French Dna. Trouble In Purgatory

Is there such a thing as "French DNA"? Paul Rabinow, in the course of being a "philosophical observer" to a scientific collaboration between France and the United States, discovered that there is indeed a French DNA, contrary to what most of us would believe. In his story of nations, commerce, patients, and science, Rabinow explores the tangled relations and conceptions that modern medical research. In 1993, an American biotechnology Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and France's premier genetics lab, the Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humaine (CEPH), developed plans for a collaborative effort to discover diabetes genes. The results of this collaboration could have been medically significant and financially lucrative. The two companies had agreed that the CEPH would supply Millennium with a store of genetic material collected from a large number of French families, and Millennium would supply funding and expertise in new technologies to accelerate the identification of the genes, terms that the French government had approved. But in early 1994, just as the collaboration was to begin, the French government abruptly called a halt. The insisted that under no circumstances could the CEPH be permitted to give the Americans that most precious of all substances-never before named in such a manner-French DNA. Rabinow's brilliant exposition of the deal gone wrong illuminates those sites where genetics, bioethics, patient groups, venture capital, and the state meet. French DNA is about international competition, the future of human health, ferocious financial conflict, and the intersection of culture and science-the place where, finally, DNA became French.