Date:
Location:
"The Genealogy of a Gene: Patents, HIV/AIDS and Race"
Speaker:
Myles W. Jackson, Albert Gallatin Research Excellence Professor of the History of Science, New York University Gallatin; Professor of History, Director of Science and Society, College of Arts and Science, New York University.
Contact:
Shana Rabinowich
shana_rabinowich@hks.harvard.edu
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.
Lunch is provided if you RSVP via our online form by Thursday of the week before the event.
Abstract:
This talk is based on the author's recent book, The Genealogy of a Gene: Patents, HIV/AIDS and Race, which uses the CCR5 gene as a heuristic tool to probe three critical developments in biotechnology from 1990 to 2010: gene patenting, HIV/AIDS diagnostics and therapeutics, and race and genomics. Interdisciplinary in scope, the project ties together intellectual property, the sociology of race, and molecular biology by showing how certain patent regimes have rewarded different forms of intellectual property. The decision to patent genes is not inevitable, the author argues, nor is the use of race as a major category of human classification.
Biography:
Myles W. Jackson is the Albert Gallatin Research Excellence Professor of the History of Science at NYU-Gallatin, Professor of History of the Faculty of Arts and Science of NYU, and Director of Science and Society in the College of Arts and Science of NYU. His first book, Spectrum of Belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision Optics (MIT Press, 2000) received the Paul Bunge Prize from the German Chemical Society for the Best Work on Instrument Makers and the Hans Sauer Prize for the Best Work on the History of Invention. His second book, Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians and Instrument Markers in Nineteenth-Century Germany (MIT Press), was released in 2006 with the paperback edition appearing in 2008. He is co-editor of Music, Sound, and the Laboratory for the History of Science Society’s Yearbook, Osiris, with the University of Chicago Press published in 2013, and he is the editor of DNA Patenting: Perspectives on Science, published with MIT Press in 2015. Professor Jackson received the Francis Bacon Prize for Contributions to the History of Science and Technology from Caltech. He is a member of the Erfurt Academy of Sciences in Germany, the German National Academy of Sciences- Leopoldina, and a corresponding member of the Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Science in Belgium. His latest work, The Genealogy of a Gene: Patents, HIV/AIDS, and Race, was published with MIT Press in March of 2015.
