How Scientists Produce Institutions: The Practice and Politics of Genome Editing

November 16, 2022 -
4:00pm to 5:30pm

Santiago J. Molina, PhD
Sociology/Science in Human Culture Postdoctoral Fellow
Northwestern University

Abstract: The CRISPR-Cas9 system has been heralded by researchers as a breakthrough biotechnology and has gained widespread use in biomedicine. Despite over 20 clinical trials for treating genetic diseases with genome-editing technologies underway, the moral basis of modifying human DNA is still debated by scientists, regulators, patients, and civil society at large. This talk reframes concerns over the ethics and governance of genome editing as a problem of institutionalization: how is the idea and discourse of genome editing rendered into a durable set of practices that become routine, legitimated and, ultimately, taken for granted? Drawing from participant observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research the talk traces the organizational, moral, and discursive dimensions of institutionalization, and argues that scientists shape the institutionalization of genome editing by resisting the encroachment of regulatory bodies and carefully maintaining the boundaries of self-governance.

Sponsored by Columbia University’s Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture Project

Location and Address

Online