From: Kenneth Van Oost (Kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Mon 23 Dec 2002 - 17:34:07 GMT
What do you think, guys !? Something good or do we forget it all !?
Menomics
Those who thought there was only one book of life, were surprised to find that
humans didn 't fit in one single chapter, but were in fact the subject of a whole
libary.
DNA tells us who we are, where we from and where we're headin' if we want
to procreate new blood, new genes, new sequences.
DNA tells us out what we are made of, it defines our desire to know every-
thing about ourselves, it gives us an image of how we can create a picture
of ourselves.
But who and what is exactly the human !?
Is that the subject who identifies himself with what his genes say !? Is he
the real option who was conceived in the testtube_ or is he the one, like
`Zi`zek Slavoj stipulates, " the contextual symbolic order which is expres-
sed in some language "!? Or is he just that irrational, non- moral and un-
approachable being where scientists are talking about if they are discussin'
genetics !?
The discours in genetics, or rather the genomic discours by scientists,
phychologists, politicians,.. is coverned by ' talking about man ' !
But who and what is that being !?
Let me begin with to explain what genomics stands for.
Genomics is the mixure of institutes, companies and people who bring
forth knowledge/ insights/ technics which can provide processes, struc-
tures of how the human genome functions.
This area of expertise is something what resulted out of the HGP, the
Human Genome Project.
The old view, that one gene resulted in one simple protein is left behind
and now we' re faced with a model wherein all kinds of complex relations
between genes and between mechanisms and genes regulates the inter-
actions between DNA and environment.
Where in the same token some speak about the other side of the mole-
cular biological coin, where eugenetical implications, genetic manipulation
and genetic discrimination, the loss of privacy, the crossing of moral and
ethical bounderies are just around the corner, are however the expecta-
tions very high.
Genomics is seen as some fast form of science wherein efficiency, reno-
vation, progressiviness are highly appreciated and worthly rewarded.
Thoughts and reasonings take however time, we can 't take patents for
them, and we can 't win a Nobelprize with them. But how big the diffe-
rence in approach between the humansciences and genomics might be,
both want to know man and how to define him.
Humanscientists wrote complete libaries about man or about what it meant
to be human. When all these books would be transferred into one data-
bank and would be interpreted by bio- analysts, there would be no complete
picture emerging.
At best an image of what kind of human there has been or is can be drawn.
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