Integrative Biology and Big-Data-Centrism: Mapping out a Bioscience Ethics Perspective with a S.W.O.T. Matrix.

Abstract

In current biomedicine, omics technologies drive systems-oriented modes of research to achieve a more holistic and personalized view of health and disease. This shift in scientific approach co-occurs with an era of biocapitalism characterized by markets for biomaterial (e.g., DNA, cells, and tissues) as exploitable resources, high-throughput technologies as tools, and "Big Data" as currency. Prediagnostics and genomics-based analyses successfully entered the public domain more or less unfiltered, offering numerous business opportunities envisioning individuals to contribute to the health sector by providing biomaterial and data as well as by using technology, thus becoming participants and informed coproducers of health. Exploring strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats by S.W.O.T. analysis, we highlight some chances, pitfalls, and biases of this sector from a bioscience ethics stance. We conclude that the shift from diagnostic to predictive interpretation of data that comes along with integrative biology seems to escape the general and sometimes the experts' awareness. Moreover, rapid translation into products for the global health market is based on marketable views on health and disease that in turn affect basic research through, for example, funding policies and the research questions being asked. Along with this, biological reductionism is revived fuelling simplified understandings of the genotype phenotype relationship in terms of biology and the human dimension in a broader sense, as well as visions of achieving human perfection through novel biotechnologies.