Blinded by Science: The Social Implications of Epigenetics and Neuroscience

305 Pages·2017·8.497 MB·English

by  David Wastell, Susan White (eds.)

Blinded
Science
by
The social implications of
epigenetics and neuroscience
David Wastell, Susan White
BLINDED BY SCIENCE
The social implications of
epigenetics and neuroscience
David Wastell and Sue White
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

Policy Press North America office:
University of Bristol Policy Press
1-9 Old Park Hill c/o The University of Chicago Press
Bristol 1427 East 60th Street
BS2 8BB Chicago, IL 60637, USA
UK t: [phone]
t: [phone] f: [phone]
[email protected] [email protected]
www.policypress.co.uk www.press.uchicago.edu

© Policy Press 2017
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 978-1-4473-2234-4 paperback
ISBN 978-1-4473-2233-7 hardcover
ISBN 978-1-4473-2237-5 ePub
ISBN 978-1-4473-2238-2 Mobi
ISBN 978-1-4473-2236-8 ePdf
The right of David Wastell and Sue White to be identified as authors of this work has been
asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press.
The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the authors
and not of the University of Bristol or Policy Press. The University of Bristol and Policy
Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material
published in this publication.
Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race,
disability, age and sexuality.
Cover design by Lyn Davies
Front cover image: www.alamy.com
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners
For Geraldine, Imogen, Joe, Tom and the
latest (epi)genetic incarnation, baby Jesse.

Contents
List of figures and tables vi
Acknowledgements vii
Preface viii
Part I: Getting to grips with the thought styles 1
one Biology and the drive for human improvement 3
two How knowledge gets made in neuroscience and 25
molecular biology
three Blaming the brain 61
Part II: Fixing real people 87
four The precarious infant brain 89
five The cat is out of the bag: from early intervention to 111
child protection
six Perfecting people: the inexorable rise of prevention science 129
seven Epigenetics: rat mum to my Mum? 157
eight Human epigenetics prematurely born(e)? 177
nine Are we broken? Fixing people (or society) in the 199
21st century
Appendices
Appendix A: Signs and codes 225
Appendix B: The amygdala: the brain’s almond 231
Appendix C: Statistical primer 235
Appendix D: The definition of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) 248
Appendix E: Critique of Cunha et al, 2010 249
References 259
Index 281
v
Blinded by science
List of figures and tables
Figures
1 Heat map of a game of football in the Spanish Liga between 41
Barcelona and Real Betis
2 Schematic side view of the brain showing Posner et al’s 46
macroscopic brain network
3 The front cover of the Allen Report, January 2011 96
4 Heckman’s economic model showing the rate of return for 138
investment declining sharply with age
5 Characteristic waveform of the human ERP, and model 226
human information processing system, depicted as a block
diagram
6 Probability density functions for two normal distributions to 240
demonstrate the degree of overlap associated with a Cohen’s d
of 0.2.
7 Four scatter-plots to illustrate how the strength of a 245
relationship between two variables is reflected in the correlation
coefficient, according to the variability of the data and the
nature of putative trend
8 Two possible growth functions as described in the text: 251
a simple concave function and a more complex S-shaped curve
Tables
7.1 Licking and grooming rates (mean number of observations 166
out of 1,200)
8.1 Effects of famine exposure on employment rates and hospital 183
admissions for cardiovascular disease
A1 Data for the imaginary swim test showing the length of periods 236
of immobility (in seconds) for the six mice
A2 Simulated data for the genetically engineered versus control 239
comparison
A3 Hypothetical scenario to evaluate the performance of an 242
imaginary biomarker
A4 The diagnostic criteria for 299.00 Autism Spectrum Disorder 248
A5 Selected list of HOME items 252
A6 Parameter estimates and effect sizes for the various factors 253
modelled to influence cognitive skill in consecutive periods
vi
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Mike Seltzer for
a very detailed read of our manuscript and further insights into the
historical continuities, and Paul Martin for advice on some of the
technical aspects. Any errors in the published work are our own.
The book was informed by discussions with our colleagues in the
research team on Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant ‘How does
inequality get “under the skin’”? Epigenetics, health disparities and
the making of social policy’. Particular appreciation goes to Maurizio
Meloni who has pointed us in the direction of a great deal of useful
material.
Our encounter with Basil Bunting was facilitated by Joe White.
Thanks Joe.
Finally, we would like to thank the team at Policy Press for their
support and encouragement from commissioning all the way through
to publication.
vii
Blinded by science
Preface
[F]or decades we’ve all been told: you are what you eat.
You are what you drink. You are how much, or how
little, you exercise … And yet a quiet scientific revolution
is changing that thinking. For it seems you might also be
what your mother ate. How much your father drank. And
what your grandma smoked. Likewise your own children,
too, may be shaped by whether you spend your evenings
jogging, worrying about work, or sat on the sofa eating
Wotsits. (Bell, 2013)
The pronouncements of leading biotechnoscientists are
listened to with respect previously given only to the most
eminent of nuclear physicists, today they advise government
and industry, and give well-received lectures to the world
leaders at Davos. (Rose and Rose, 2012: 277)
The biological sciences, particularly neuroscience and genetics, are
currently in the cultural ascent. Aided by advances in informatics
and digital imaging, these ‘techno-sciences’ increasingly promise to
provide a theory of everything in the natural and social worlds. Social
policy has not been slow to conscript biology into its legitimating
stories. Beginning in the United States with the decade of the brain
in the 1990s, neuroscience was first on the stage, but developments in
genetics, known as epigenetics (referred to in the first epigraph), also
have potentially profound implications for society and culture, and the
responses of the State to intimate family life and personal choices. In
the chapters that follow, we aim to provide a review of these nascent
technological biologies and their claims. We examine the actual and
potential applications of contemporary biology in social policy, and
the implications which flow for moral debate and State intervention.
Our purpose, in part, is to explore how the new technological
sciences ‘think’, how their scientific practice is conducted, the issues
on which they focus, and the assumptions that have to be made in the
interpretation and application of their findings. If we are to perceive,
question and debate their social implications, science and scientists
must be part of the story. It is not simply, as we and others have argued,
that the original science can be lost in translation into policy, but
sometimes the preoccupations of the laboratory itself lead in distinctive,
viii
Preface
controversial directions. Experiments on the maternal behaviour of rats,
for example, make assumptions about what good mothering looks like;
these experiments then inform debates on human maternal lifestyle,
which in turn influence policy and so forth.
Technological biology has the capacity to shift profoundly the
relationship of the State with its citizens. If brains can be damaged or
boosted, should we not be boosting them or preventing the damage?
If gene expression is adaptive, and can be changed for the better at the
molecular level, should we not get swiftly to work? If the genome is
re-conceptualised as a malleable entity, and vulnerable to lifestyle and
patterns of nurture, will this create ever more moralised domains and
responsibilities, judgements of what is good or bad? What implications
are likely to ensue from a moral imperative that requires each generation
to maintain the quality of the human genome (and epigenome)
and pass it on in no worse condition than that received by the present
generation? How does it change your relationship with your mother
if you see yourself, not as the latest in a line of anxious people, part of
a family of worriers, but instead as a neurologically and epigenetically
compromised individual, damaged in utero or in early childhood by
your ‘neurotic’ or distracted mother?
In seeking to examine critically the seemingly self-evident virtues
of the aspiration for human improvement driven by scientific progress,
we as authors inevitably put ourselves into a position of some moral
delicacy. We are, of course, in favour of social improvement and
understand the impulse to deliver the good life for the many, but
we will show that contestable choices are being made about who to
help, who needs to change and how money is spent on creating a
better world. Our arguments are sometimes complex to deliver, and
perhaps prone to be misunderstood. Before we venture forward, we
will briefly summarise what we are intending to argue and, crucially,
what we are not.
The aim of this book is first to provide a critical introduction to the
biology itself, so that readers may appraise its promises, its threats and
its implications for policy and professional practice, for example, in
social work, education, law and medicine. Second, we seek to locate
this within the historical movement of post-Enlightenment thought.
Thus, we have drawn on concepts from social science to explore how
ideas move from the laboratory to the policy world, and further afield
into public discourse. Behind apparently uncontroversial programmes
for social improvement, there are fundamental assumptions and myths;
possible alternative actions can be obscured behind policies which seem
benignly self-evident. For example, it has become unfashionable in the
ix