Promising precision medicine: how patients, clinicians and caregivers work to realize the potential of genomics-informed cancer care. Issue 3 (3rd July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ackerman, Sara L.
• Is Part Of: New genetics and society. Volume 41:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 196
• Page End: 215
• Publication Date: 2022-07-03
• Subjects: precision medicine -- potentiality -- cancer -- genomics -- equity; Genetic engineering -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Biotechnology -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 660.65
• DOI: 10.1080/14636778.2021.1997577
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1463-6778

Abstract

Abstract : This paper examines the emerging field of molecular oncology, in which targeted treatments are sought for patients who have exhausted standard cancer therapies. Drawing on an ethnographic study at a U.S. academic medical center, and building on recent theoretical work examining potentiality as a site where expectations, meaning and value are produced, I describe efforts to translate genetic information into extended life for patients. Clinicians, patients and families performed various types of largely-unrecognized labor that invested precision medicine with potential even when life-prolonging therapies remained elusive. Their future-making work was enabled and constrained by the structural conditions of U.S. health care. In this context potentiality was a generative force that was harnessed to the interests and inequities of a market-driven health system, raising important questions about who is able to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from emerging innovations and narratives of hope.