Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century

The Human Genome Project, as discussed in Chapter 2, was presented by science as the means to achieving a technological revolution in healthcare. This chapter explores how this technological revolution was also a financial one. Genomic research is conducted with an eye toward profits. The definition of race as biological helps to enable these profits.

More specifically, this chapter explores the relation between gene-based bio-technology and the pharmaceutical industry, taking into consideration the enormous profits that this relation can yield. There is a promise of personalized gene-based medicine in the future. However, genetic technology at present revolves around group-based rather than individual-based pharmaceuticals, which are often “personalized” according to the myth of biological race.

The Haplotype Map Project, launched in 2002, was designed to track genetic patterns distributed across the globe to determine genetic sources for disease. This project generally failed. Most diseases have been revealed to be the result of a combination of genetic variants that are rare and that cannot be located through the geographical hunting conducted by the Haplotype Map Project. The better way to personalize medicine is to take an old-fashioned family history.

Moreover, while there may be genetic causes of disease, many of which remain to be determined, finding the genetic cause rarely helps to cure or treat the condition.