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This paper considers the tensions created in genomic research by public and private for-profit ideals. Our intent is to strengthen the public good at a time when doing science is strongly motivated by market possibilities and opportunities. Focusing on the emergence of gene editing, and in particular CRISPR, we consider how commercialisation encourages hype and hope-a sense that only promise and idealism can achieve progress. At this rate, genomic research reinforces structures that promote, above all else, private interests, but that may attenuate conditions for the public good of science. In the first part, we situate genomics using the aphorism that 'on the shoulders of giants we see farther'; these giants are infrastructures and research cultures rather than individual 'heroes' of science. In this respect, private initiatives are not the only pivot for successful discovery, and indeed, fascination in those could impinge upon the fundamental role of public-supported discovery. To redress these circumstances, we define the extent to which progress presupposes research strategies that are for the public good. In the second part, we use a 'falling giant' narrative to illustrate the risks of over-indulging for-profit initiatives. We therefore offer a counterpoint to commercialised science, using three identifiable 'giants'--scientists, publics and cultures--to illustrate how the public good contributes to genomic discovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue that researchers in the field of precision medicine need to address the performative dimension of collecting data. We propose the fun-house mirror as a metaphor for the use of personal health data; each health data source yields a particular type of image that can be regarded as a 'data mirror' that is by definition specific and skewed. This requires competence on the part of individuals to adequately interpret the images thus provided.

Metaphors allow us to come to terms with abstract and complex information, by comparing it to something which is structured, familiar and concrete. Although modern science is "iconoclastic", as Gaston Bachelard phrases it (i.e. bent on replacing living entities by symbolic data: e.g. biochemical and mathematical symbols and codes), scientists are at the same time prolific producers of metaphoric images themselves. Synthetic biology is an outstanding example of a technoscientific discourse replete with metaphors, including textual metaphors such as the "Morse code" of life, the "barcode" of life and the "book" of life. This paper focuses on a different type of metaphor, however, namely on the archetypal metaphor of the mandala as a symbol of restored unity and wholeness. Notably, mandala images emerge in textual materials (papers, posters, PowerPoints, etc.) related to one of the new "frontiers" of contemporary technoscience, namely the building of a synthetic cell: a laboratory artefact that functions like a cell and is even able to replicate itself. The mandala symbol suggests that, after living systems have been successfully reduced to the elementary building blocks and barcodes of life, the time has now come to put these fragments together again. We can only claim to understand life, synthetic cell experts argue, if we are able to technically reproduce a fully functioning cell. This holistic turn towards the cell as a meaningful whole (a total work of techno-art) also requires convergence at the "subject pole": the building of a synthetic cell as a practice of the self, representing a turn towards integration, of multiple perspectives and various forms of expertise.

This paper indicates how continental philosophy may contribute to a diagnostics of contemporary life sciences research, as part of a "diagnostics of the present" (envisioned by continental thinkers, from Hegel up to Foucault). First, I describe (as a "practicing" philosopher) various options for an oblique (or symptomatic) reading of emerging scientific discourse, bent on uncovering the basic "philosophemes" of science (i.e. the guiding ideas, the basic conceptions of nature, life and technology at work in contemporary life sciences research practices). Subsequently, I outline a number of radical transformations occurring both at the object-pole and at the subject-pole of the current knowledge relationship, namely the technification of the object and the anonymisation or collectivisation of the subject, under the sway of automation, ICT and big machines. Finally, I further elaborate the specificity of the oblique perspective with the help of Lacan's theorem of the four discourses. Philosophical reflections on contemporary life sciences concur neither with a Master's discourse (which aims to strengthen the legitimacy and credibility of canonical sources), nor with university discourse (which aims to establish professional expertise), nor with what Lacan refers to as hysterical discourse (which aims to challenge representatives of the power establishment), but rather with the discourse of the analyst, listening with evenly-poised attention to the scientific files in order to bring to the fore the cupido sciendi (i.e. the will to know, but also to optimise and to control) which both inspires and disrupts contemporary life sciences discourse.

Two decades ago, in 1994, in the context of the 4(th) EU Framework Programme, ELSA was introduced as a label for developing and funding research into the ethical, legal and social aspects of emerging sciences and technologies. Currently, particularly in the context of EU funding initiatives such as Horizon2020, a new label has been forged, namely Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). What is implied in this metonymy, this semantic shift? What is so new about RRI in comparison to ELSA? First of all, for both labels, the signifier (S) was introduced in a top-down manner, well before the concept that was signified by it (s) had acquired a clear and stable profile. In other words, the signifier preceded (and helped or helps to shape) the research strategies actually covered by these labels (the precedence of the signifier over the signified: S/s). Moreover, the newness of RRI does not reside in its interactive and anticipatory orientation, as is suggested by authors who introduced the term, but rather in its emphases on social-economic impacts (valorisation, employment and competitiveness).