Mobilizing Mutations: Remaking the Normal vs. Pathological in Genomic Medicine and Patient Advocacy

Rare Disease Social Research Center (RDSRC) at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology in the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN) announces the first “Society and Technologies on Health and Illness” seminar in the academic year 2021/2022:

27.10.2021, 18:30-20:00 CET

 Daniel Navon (University of California San Diego)

“Mobilizing Mutations: Remaking the Normal vs. Pathological in Genomic Medicine and Patient Advocacy”

It turns out that genetic mutations are both far more numerous and difficult to interpret than experts anticipated. What will this mean as we move into an era of genomic or ‘precision’ medicine? In this talk, I examine how research on people with genetic mutations is destabilizing longstanding modes of measuring, categorizing, and managing human difference. Genetic mutations and variants are increasingly used to reclassify illness, leading to the formation of support groups, foundations, specialist clinics, and dedicated literatures for conditions like the XXX, NGLY1, Fragile X, and 22q11.2 Deletion Syndromes. Today, a positive genetic test for one of these conditions can radically alter the way a patient is understood and treated. Increasingly, as the distinction between ‘carrier genes’ and mild genetic disorders is blurred, finding a mutation can even realign the very boundary between the normal and pathological.

Please join us via Zoom. Everybody is welcome!

Join Zoom Meeting

https://wzuw.zoom.us/j/87667499429?pwd=TnM1d3lCUmZZRjlBakVzQnFmTGtHZz09

Meeting ID: 876 6749 9429

Passcode: 108160

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