Making blood ‘Melanesian’: Fieldwork and isolating techniques in genetic epidemiology (1963–1976)

• Published in: Studies in history and philosophy of science. Part C, Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences Vol. 47; pp. 118 - 129
• Main Author: Widmer, Alexandra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2014
• Subjects: Continental Population Groups - genetics; Culture; D. C. Gajdusek; Ethnic Groups - genetics; Fieldwork post-colonial science studies; Gajdusek D Carleton; Genetic epidemiology; Genetics, Population - history; Hemoglobins - genetics; History, 20th Century; Humans; Isolates; Malaria - genetics; Melanesia; Molecular Epidemiology - history; Population genetics; United States; United States; Melanesia; Fieldwork post-colonial science studies; D. C. Gajdusek; Genetic epidemiology; Isolates; Population genetics
• ISSN: 1369-8486; 1879-2499; 1879-2499
• DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.05.012

‘Isolated’ populations did not exist unproblematically for life scientists to study. This article examines the practical and conceptual labour, and the historical contingencies that rendered populations legible as ‘isolates’ for population geneticists. Though a standard historiographical narrative tells us that population geneticists were moving from typological understandings of biological variation to processual ones, cultural variation was understood as vulnerable to homogenisation. I chart the importance that D. Carleton Gajdusek placed on isolates from his promotion of genetic epidemiology in WHO technical reports and at a Cold Spring Harbour symposium to his fieldwork routines and collection practices in a group of South Pacific islands. His fieldwork techniques combined social, cultural and historical knowledge of the research subjects in order to isolate biological descent using genealogies. Having isolated a population, Gajdusek incorporated biological materials derived from that population into broad categories of ‘Melanesian’ and ‘race’ to generate statements about the genetics of abnormal haemoglobins and malaria. Alongside an analysis of Gajdusek's practices, I present different narratives of descent, kinship and identities learned during my ethnographic work in Vanuatu. These alternatives show tacit decisions made pertaining to scale in the production of ‘isolates’. •Human biological variation was seen as an evolutionary process best studied in ‘primitive isolates’.•Human cultural variation was viewed as vulnerable to homogenisation.•D. Carleton Gajdusek's fieldwork reveals how he isolated populations.•Producing ‘isolates’ meant tacit decisions on scales of identity and history.•To isolate populations, genetic epidemiologists employed static concepts of culture.