Constituting Stratified Publics and Building the Futures of Health through Precision Medicine

• In Event: Ghosts of Modern Futures Past – II

Abstract

Imaginaries of Precision Medicine – as a new paradigm of medicine which combines genomic analysis with a patient’s lifestyle and environmental data – are steering visions of biomedicalized health futures toward individualized, raced-classed techno-solutions for the privileged and away from community focused healthcare. The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), a leading medical university, has adopted precision medicine into its institutional mission. UCSF’s Mission Bay campus is the core of its Precision Medicine Initiative. At this corner of Mission Bay, where 16th and 3rd Streets intersect, Uber is also building its new headquarters, sharing the same plot of land as the new Golden State Warriors arena. Here we are witnessing an emergent epicenter, a material confluence of neoliberal development projects – tech touching biotech touching sport, (un)expectedly. I argue that through observing the construction of these buildings on this multi-billion-dollar street corner, we can understand how publics are being constituted through and pulled into these visions of large-scale technoscience projects in stratified ways. I ask, how are sociotechnical imaginaries of precision medicine literally building certain futures – the new hospitals; the infrastructure of precision medicine itself as a clinical “knowledge network”; and the envisioned future(s) of medicine and health? Through ethnographic observation, interviews with biomedical scientists in the area, and urban theories of space, I read the materially situated landscapes of this precision medicine initiative against promises of technoscientific innovation and claims to universality. I conclude by considering how publics gathering around these matters of concern might lead to regenerative rather than stratified futures.

Author

• Dennis Browe, UCSC