In Their Own Words

Building Genetic Medicine explores the development of one of the most highly anticipated and publicized technologies of the genomic revolution: genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer. Built in the late 1990s, this technology promised to bring the new powers of disease prediction through DNA analysis to a health problem that had puzzled health care professionals, scientists, and patients in the developed world for decades. It quickly became clear, however, that individual countries would adopt very different approaches towards this technology, both in terms of its development and its integration into health care infrastructures. Through comparative analysis of the development of this new technology in the United States and Britain, this book demonstrates how national contexts--in terms of political structures and cultures, national histories and traditions--shape the development of new science and technology, and how these differences have very important implications for contemporary citizens, even in an era of globalization.