Due to rapidly aging populations, the number of people worldwide experiencing dementia is increasing, and the projections are grim. Despite billions of dollars invested in medical research, no ...effective treatment has been discovered for Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia. The Alzheimer Conundrum exposes the predicaments embedded in current efforts to slow down or halt Alzheimer’s disease through early detection of pre-symptomatic biological changes in healthy individuals. Based on a meticulous account of the history of Alzheimer’s disease and extensive in-depth interviews, Margaret Lock highlights the limitations and the dissent associated with biomarker detection. Lock argues that basic research must continue, but should be complemented by a public health approach to prevention that is economically feasible, more humane, and much more effective globally than one exclusively focused on an increasingly harried search for a cure. Margaret Lock is the Marjorie Bronfman Professor Emerita in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at McGill University.
This paper suggests that it is urgent for anthropologists to respond to a current move in epigenetics in which nature and nurture are no longer understood as dichotomous elements. It is argued that a ...neobiological reductionism is currently taking shape due to molecularization of the environment by epigeneticists. Anthropological concepts of embodiment should be retheorized in light of this development. The formation of epigenetics as a discipline is discussed, then the habitual black-boxing of the post-Enlightenment material body is noted. Five illustrative examples are given of recent epigenetic findings: the impact of maternal stress on fetal dysfunction, social deprivation and epigenetic changes, food as molecularized epigenetics, aging and epigenetics, and toxins as epigenetic triggers. "Embedded bodies," "local biologies," and "biosocial becomings" are introduced as concepts that enable the insertion of an anthropological perspective into this emerging debate. A brief account of historical trauma and its ongoing effects as experienced by First Nations and Inuit of Canada are given in conclusion. It is argued that historical and ethnographic accounts are indispensable if epigenetic findings are to avoid neoreductionism and contribute to policy changes to improve human well-being.
Recovering the Body Lock, Margaret
Annual review of anthropology,
10/2017, Letnik:
46, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The Anthropocene has been officially declared as a new geological epoch owing to the lasting impact made by humans on environments, negatively affecting the health and even survival of human ...populations. Furthermore, over the past decade, molecular science has shown that the human genome is reactive to environments that are external and internal to the body. Hence, environments impact directly on individual bodies by bringing about epigenetic changes in the genome. Following a discussion of human exceptionalism and its limitations, I argue that an anthropology of embodiment should be situated in time and space, and recognition given to local biologies as a subcategory of situated biologies evident globally. Examples are then given of the intergenerational transmission of epigenetic effects due to environmental toxic exposures with a concluding call for anthropologists to engage with the worldwide challenge.
Recognition among molecular biologists of variables external to the body that can bring about hereditable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotypes has reignited nature/nurture discussion. ...These epigenetic findings may well set off a new round of somatic reductionism because research is confined largely to the molecular level. A brief review of the late nineteenth-century formulation of the nature/nurture concept is followed by a discussion of the positions taken by Boas and Kroeber on this matter. I then illustrate how current research into Alzheimer's disease uses a reductionistic approach, despite epigenetic findings in this field that make the shortcomings of reductionism clear. In order to transcend the somatic reductionism associated with epigenetics, drawing on concepts of local biologies and embedded bodies, anthropologists can carry out research in which epigenetic findings are contextualized in the specific historical, socio/political, and environmental realities of lived experience.
Mutable environments and permeable human bodies Lock, Margaret
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
September 2018, 2018-09-00, 20180901, Letnik:
24, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Geologists have declared an epochal transition to the Anthropocene, formally recognizing humans as the driving force of destructive global change; a distinction can no longer be made between human ...history and natural history. Certain commentators argue that Capitalocene better characterizes the situation, given that the effects of planetary decimation and global warming are not equally distributed among humans. A second conceptual change has recently taken place in which genomes are recognized as reactive to environmental stimuli both external and internal to the human body. In the post‐genomic era, genes neither initiate life nor drive human development. The science of the bourgeoning field of behavioural epigenetics is introduced, followed by illustrative examples of environmentally caused epigenetic changes that impact negatively on health. Epigeneticists routinely delimit their attention to detecting measurable changes at the molecular level. It is argued that anthropological contributions that incorporate subjective accounts of embodiment involving past and present events are crucial in order to better situate and account for biological differences and health outcomes historically, ecologically, and politically. Discussion of the microbiome provides a cautionary reminder that microbes are the ultimate driving force of health and illness. In conclusion, the Earth Optimism movement is briefly introduced, as is the concept of resilience, but alone these positive moves will not curb unremitting global warming.
Abstrait
Environnements mutables et corps humains perméables
Résumé
Les géologues ont défini une transition d’ère vers l'Anthropocène, reconnaissant ainsi formellement le rôle moteur des humains dans les changements destructeurs à l’échelle mondiale : il n'y a désormais plus de distinction entre histoire humaine et histoire naturelle. Certains commentateurs estiment cependant que le terme de « Capitalocène » décrit mieux la situation, puisque les effets de la décimation planétaire et du réchauffement climatique ne sont pas également répartis entre les humains. Un deuxième changement conceptuel s'est récemment produit, avec la reconnaissance du fait que le génome réagit à des stimuli environnementaux extérieurs aussi bien qu'intérieurs au corps humain. Dans l’ère postgénomique, les gènes ne sont pas à l'origine de la vie et ne sont pas non plus les moteurs du développement humain. L'auteure présente ici le domaine naissant de l’épigénétique comportementale, qu'elle illustre d'exemples de changements épigénétiques néfastes pour la santé causés par l'environnement. Les épigénéticiens limitent habituellement leur objet à la détection des changements décelables au niveau moléculaire. L'auteure avance que l'apport anthropologique de récits subjectifs d'incorporation, relatifs à des événements présents et passés, est indispensable pour mieux situer et expliquer les différences biologiques et l’évolution des paramètres de santé du point de vue historique, écologique et politique. La discussion du microbiome rappelle que les micro‐organismes sont, en dernier recours, la force qui fait la santé et la maladie. En conclusion, l'auteure présente rapidement le mouvement « Earth Optimist » et le concept de résilience, tout en précisant que ces mouvements positifs ne suffiront pas à enrayer l'implacable réchauffement climatique.
The lure of the epigenome Lock, Margaret
The Lancet,
06/2013, Letnik:
381, Številka:
9881
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
...we must recognise the entanglement of nature/nurture that exists throughout every human life. ...far, distal variables have not received the same degree of minute attention as have cellular ...environments.
A discussion of the recent transition to a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, opens this article. The need to declare a new era has been declared necessary by geologists, together with other ...scientists and critical commentators due to the inordinate amount of human‐made destruction being imposed on the globe and its inhabitants. This destruction disproportionally effects those who are economically deprived and experience discrimination. An account of the recognition and routinization of epigenetics follows, in which an unexamined assumption of genetic determinism is debunked. A move to recognize human existence everywhere as contextualized in environments that impinge on body functioning throughout life opens up a discussion of the embodiment of trauma followed by six illustrative examples from the newly recognized field of environmental epigenetics.
In this review of research on anthropological topics that implicate the body, it appears that only since the late 1970s have anthropologists paid more attention to bodily representation. These ...anthropologists have approached the body in three ways: (1) as a product of special social, cultural, & historical contexts; (2) as part of the nature/culture or mind/body debate; & (3) as a political issue, in the production & reproduction of bodies. Anthropolgists studing the sick body have come to confront the truth claims of the medical & epistemological sciences, even as their work is used in medicine & for political ends. 258 References. M. Pflum
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