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AMADE M'CHAREK, The Human Genome Diversity Project: An Ethnography of Scientific Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, x + 185 p.
The Human Genome Project is well known for its first complete sequencing and mapping of the biochemical basis of human heredity. Although less well publicized than the Human Genome Project, another genomic project was announced in 1991. Unsatisfied with the narrow sample of people whose genome researchers wanted to decode, some scientists, led by Allan Wilson and Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a biochemist and population geneticist, conceived a different project, called the Human Genome Diversity Project. Instead of relying on only a few examples of the human genome, taken from four or five European individuals to represent the whole of the human species, the Diversity Project had much broader aims, wishing to tackle the diversity of the human species in its genetic make-up. Unfortunately, launching the Human Genome Diversity Project was done only with great difficulty.
This story forms the background of the fine book written by Amade M'charek, who teaches both political science and biology at the University of Amsterdam. Although the Human Genome Diversity Project was not successful, human genome diversity research, as opposed to a co-ordinated international project, was never abandoned.
This book, comprising an approach to the sociology of science and technology, belongs to laboratory studies. It takes a close look chiefly at the research subjects and practices inside two European laboratories, though other laboratories were visited. All try to tackle basic and practical problems in genetics and population biology. We know that many linguistic groups are fast disappearing; scientists believe that isolated linguistic groups are also isolated genetic groups. They may have a unique...