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Biobanking in Singapore is characterized by contested relations between funding ambitions and research practices, and different notions of what the (potential) value of storing samples and data for medical research is. Different biobanking efforts anticipate the production of public goods from stored materials in specifically situated ways. These efforts to produce public goods in the form of scientific and economic value can be fruitfully understood in terms of extraction, a complex sociotechnical process of retrieving (potential) value from raw materials, which both informs and is informed by specific social values. In exploring the extraction of potential value in relation to practice values, I propose the notion of value formations to account for the coproduction of and intersections between different forms of value(s) in scientific practices situated in particular social contexts. I trace value formations across the life span of biobanking collections, which range from recruitment, collection, and processing of samples to their storage, retrieval, and use. Observations along this life span show the social and temporal complexity of value-making in biobanking in Singapore, pointing to the contextual specificity of how biobanking is understood as a public good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While transnational research infrastructure projects long preceded the formal integration process that created the European Union, their advancement is an increasingly central part of EU research policy and of European integration in general. This paper analyses the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure–European Research Infrastructure Consortium (BBMRI–ERIC) as a recent example of institutionalized scientific collaboration in Europe that has formally been established as part of EU science policy. BBMRI–ERIC, a network of European biobanks, is expected to contribute to both European science and European integration. Yet its achievements in these domains are interpreted differently by various actors involved. This paper draws on STS conceptualizations of infrastructures as relational, experimental, and promissory assemblages. These support the formulation of a working definition of research infrastructures that in turn helps to explore the heterogeneous meanings attributed to BBMRI–ERIC. The paper describes the creation of this distributed European research infrastructure, and divergent understandings of what it means for BBMRI–ERIC to be distributed, to be European and to be a research infrastructure. This analysis demonstrates how building a research infrastructure is also an effort to define what it means to be European—a process in which what is European about science and what science can do for Europe is continuously (re-)imagined, contested and negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a book review of "COVID-19: The Postgenomic Pandemic" by Hugh Pennington. The book provides an evidence-based overview of the biology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease COVID-19. It explores how postgenomic techniques, such as PCR tests and mRNA-based vaccines, have shaped our understanding of the disease. The review acknowledges the book's focus on scientific achievements but criticizes its lack of attention to the social and relational aspects of the pandemic. Overall, the review suggests that the book offers valuable insights into the scientific basis of COVID-19 but leaves room for further exploration of the pandemic's diverse impacts. [Extracted from the article]

This article addresses the challenges solidarity poses for the development of Precision Medicine (PM). Solidarity is invoked in calls for a new 'social contract' for PM, seeking to promote participation in PM by emphasizing reciprocity between contributions to and benefits from this new branch of medicine. In this context, there is a need for further conceptualization with regard to what qualifies as solidarity and how solidarity is performed in Precision Medicine initiatives. We address these conceptual gaps that have important practical implications for PM's development, most notably for agendas of public engagement and trust. We argue that solidarity does not only represent a value but also takes on infrastructural forms, shaping how PM is practiced in, for example, healthcare delivery systems. Next, we empirically probe how solidarity is invoked in PM initiatives in the United States ('All of Us'-Program) and Europe (the UK 100,000 Genomes Project and the French 2025 Genomics Plan). Based on this analysis, we argue that the infrastructural dimension of solidarity forms a vital precondition to build trust in PM. Echoing the famous motto of The Three Musketeers, 'One for all, all for one', PM policies cannot just proclaim solidarity for the gathering of data alone ('One for all') without caring about delivery of benefits of PM ('All for one'). We conclude by proposing an empirical research agenda for studying infrastructural formations to secure solidarity in the implementation of PM practices across national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While developments in genetic medicine are widely considered to bring forward pressing policy challenges, the question how genetic diagnostics are integrated into and distributed within existing health-care infrastructures has virtually been ignored. This paper addresses the distribution of genetic diagnostics through the framework of bioconstitutionalism, which suggests that basic categories for the allocation of rights and duties in law and policymaking are redefined together with and through specific scientific and technological ways of understanding and intervening in life. The paper thus analyzes the coproduction of diagnostic and distributive approaches to familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), a hereditary form of high cholesterol, in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany. It describes how a commitment to a genetically narrow screening program in the Netherlands reflects a commitment to providing care to specific subcommunities of people at risk; how a broad and predominantly phenotypic understanding of FH in the United Kingdom can be understood in terms of an emphasis on comprehensive population coverage and how the framing of high cholesterol as a regular risk factor in Germany expresses a rule-bound notion of justice. The paper thus suggests that particular culturally situated imaginations of distributive justice in the distribution of health-care resources underwrite the formation of diagnostic and distributive arrangements. The paper thereby proposes that bioconstitutionalism can provide a valuable contribution to (comparative) health policy analysis by lying bare how policies affect individual access to medical care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]