The Pitfalls of Genomic Data Diversity.

Biomedical research recruitment today focuses on including participants representative of global genetic variation-rightfully so. But ethnographic attention to practices of inclusion highlights how this agenda often transforms into "predatory inclusion," simplistic pushes to get Black and brown people into genomic databases. As anthropologists of medicine, we argue that the question of how to get from diverse data to concrete benefit for people who are marginalized cannot be presumed to work itself out as a byproduct of diverse datasets. To actualize the equitable translation of genomics, practitioners need to place the impacts of ancestral genetic difference in the scope of much more impactful social determinants. For this to happen, multidisciplinary expertise needs to be leveraged, and current, structurally unequal health care systems ultimately need to transform. As modest steps toward this goal, new models for benefit-sharing must be developed and implemented to mitigate existing inequality between data donors and the entities profiting from that data.

A TALE OF TWO MOLECULAR CALIFORNIAS.

Molecular identification technologies are often framed in terms of their societal benefits. Forensic uses of DNA databases benefit society through the efficient identification of criminal suspects, while consumer DNA services empower individuals by identifying ethnic, health-related, and potentially sexual, molecular genealogies. Two examples of these technologies are California's criminological database CAL-DNA and the revitalized project to find a 'gay gene'. Both examples show how molecular identification technologies are also entangled with histories of coercion and stigmatization. The search for a 'gay gene' is premised on the historical stigmatization of homosexuality as deviant as well as contemporary concerns with resisting the idea that it is a lifestyle choice. The CAL-DNA database demonstrates that stigmatization still underpins contemporary identification technologies. This 'race-neutral' database puts racial minorities at increased risk of getting caught up in the criminal system precisely because of a racist history of identifying men of color as potential criminals. While the increasing criminological and consumer applications of molecular identification technologies are spearheaded in California, their uses emerge in a futurist culture that decontextualizes them from historic and contemporary coercion. The molecular identities these technologies create tell a tale of two Californias; one of empowerment and another of surveillance and stigma.