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• 1 2018-04-25T03:01:26-07:00 Imaging Genetics 3 plain 2018-04-25T03:51:40-07:00
  

  The modes of image making that define the body and its interior give insight into what diagnosis is accurate and how the body is perceived to function and to have meaning. If the body would be looked at as a set of digital slices, as illustrated in the Visible Human Project, to be readable through brain scans, or as biometrically unique, the body has a sense of malleability and transformable.

      The Human Genome Project has been one of the main influences in scientific and postmodern concepts of the body. HGP is a global scientific endeavour whose goal is to create a complete generic “map” of the human genome. Since the 1990s, scientists have been looking into Genetics to try to find the answers for the questions they have about the origins of habits that humans succumb to through life such as smoking or criminal behavior. With the introduction of specialties like gene therapy, genetic counseling, and genetic testing with HGP at its focus and its mapping of the human genome, genetics is the primary model that the body is imagined. “The Human Genome Project represents a significant new development in the tendency inherent in biomedicine toward diagnosis and prognosis that are independent of the patient's testimony or even cooperation” (Couser). Genetic science is about more than gene identification, it also includes identifying genes linked to disease, behavior, physical appearance, and many other subcategories. Gene therapy is used to differentiate human subjects in the same kind of way that scientific practices of measurement were used to hold up ideologies of racial differences in the nineteenth century. Mapping differences among human subjects is another use of gene therapy and it also has the potential to differentiate between people who are “normal” and people who are outside the norms of society in concerning ways. Now, the differences of different groups are seen through biology and cultural difference, which takes the place of nineteenth century studies of facial features (or physiognomy) and shape and size of different races skulls (or craniology).

      The genetic model of the body makes the body be conceived as an accessible digital map that can be read easily and understood. The age of the genome is a new era of medical science that allows the body’s potential for disease can be remapped and restructured because of the Human Genome Project. The genome map has resulted in the identification of 1,800 disease genes and been the basis for over 1,000 genetic tests for human conditions. In efforts to map the full spectrum of genetic diseases, The HapMap project was started. Parallels could be drawn from the mapping of genomes and early exploration of the world with scientists being the equivalent to explorers. The metaphors about science that are used actually make up what science sees and they have impact on the methods used inside and outside the lab. These metaphors are developed by geneticists to describe their work in a more understandable way. The pinnacle of modern science is the Human Genome Project when considering its potential control over the human body.

  The Renaissance was a time of great progression for human creativity and fine art and the era of biotechnology can be seen as modern day parallel to the Renaissance. “Most of the biotechnological, medical, and consumer practices currently available, routinely prescribed, and widely purchased depend on geneticized ideas of race and, paradoxically, on the same genomic science that has been invoked to prove the non-existence of genetically distinct races” (Weinbaum).The practices of looking in earlier scientific times was the main reason identification of individuals was boiled down to skin tone, body shape and size which lead to stereotypes and discriminatory practices. Today, the invisible genes are supposedly more accurate and have replaced appearance-based markers of natural differences. Genetic code presents more facts and is more reliable in debate without taking historical context and the social field of knowledge and power into consideration. If genetics determined differences, then more than likely differences of mental capacity, physical skill and other defining attributes would be predetermined and unchangeable. In other words, there is not much point in spending money in hopes of changing people who are genetically predisposed to doing something because that is who they are. The knowledge of this truth affects people who are different negatively in many cases and this happens through discrimination on account of their genetic makeup. Genetic science aims to identify genes as well as changing them and this has become a main topic in scientific research. The research’s purpose is to change disease-causing genes and changing appearances and cognitive abilities; basically to create an ideal or improved species as a whole. ”Whereas before, we wanted the artificial object to look like a real one, we have now entered an era in which we want the real object to look like "perfected nature." (van Dijck)