Carnie: Social And Cultural Implications Of Bioscience

From: Andrew Carnie
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:48:46 -0400 (EDT)

Re Session Three: Social And Cultural Implications Of Bioscience and Suzanne Anker's question about genetics.

In my own work on genetics making a piece for the Mendel museum in Brno in the Czech Republic, called Things Happen,
http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/things%20happen%203.htm
I had long discussions with Bernadette Modell, Emeritus Professor of Community Genetics, UCL Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education, London, a populationgeneticist. The understanding of genetic disease and how they were passed fromone generation to another and how in some case the knowledge held by familiesand social groups was used to counter act such affects and was significantlytouching. A small understanding of this field gained from making this work made me feel very strongly that we are all interrelated and was powerful antidote to Margret Thatcher’s, I can hardly bring myself to type her name, conviction “They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society”, October 31 1987. I would hope that contact with knowledge of genes and genetics through art and science would help us realise our interconnectivity and interdependence.

Andrew Carnie
Artist and Lecturer
Winchester School of Art
Southampton University
Website www.andrewcarnie.co.uk

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