Dissertation Research: Disciplinary Emergence in the Environmental Health Sciences, 1940-2000

这篇论文是对流行病学、毒理学和环境健康科学中遗传/基因组实践出现的历史社会学分析。利用历史和定性研究方法，本项目涉及三个广泛和相互关联的调查领域。首先，它分析了影响环境健康科学中遗传/基因组技术的引入、应用和发展的科学、临床、社会、政治和经济问题。这一分析特别关注分子流行病学和毒物基因组学的出现，考察了分子生物标记物和DNA微阵列被构建为环境健康研究的“正确工具”的过程(Clarke和Fujimura 1992)。其次，本研究考察了分子流行病学和毒物基因组学对环境健康风险评估实践和组织的影响。它研究了技术和实践的共同建设，考察了分子生物标记物和DNA微阵列对环境健康风险评估的影响，以及监管科学的需求如何塑造了这些技术的发展和意义(Jasanoff，1995)。最后，该项目探索了遗传/基因组技术在环境健康科学中的使用(S)的社会、文化和政治影响。它跟踪这些技术及其产生的知识，在开发这些技术的实验室和诊所之外，以描述它们如何被多个社会地点的行为者重新解释、重新配置、重新谈判、具体化和/或抵制，并产生什么不同的后果。国家科学基金将支持在环境健康科学和环境健康风险评估中收集关于遗传/基因组技术和研究方法的历史和人种学数据。其中一个重要的研究地点是位于北卡罗来纳州研究三角的国家环境健康科学研究所。资金将在一定程度上支持采访记录。

This dissertation project is a historical sociological analysis of the emergence of genetic/genomic practices in epidemiology and toxicology, the environmental health sciences. Drawing on historical and qualitative research methodologies, this project addresses three broad and interrelated areas of inquiry. First, it analyzes the scientific,clinical, social, political, and economic concerns that have shaped the introduction, application, and development of genetic/genomic technologies in the environmental health sciences. This analysis focuses especially on the emergence of molecular epidemiology and toxicogenomics, examining the processes through which molecular biomarkers and DNA microarrays have been constructed as the "right tools for the job" (Clarke and Fujimura 1992) of environmental health research. Second, this research examines the consequences of molecular epidemiology and toxicogenomics for the practice and organization of environmental health risk assessment. It investigates the co-construction of technologies and practice, examining both the effects of molecular biomarkers and DNA microarrays on environmental health risk assessment and the ways in which the demands of regulatory science (Jasanoff 1995) have shaped the development and meanings of these technologies. Finally, this project explores the social, cultural, and political implications of the use(s) of genetic/genomic technologies in the environmental health sciences. It follows such technologies, and the knowledge they produce, outside of the laboratories and clinics where they have been developed, in order to describe how they are reinterpreted, reconfigured, renegotiated, reified, and/or resisted by actors in multiple social locations and with what varied consequences. NSF funds will support the collection of historical and ethnographic data on genetic/genomic technologies and research methods in the environmental health sciences and in environmental health risk assessment. One of the important research sites is National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle, NC. Funds will in part support interview transcriptions.