Promising genomics, Iceland and deCODE genetics in a world of speculation

In late 2008 Iceland and its banking sector were briefly at the center of much attention from the world’s media as the “credit crunch” left Icelandic banks exposed with huge debts and facing uncertain futures. Mike Fortun’s latest book Promising genomics takes the reader back in time 10 years or so to when Iceland was known for a different – yet perhaps not so different – form of banking. As reported in the British press in late 1997, a company called deCODE Genetics Inc. was establishing operations in Iceland and it planned to sell the genetic, medical and genealogical information of the entire population as “the sources of future medicines” (McKie 1997, p. 14). Comparisons were duly made with financial assets as the value of the “the genetic records of tens of thousands of Icelanders” were deemed “inestimable” (McKie 1997, p. 14). As developments unfolded and legislation to create an electronic database of everyone’s medical records – called the Health Sector Database (HSD) – to be linked to genetic and genealogical information was proposed and debated in the Icelandic Parliament, social scientists and bioethicists started to show great interest in what was happening in Iceland. Some wrote commentaries from afar while others such as Hilary Rose, Paul Rabinow and Mike Fortun were drawn to visit Iceland itself. The mainstay of the book is Fortun’s ethnographic accounts of the time he spent in Iceland during the late 1990s and early 2000s. It represents a continuation of conversations started in the pages of this journal on the inescapably speculative and promissory nature of contemporary genomics (Fortun 2001, 2005). Yet, the book is so much more than a conventional ethnography – Fortun describes his anthropology as a never-ending series of “experimental moments”: he finds himself invited to accompany Kari Stefansson and a team from deCODE to the north of the country for a public meeting on their plans to establish the Health Sector Database, he gives public lectures at events organized by Mannvernd – a group of scientists, doctors and others who mobilized against deCODE’s plans, and becomes himself a source of journalistic commentary. While the book contains the expected details of interviews with members of deCODE Genetics, such as Kari Stefansson, with vocal opponents, with members of the Icelandic public who bought shares on the gray market and sadly lost their savings, and with members of the National Bioethics Commission, it also draws on narrative framings from Icelandic literature, ruminates on the local music scene, and ponders the fate of Keiko the Whale as an analogue for the figure of Kari Stefansson. New Genetics and Society Vol. 28, No. 3, September 2009, 297–300