Privatizing Biomedical Citizenship: Risk, Duty, and Potential in the Circle of Pharmaceutical Life

Abstract

Genomic research is at an impasse. In the decade since the completion of the first draft of the human genome, progress has been made, but few of the grandest promises of genomics have materialized. Biomedical researchers largely agree that one critical thing is essential to propel genomics into the future and maintain its legitimacy: more bodies. This Article will examine recent efforts at massive recruitment of subjects to participate in biomedical research and will argue that such efforts, while clearly motivated by a desire to drive biomedical research to its next stage of promised critical breakthroughs, also promote a privatized conception of citizenship that configures citizens’ duties as serving the public good primarily through serving the good of private corporations—pharmaceutical manufacturers in particular. This reconfiguration of citizenship, in turn, implicates the allocation of related public resources to support drug development.