Race and the Biotech Agenda

Perhaps the greatest danger posed by the biotech agenda is its power to intensify racial injustice in America. Not only are human biotechnologies being employed within a racist social order, but they are already reinforcing the myth that race is a genetic trait and impeding efforts to tackle the social causes of racial inequality. Remember, justifying racial inequities in biological terms rather than in terms of white political privilege has profoundly shaped science in America for three centuries, beginning with the scientific defense of slavery. This basic explanation of racial difference rooted in biology rather than power still operates today - in fact it is making a spectacular come back -- and threatens to shape every aspect of the biotechnological future. I want to focus on two examples of how racism operates within the biotech agenda in ways that are antithetical to progressive and feminist values -- reprogenetic technologies and race-based pharmaceuticals.

Reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization, along with new advances like preimplantation diagnosis and sperm sorting for sex selection, now assist people to have children who not only...