Joan Haran, a Research Fellow at Cesagene (Cardiff Centre for Ethical and Social Aspects of Genomics and Epigenetics) at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences whose research revolves around gender, representation and technoscience. She is particularly interested in the policing of boundaries between science fact and science fiction. Haran has a BA (Hons) in Literature and History from North Staffordshire Polytechnic, an MA (Dist) in Gender, Society and Culture from Birkbeck College, University of London and a PhD in Sociology from Warwick University. She co-authored the monograph Human Cloning in the Media: From science fiction to science practice (Routledge 2008) which drew together media, cultural, and feminist technoscience studies preoccupations and methodologies to document the symbolic and material labor of making genomics in the media.

Melissa Jurica, Associate Professor of MCD Biology at UCSC oversees the Jurica Lab, a research lab at UCSC working to understand the structural and functional analysis of spliceosomes a tiny molecular machine found in all human cells, as it plays a critical role in how our genes encode for an organism as unique and complex as a human being. She has recently become the director of the UCSC Initiative to Maximize Student Development program, which supports both undergraduate and graduate students in an effort to increase diversity in biomedical research.

Thanks to Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) for facilitating the following recordings of the event:

Broadening Participation Video: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Engineering 2, Room 599 |  May 14, 2014

"Broadening Participation in Science and Engineering: Social and Intellectual Diversity"
SJWG Rapporteur Report
14 May 2014
Rapporteur Report by Lizzy Hare
At this Science & Justice Working Group Event, Lund University postdoctoral research
fellow Ruth Müller moderated a discussion about how diversity within the STEM fields might be
expanded. Panelists Fay Crosby (Provost of Cowell College, and Distinguished Professor of
Psychology at UCSC), Barbara Gee (Vice President of Programs at the Anita Borg Institute for
Women and Technology), Joan Haran (Research Fellow at the Cardiff Centre for Ethical and
Social Aspects of Genomics and Epigenetics at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences), and
Melissa Jurica (Associate Professor of MCD Biology at UCSC) shared their experiences and
specific examples of inclusion and exclusion within the STEM fields. Science & Justice
Research Center Director Jenny Reardon welcomed participants and the audience, adding that
the topic has been appearing more frequently in recent news media, and that she’s interested in
the rise of this concern during a time when there doesn’t seem to be a lot of progress being made
towards equity and inclusion.

Ruth introduced the discussion with a reminder that issues of inclusion have always been
a part of scientific knowledge production. In the early days of the experimental sciences,
scientists distinguished themselves by portraying themselves as the “modest witness” who could
transcend the body to make observations of the world that were not occluded or biased by the
researcher’s perspective. Crucial to the operation of these laboratories were those whose
contributions could not be counted as objective science, due to their non-white, non-male, nonbourgeois
bodies. When multiple others began to demand access, many of those who were most
successful embodied the “neutral” characteristics of white, male, bourgeois science as best they
could, effectively creating a science that could claim inclusion while still ignoring the
contributions of other ways of life. Müller asks us if it is perhaps time for science to accept that
it only allows in a select few, and that the traits that are seen as necessary for a good scientist
exclude a number of potentially excellent thinkers and scholars.

Faye Crosby began her contribution by explaining that she believes strongly in the value
of positivism, and that she believes this value is exclusive of gender. In her experience, there has
often been a pretense of using standards of merit, yet non-scientific values are able to creep in.
She used a social psychology study on affirmative action as an example. In that experiment,
white male subjects were asked to review applications for a single prize. They received
information about a person of color, or a white person. In half of the situations the persons of
color had low test scores but excellent letters of recommendation, while in the other group, it was
reversed. The reviewers showed a clear preference for white candidates, and justified it either
with the letters of recommendation or the test scores, depending on the case. Either way, they
claimed to be fair and unbiased in their decision making process. Faye used this example
because she wants to make the case that we should not change the way we do science to make it
more “feminine”, but rather, we should make it more scientific and make sure that the same rules
apply all over. This will require taking notice of all of the small structural factors that make it
easy to continue to enact practices that keep women down.

Barbara Gee discussed her work at the Anita Borg institute, and emphasized how the
institute uses scientific research to support the goal of the foundation. That research has helped
them to show that including women technicians and engineers in the research and design of a
product is both good social practice and good business practice, because it has been shown to
boost sales and yield more successful products. The Institute has had some success in fostering
relationships between women in computing and inspiring confidence, but they are still working
on how to change the culture within companies. Gee said that this is especially difficult because
so much of the problem lies in unconscious biases.

Melissa Jurica echoed many of the same sentiments that Crosby and Gee had shared with
the Working Group. Jurica explained that in her experience much of the problem lies in the
values that scientists are expected to share and to cultivate. These values might not promote
minority representation in science, and may even actively work to discourage it. She mentioned
aggression, self-promotion and skepticism in particular. For her, self-doubt is a form of
skepticism that she thinks might ultimately be beneficial to science, but it tends not to be valued
in laboratory settings. Because these values are seen as being neutral, it is hard for scientists to
recognize that privileging these values often means privileging certain kinds of people. Like
Faye, she encouraged the Working Group participants to utilize implicit bias tests as a way to
help people understand where their own prejudices may lie. In closing, Jurica also expressed
some frustration that women scientists are asked to participate in panels about diversity, but that
such talks often end up preaching to the converted, as it is too easy for those in majority
positions to ignore them. It is worth mentioning that in a full room, there were only two men who
were not directly affiliated with the Science & Justice Research Center.

Joan Haran brought the conversation outside of the context of the lab by discussing the
representation of women scientists in the media. Why, she asked, are women scientists in the
media so highly stereotyped? At the same time, she reminded us that realistic representations of
women scientists might not be desirable either. Fewer than 13% of professional scientists are
women, so if representations were accurate, their voices would be heard even less frequently.
But if representations of women scientists shift towards being aspirational, perhaps the better
move would actually be to disentangle the categories in the first place, and make space for
representations of scientists who happen to be women, or women who happen to be scientists.

One of the main concerns voiced during the discussion period was why there are fewer
women Computer Science undergraduates in the US now than there were in 1988, which was the
peak. Some seem to think that this could be because men present themselves as more confident
and self-assured, which leads women to believe that they are behind. Ruth asked if this might be
because we have myths about what science is as an activity, and that means that we tend to deemphasize
the importance of group effort in advancing scientific knowledge. Lauren asked the
panelists what could be done to make women more confident, and Faye responded by saying that
she does not want women to become as confident as men, but rather, she wants men to become
as humble as women. Melissa reminded us that all of these issues become more problematic
when there is a large gap in the gender divide in the workplace.

The matter of care and caretaking was also addressed in the discussion period. Melissa
attributes her ability to be successful as a scientist in part to her spouse who is willing to stay at
home. This caused others to wonder about the invisible labor of caretaking that has allowed
male scientists to be successful over the years.

In going forward, the Working Group is optimistic that the knowledge about gender gaps
and inequalities in science will be useful in making changes in the future, but there still seems to
be some concern around how to enact change in academic and private institutions.

May 08, 2014 | ANTHROPOCENE CONFERENCE: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet

Can humans and other species continue to inhabit the earth together? Through noticing, describing, and imagining, we renew conversation about life on earth.

Full schedule: ANTHROPOCENE: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet

Video documentation of the conference: 

“Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet” begins Thursday evening with a talk by acclaimed science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz. The talk has long been sold out, but simulcast video streaming will be available at two locations on the UCSC campus: the Humanities Lecture Hall (Room 206) and Social Sciences 1 Room 110. The talk and broadcast are scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.

“Through noticing, describing, and imagining, we renew conversation about life on Earth,” is how organizers describe the conference’s objectives.

Le Guin spoke of her views on the subject in an extensive interview with the Good Times weekly newspaper. “Well, we’re at a point where how many species go extinct everyday due to human interference? How many oil spills are we going to have? How many people are running around shooting school children with repeater guns? Things are not going well,” she said.

The conference was conceived by UCSC anthropology professor Anna Tsing and is co-presented by the UCSC Anthropology Department’s Emerging Worlds initiative and Denmark’s Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene project. The term Anthropocene is a new one, used to describe the geologic epoch defined by human disturbance of the earth’s ecosystems.

Last year, Tsing won a $5 million Niels Bohr Professorship from the Danish National Research Foundation with which she is establishing a program encompassing the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and the arts in an exploration the Anthropocene.

Aarhus is Denmark’s largest and second oldest university. Founded in 1928, it is located about 120 miles west of Copenhagen. Tsing spent last fall quarter at Aarhus and will teach and conduct research there during the 2014-2015 academic year. She spent time at the university in 2010 on a Guggenheim fellowship.

The conference will continue Friday and Saturday with series of talks that are free and open to the public. All will be held at the Colleges Nine and Ten Multipurpose Room on the UCSC campus. A complete schedule can be found at anthropo.ihr.ucsc.edu.

May 8, 2014 7-9pm at the Rio Theater
May 9, 2014 9-5:45pm in the College 9/10 Multipurpose Room
May 10, 2014 9:30-6pm in the College 9/10 Multipurpose Room

Sept 27, 2012 | Genomics Gets Personal: Property, Persons, Privacy

Introduction by David Haussler, Director of the UCSC Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering and the UCSC Cancer Genomics Hub). 

Panelists:

Gail P. Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D., Head, Division of Medical Genetics, The Arno G. Motulsky Endowed Chair in Medicine & Professor of Genome Sciences, University of Washington Medical Center

Robert Cook-Deegan, M.D., Research Professor, Genome Ethics, Law & Policy, Duke University, Director, Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy, Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, Author of Gene Wars: Science, Politics and the Human Genome Project

John Wilbanks, Director, Sage Bionetworks, Director, Consent to Research project (CtR), Co-founder of the Access2Research petition
Senior Fellow in Entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Ryan Phelan, Founder, and former CEO, DNA Direct by Medco
Board member, Personal Genome Project, Founder Direct Medical Knowledge, Founding Executive Director of Planetree

Roundtable discussion moderated by Jenny Reardon, Director of the Science & Justice Research Center and Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz.

Tremendous advances in sequencing technologies have transformed genomes into a valuable new source of data about the biology of individuals. While these new data promise a revolution in medical care, more immediately they pose fundamental new ethical, social and legal questions about ownership and control of our bodies and their molecular constituents.

• To what extent are genomes the property of persons, and thus subject to their control?

• To what extent should genomes be shared in pursuit of medical breakthroughs or profit by others?

Please join a panel of experts to explore these questions and offer insights on how we can advance personal genomics within ethical and legal frameworks that respond to these fundamental questions about individual rights, property, and the nature of public goods in a genomic age.

A  special event featuring a panel discussion on the ethical and legal questions around personal genomics, hosted at UCSF Mission Bay Campus Byers Auditorium at Genentech Hall, 600 16th Street, San Francisco.

ARCHIVE VIDEO

"Genomics Gets Personal: Property, Persons, Privacy"
SJWG Rapporteur Report
27 September 2012
Reporter: Martha Kenney
“Genomics Gets Personal: Property, Persons, Privacy” took place at UCSF’s Mission Bay
Campus on September 27th, 2012. Renowned Bioinformatics researcher David Haussler, in his
introduction to the event, explained that in the next phase of genomics research that the hardest
challenges will not be the technological or medical problems but the social issues. He suggested
that interdisciplinary initiatives like the Science & Justice Research Center are necessary to
investigate and address these social issues. Jenny Reardon, the chair of the proceedings,
introduced the topic of personal data by reminding the audience that not long ago there was no
such thing as “personal data.” We did not grow up with the idea of personal data, but in the age
of Facebook our lives are not only mediated by data but our bodies have become new, potentially
valuable, sources of data. The Science & Justice Research Center has been experimenting with
bringing novel groups of interdisciplinary researchers together to address these novel problems.
This event convened a panel of four world-class medical and legal experts from the public and
private sectors around two questions unique to problems that emerge from the rise of “personal
data”:

• To what extent are genomes the property of persons and subject to their control?
• To what extent should genomes be shared with others for the purpose of medical
breakthroughs or profit?

Prof. Reardon posed a question to each of the panelists that drew on their unique perspectives on
personal genomics. Through the course of the discussion it became clear that the speakers had
differing opinions on key issues that were based in their personal experience with genomics and
how they were positioned in the field. For example, on the topic of citizens having access to
their own genome sequences for diagnostic purposed, there were critical difference between the
different responses.

Gail Jarvik spoke about her practice of finding actionable genes for clinical intervention through
targeted exome sequencing rather than genome sequencing. This approaches is less expensive
and doesn’t return results for genetic conditions that clinicians are not testing for. The data is not
returned to the patient or their doctor because of the risk of misinterpretation. John Wilbanks,
Director of Sage Bionetworks, however, argued that patients have a right to their data and that
taking the data out of the hands of academics needs to become a more viable alternative.
Consumer health advocated Ryan Phlean said that that the opinion that genetic data is too
dangerous and confusing for public consumption is flawed. When there are good ways to
interpret genomic data accessible online genomic data will be useful to the public. Robert Cook-
Deegan, Professor of Genome Law, Health and Policy at Duke University, agreed that people are
becoming less tolerate to the older model where the doctor acts as an intermediary between
medical tests and the patients, but unmediated access to data for patients is only one of the
competing models doctors have to choose between as genomic sequencing becomes more
prevalent.

Questions of informed consent and patients as research partners also played a prominent role in
the discussions. Robert Cook-Deegan referenced the article, “Glad you asked: Participants'
Opinions of Re-Consent for dbGaP Data Submission” as evidence that patients prefer to be asked
when their data is used for a purpose different than the original study, but once asked they are
positively inclined to share their data. Gail Jarvik, who was one of the co-authors on that article,
cautioned that the patient sample was very homogenous, containing mostly white middle-class
Americans. The question of homogeneity is an important one for both scientific and ethical
questions. John Wilbanks joked that scientists he worked with thought they would “find the
Apple gene” because their sample population was all affluent, white men who are the first to buy
the next iPhone. While Ryan Phlean suggested that this is the demographic of “early adopters”
and will change as the technologies become more ubiquitous, Robert Cook-Deegan cautioned
that we should revisit the connection between genetics and eugenics in this context. Different
groups are and will be experiencing the risks and benefits of these technologies in different ways.
This point was echoed during the open question period by Kate Darling, a graduate student in
Medical Sociology at UCSF, who noted that people are drawn into medical contexts in highly
varied, uneven, and contradictory ways. A prison inmate experiences genomics differently that
someone who pays 23andMe for genomic sequencing. Paying attention to this uneven landscape
of medicalization is key for doing bioethics in an age of personal genomics.

It was clear from the questions and varied responses that the territory of personal genomics is
still very much in formation. Questions of sharing and privacy, consent and re-consent, diversity
and inequality, paternalism vs. partnership vs. personal knowledge, and who should profit from
genomic data are currently at stake and could be addressed in multiple different ways. Forums
such as this event are an important part of building a future for personal genomics that takes into
account the social issues that arise with the new genomic technologies and is informed by
different situated (sometimes contrasting) perspectives.

Apr 23, 2008 | Troy Duster: “Criminal Justice/Genomic Justice?”

The Science and Justice Working Group Presents

A Conversation With: Troy Duster, Professor of Sociology & Director of Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge, New York University and author of Backdoor to Eugenics (Routledge, 2003)

This month, the U.K. government proposed entering into DNA databases those youths deemed “at risk” for being criminals. How can and/or should “we” respond to such proposals? DNA databases have been celebrated for exonerating those unjustly charged with crimes, and for increasing the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, but at what cost? Are DNA databases creating new classes of persons (i.e., proto-criminals)? What are the justice issues raised by these forensic databases, and how do they relate to questions about prisons and justice? Such databases intersect with and alter issues of race, class and gender, issues that already strongly shape the criminal “justice system”; it is not yet clear what we need to know in order to address these topics in science, justice, and law.

Preceding this event, Prof. Duster will present a Sociology Dept. Colloquia: “DNA Fingerprinting and Civil Liberties: The CSI Effect and the Social and Political Implications of the Ever-Expanding DNA Databases" 3:00-4:30 p.m., Interdisciplinary Sciences Building 120

Sponsored by the Science and Justice Working Group and the Sociology Department

Troy Duster, “Criminal Justice/Genomic Justice?”
SJWG Rapporteur Report
23 April 2008
This event began with Reardon recapping Duster’s previous talk about the “CSI effect” and
DNA databanks. She mentioned that there was lots of attention on DNA data when she lived in
the UK last winter. The front page of the “Observer” recently had a headline, “ ‘Put Young
Children in DNA Database,’ Police Urge.” She asked, “How do we respond to this?” In the UK,
there is now biometric scanning/storing of biological information for migration and immigration
policies … In Troy’s earlier talk, he discussed the bias of the data base being 2/3 people of color,
so Jenny raises the question, “Can we put everyone in the database?”

Duster responded that it doesn’t change the operation of race. He noted that there would be a
false sense of universal justice. That is, having everybody is in the database assumes that since
we are all in, we are all equally subject to whatever it means to be in the database. Troy
discussed a case in the late 1980s that took place at University of Virginia. There were about a
dozen white fraternity boys, mostly from privileged backgrounds, who were raided by the police
for what turned out to be a cocaine raid. The community could not believe the police would
target college-attending white boys while real “criminals” are out on the street. Duster contends
that the apparatus of state will always turn primarily to vulnerable populations, which
consequently turn out to be predominantly black and Latino arrests. He stated that if there were
a universal database, such as in Portugal since 2004, there would continue to be arrests in
targeted areas. “Cold hits” are arrested on the streets and not on privileged college campuses.
The important thing to think about is what is the context and specifics of question. That is as
long as we have the apparatus of the state, it’s fool’s gold to have universal database.

Donna Haraway turned discussion toward the question of positive harm. She agreed that racial,
class distributions are fundamental issues, especially in regards to incarceration populations.
However, Donna questions whether the current database harms and whether the universal
database would do positive harm or will it be a money issue? Would it be a waste of distribution?
Haraway questions whether bias is structured in system and whether DNA bias is irrelevant to
system or is it doing harm? Duster responded that there are both exonerations and releasing of
innocent people—it’s always about individual cases.

Discussion turned towards privacy issues and whether it would be possible to protect 4th
Amendment rights through technical solutions. For instance, it may be possible to divide
individuals’ genetic sequences in order segment control of the sequences and allow for
exonerative use without disclosing the entirety of one’s sequence at any one time. Duster
responded that having technical solutions can be misleading and assumes an amount of expertise
and standardization that is typically not available on a large scale in law enforcement. Presently,
local, state, and national law enforcement agencies have widely divergent standards for taking,
storing, and using genetic data on suspects and convicts.

In response to this, discussion moved toward how to change policing practices. Duster responds
to this by suggesting that we change the reward structure within policing and challenge the
funding priorities that favor prisons over schooling. For instance, there are overtime policies in
police departments that encourage extra arrests and the end of shifts, incentivizing officers to
make excess arrests. Similarly, the state often chooses funding law enforcement and prisons over
universities because prisons create jobs for economically depressed communities and these jobs
cannot be outsourced.

Several participants raised questions about how much biometric and genetic infrastructure feeds
into police state and how much of it can actually be used positively to release innocent prisoners.
Duster responds that DNA at best is going to handle 1-2% of all crimes. Out prisons have 2
million people. Maybe 3000 exonerates for 300,000 who are not getting it. Beatriz da Costa
mentioned her experience of being an immigrant to the US and skepticism of being subject to
laser scanning and questioned something along the lines of where that information is going or
how might it be used against her. Duster responded that it seems to depend almost entirely on
who is in control of database. The answer is going to come in context of who is asking the
question and who has got the power.

SJWG member Jake Metcalf raised the question of whether we are giving DNA too much power
and notes there are all sorts of ways of reading the genome and more subtle ways of
understanding DNA. Some the concerns over genetic databases seems to rest on sketchy science
and an incomplete understanding of exactly what types of information get stored and how they
are used. As important as it is to resist the police state, it is important to avoid reifying an overly
powerful understating of DNA because then it is reinforced, when really it should be challenged
empirically and politically. Chelsea argued that the power of DNA in criminal justice will
largely be settled by legal precedent.

Mark Diekhans made the point that there is a privilege to identifying as/with the socio-economic
class that isn’t scared of being targeted as “criminal.” Duster mentioned that there is this pushing
together of “criminals” that started off as just sexual offenders, to then violent, then, felons, then
misdemeanor, to now arrestees – there’s a long continuum that we need to be aware of. Duster
highlights importance of possible, practical solutions. The ACLU says “arrestees, no; felons,
OK…” but at level of arrestees there is potential for mobilizing.

Rebecca [politics student?] then brought up the epistemological assumption of the body. That is,
without too much science how can the body tell the truth? From a political and ethical
standpoint, is the idea of the body property? What are underlying assumptions about the body?
Reardon added, who owns the self? Whose property is it? We’ve moved from ownership of land
to the self…is it white guilt? Who owns a body? Can anybody have property of the self?
Beatrice notes that classification is issue too. We don’t have to have a good science—looking at
donor profiles online; there are spaces for “homosexual tendencies” are being pathologized.

A question was raised whether there is fear of the “criminal gene”? Is there fear that we might
use new or find new categorization by developing a universal database. Duster responded that
crime is socially defined—even murder and rape. Historically, rape could not have happened to
black women by white men or slave owners. Haraway suggested that the politics of DNA storage
need to consider the politics of where samples are taken from? There is an issue of the quality of
science here and assurance regulating and limitations of a set of samples/data. We are not
looking at DNA but more a repeat of sequences. The politics of sampling raises the question of
“who is compared to what?” Donna reminds us that DNA is not one god but is a variety of
practices—the dog genome is useful to investigate—and thus we should not let DNA stand as a
single word.