Citizens in the commons: blood and genetics in the making of the civic

Abstract

This essay is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Indian community in Houston, as part of a NIH/NHGRI-sponsored ethics study and sample collection initiative entitled ‘Indian and Hindu Perspectives on Genetic Variation Research.’ Taking a cue from my Indian interlocutors who largely support and readily respond to such initiatives on the grounds that they will undoubtedly serve ‘humanity’ and the common good, I explore notions of the commons that are created in the process of soliciting blood for genetic research. How does blood become the stuff of which a civic discourse is made? How do idealistic individual appeals to donate blood, ethics research protocols, open-source databases, debates on approaches to genetic research, patents and Intellectual Property regulations, markets and the nation-state itself variously engage, limit or further ideas of the common good? Moving much as my interlocutors do, between India and the United States, I explore the nature of the commons that is both imagined and pragmatically reckoned in both local and global diasporic contexts.

Precision health equity for racialized communities

“…Genetic samples and the possible data derived from them can be of cultural significance to racialized communities. Similar to accounts about the sacred nature of blood and DNA to Indigenous communities in Canada or the United States, many racialized communities from the global South—differentiated as they certainly are—attribute special (and varying) meanings to blood and tissue also [ 22 , 45 , 46 ]. Nevertheless, the benefit of access to preventative and diagnostic care which precision medicine can possibly offer makes it of interest to some, but certainly not all, racialized communities based on their health priorities, cultural understandings of health and wellness, and collective decisions [ 8 , 22 , 45 ].…”