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InThe Genealogy of a Gene, Myles Jackson uses the story of the CCR5 gene to investigate the interrelationships among science, technology, and society. Mapping the varied \"genealogy\" of CCR5 -- intellectual property, natural selection, Big and Small Pharma, human diversity studies, personalized medicine, ancestry studies, and race and genomics -- Jackson links a myriad of diverse topics. The history of CCR5 from the 1990s to the present offers a vivid illustration of how intellectual property law has changed the conduct and content of scientific knowledge, and the social, political, and ethical implications of such a transformation. The CCR5 gene began as a small sequence of DNA, became a patented product of a corporation, and then, when it was found to be an AIDS virus co-receptor with a key role in the immune system, it became part of the biomedical research world -- and a potential moneymaker for the pharmaceutical industry. When it was further discovered that a mutation of the gene found in certain populations conferred near-immunity to the AIDS virus, questions about race and genetics arose. Jackson describes these developments in the context of larger issues, including the rise of \"biocapitalism,\" the patentability of products of nature, the difference between U.S. and European patenting approaches, and the relevance of race and ethnicity to medical research.

With the rise of molecular genetics and the cornucopia of techniques it provides, a number of biomedical researchers in both the public and private sectors have turned to the human genome to search for variations among the world's populations, with the purpose of tracing human evolution and migration patterns and predicting genetic disorders. The human genome also offers insight into an individual's genealogy, which has never before been charted with such precision. Whereas 18th- and 19th-century scholars fetishized external characteristics in order to classify humans,more recent scholars have turned to the internal sequence of the genome. But how does one define populations? Should they be based on race? Can one speak of race at the molecular level? This essay explores the history of the biology of race with a view to compare and contrast modern molecular biological studies with the more pernicious actions of early-20th-century eugenicists. The key linking the two practices is the search for biological entities that do not overlap among the races. A critical difference is that modern studies use molecular biology to include previously excluded populations in the treatment of certain diseases. While the intentions are quite different, a number of scholars feel that genetic essentialism might be the end result.

Making modern science: a historical survey. By Peter J. Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. viii+528. ISBN 0-226-06861-7. $25.00. The morals of measurement: accuracy, irony and trust in late Victorian electrical practice. By Graeme J. N. Gooday. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xxv+285. ISBN 0-521-43098-4. L40. Victorian relativity: radical thought and scientific discovery. By Christopher Herbert. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Pp. xv+302. ISBN 0-226-32733-7. $21.00. Engineering empires: a cultural history of technology in nineteenth-century Britain. By Ben Marsden and Crosbie Smith. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2005. Pp. xi+351. ISBN 0-333-77278-4. L58. The electric vehicle: technology and expectations in the automobile age. By Gijs Mom. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. xiii+423. $54.95. When physics became king. By Iwan Rhys Morus. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. xii+303. ISBN 0-226-54202-5. $25.00. Masters of theory: Cambridge and the rise of mathematical physics. By Andrew Warwick. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. xiv+572. ISBN 0-226-87374-9. $95.00. Over the past three decades, a growing number of historians of science and (to a lesser extent) historians of technology have offered compelling cultural histories that depict the inextricable links between the content of scientific and technological knowledge and the context in which it was created. Rather than assuming at face value that science is a trans-temporal body of knowledge, these historians describe the scientific enterprise as being culturally contingent. Most of the socio-cultural histories of science of the 1980s and 1990s were synchronic, focusing on various aspects of science and culture during a relatively short span of time. As important and successful as those studies were, a number of historians feared that the discipline was losing sight of the longue durée. Precisely because scientific theories and practices can be successful over long periods of time and throughout different cultures, micro-histories with a penchant for contextualizing, while necessary, seemed insufficient. The question was then raised: could the analytical tools and historiographies offered by these earlier microanalyses be applied diachronically? A number of recent works discussed in this review article have answered this question with a resounding ‘yes.’ By focusing on macro-historical themes, such as pedagogy, standardization, imperialism, credibility, and trustworthiness, these works detail the importance of science and technology to Victorian society, and illustrate how the social relations typical of the period shaped physical and technical knowledge.

On a cool, cloudy morning in early February 2010, I journeyed to lower Manhattan, the site of the Southern District Court of New York. The court guards told me that it was an atypically busy day. I stood on line as scores of people went through the security checkpoint and headed for courtroom 18C. By the time I arrived at the courtroom, slightly before 10 a.m., it was packed with reporters, scientists, biotech representatives, and lawyers. I wondered, “What in the world am I, a historian (albeit of science), doing here?” Everyone in the courtroom was waiting for Judge Robert

In the last years of the twentieth century, the CCR5 gene and its protein product became the objects of state-of-the-art work on diagnostics and drug treatment. The CCR5 patent’s lineage is now the subject of biomedical research on chemokine receptors and is entangled in the complex political, social, and biomedical lineages of HIV/AIDS—with big pharma playing the lead role in the story. The gene’s genealogy has been humanized and inextricably linked to the lives of the tens of millions infected. After this chapter examines these issues, it returns to intellectual property themes. HIV/AIDS diagnostic tests and medications have been

After having his DNA tested in 2008, Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard University scholar and director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute [now the Hutchins Center] for African and African American Research, was told that he was approximately half Irish, which means that about 50% of the genetic markers tested descended from Irish stock. Apparently he shares ten of eleven DNA matches with the descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages, a fourth-century Irish warlord. Ironically, he is related to the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officer who arrested him for disorderly conduct after a neighbor reported that two men had broken

The CCR5 patent has become emblematic of the ways that intellectual property law has changed the conduct and content of scientific knowledge and the social, political, and ethical implications of such a metamorphosis. The resolution of these issues signaled the willingness of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to assist the biotech sector. This chapter and the next two continue to trace theCCR5gene’s intellectual property lineage. As a historian, I am wary of teleological histories. The astute reader will quickly identify a tension, particularly evident in this and the next chapter, between the teleology of gene patenting as