The Geneticization of Ethnicity and Ethnicization of Biomedicine: On the “Taiwan Bio-Bank”

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1 IntroductionTaiwan is an immigrant, island society where inter-ethnic marriages have been common. Its 'four great ethnic groups' sida zuqun) - the Hoklo, Hakka, Mainlanders, and aboriginal peoples - exist only as a social construction that arose in the 1990s in a specific political-cultural context.1 In 2005, a major government-sponsored research project, the Taiwan Biological Sample Bank - or Taiwan Bio-Bank (hereafter TBB) - was organized by a group of scientists and physicians. The purpose of the project is to collect genetic data from the 'four great ethnic groups' of Taiwan in order to build a national database.2 An ethnic categorization that emerged in the past fifteen years or so has been taken for granted in a cuttingedge study.Focusing on the TBB, I hope to analyse the relationship between the rise of biomedicine and the geneticization of ethnicity in Taiwan by tracing the increasingly intimate ties between genetic discourse and the conception of the four great ethnic groups. My analysis is based mainly on primary data, including such archival records as the Preliminary Feasibility Report on the Establishment of the Taiwan Biological Sample Bank, the Final Report of the National Science Council's Research Grant Proposal: The Completion of the Taiwan Biological Sample Bank, Research Proposal for a Population Genetic Database for Taiwan: The Minutes of the 24th Academicians' Meeting, and the like. I also rely on such secondary sources as newspapers, magazines, and websites, emphasizing materials prepared by scientists themselves.It is still early days for the TBB, which is (at the time of writing) in the midst of its pilot study and has not yet reached the laboratory stage. But it is important not to postpone an examination of how the project has been shaped politically and culturally and to point out its potential unintended social consequences. I argue that the TBB, meant to identify the definitive genetic markers of human similarity and difference, opens up new possibilities for the essentialization of ethnicity - even though biomedical scientists presumably do not mean to provide grist for the mill of ideological or political debates. This project, I argue, would make a significant contribution to the construction of Taiwanese identity-politics by encouraging the view that Taiwanese people as a whole are genetically unique. My analysis of the TBB case shows that at a specific social and historical moment science and politics may be mutually constitutive. A laboratory project like the TBB may be built atop politically and culturally loaded conceptions that invalidate all claims to scienticity. When those involved make theoretical and methodological assumptions about the 'four great ethnic groups', they neglect the problematical history of Taiwanese society, particularly the long series of clashes over ethnic politics. Unless biomedical scientists address these complicated issues by drawing on findings from the social sciences, their project may come to serve as the unreliable foundation for dubious cultural and political causes.2 Genes, Race, Ethnicity, and Identity PoliticsBiomedicine and biotechnology have developed rapidly since the late-twentieth century. The Human Genome Project initiated in 1990 by the US Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health was a significant moment. In the 2000s, scientists announced the first working draft sequence of the entire genome, and by April 2003 the project was complete. Since then, many countries have set about building national human genetic databases. Such projects, which involve vast numbers of genetic samples categorized by racial and ethnic labels, have brought about changes in contemporary identity-politics.First of all, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish the concept of race from that of ethnicity in biomedical and medical studies. …