Studying Ethics as Policy

Abstract

This article reports on a study of an ethics policy developed by a startup genomics company at the time it gained all commercial rights to a populationbased biobank in northern Sweden. Work in the anthropology of policy has been used as inspiration to study throughto identify how the policy took shape, to follow it through to the networks in which it took on social life, and finally to probe its social implications, in particular among the people for whom and on whom it was supposed to work. It is argued that as ethics takes the form of policy work, it tends to be so preoccupied with presenting solutions that it overlooks critical understanding and assessment of problems. It is suggested that anthropology might play a complementary role to the policy work of ethics by reintroducing otherwise marginalized moral voices and positions.