Consent on the Continent: Technologies of Inclusion in Global Health Genomics

Wednesday, March 10, 2021. 4:00 pm
Speaker
Duana Fullwiley
Event Sponsor(s)
African and African-American Studies, Bioengineering, Bio Policy & Leadership in Society, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Center for African Studies, Center for Biomedical Ethics, Center for Innovation in Global Health, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Center for South Asia, Department of Anthropology, Department of Bioengineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of Communications, Digital Civil Society Lab, Ethics, Society, and Technology Hub, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, PACS center on Philanthropy, Program in History and Philosophy of Science, Program in Human Biology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Stanford Earth, The Steve Luby Research Group
Location
ONLINE-ONLY EVENT LIMITED TO STANFORD STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF. ADVANCE REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED WITH A STANFORD EMAIL ADDRESS.
Consent on the Continent: Technologies of Inclusion in Global Health Genomics
Speaker(s):
Duana Fullwilley is an anthropologist of science and medicine whose fieldwork with scientists, patients and larger publics explores the interplay of genetics and cultural politics in Senegal, France and the United States. She writes broadly about genetics, ethics and how people imagine and seed ideas of human difference. She is the author of the award-winning The Enculturated Gene: Sickle Cell Health Politics and Biological Difference in West Africa as well as numerous articles on ancestry genetics in the United States. The larger themes of her work have also inspired her artistic engagements with medical power and scientific legacies that emerge in her literary writings and curations published in venues such as Ars Medica, The Boston Review and exhibited at the San Francisco Exploratorium. She has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Scholars Program, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.  She is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford.
 
Large-scale genomic databases that provide DNA and tissues from many different global populations increasingly provide valuable sources of medical, pharmaceutical and forensic information. The resultant products, discoveries and raw materials hold the promise for numerous innovations. These possibilities, in turn, raise issues of who profits from DNA databases and on what scale. How will benefits be shared, and do individuals, families and populations truly understand what can be done with DNA in the genomic age?  Lastly, how has the prospect of genomics in one’s country made scientists and everyday people feel obliged to please funders’ requests for “broad consent” to reuse African biospecimens—and thus participate in a form of global health that may reproduce racialized hierarchies of colonial power dynamics?  This lecture is part of the Center for African Studies: Producing Knowledge in and of Africa series.
 

This is  an event in the series of speakers for STS 51, a weekly lecture series exploring the intersections of race, racism, and scientific practice