AI-quantum genomics promises precision medicine but entrenches extractive health data regimes and corporate monopolies on life sciences
Original framing: “Tapping your genome with AI and quantum computing could deliver on the promise of personalized medicine – but practical and ethical hurdles remain” — The Conversation - Global
The history of eugenics and racialized medicine (e.g., 19th-century craniometry, 20th-century sterilization programs) haunts contemporary genomic research. Patenting of BRCA1/2 genes by Myriad Genetics revealed how 'personalized' medicine can entrench corporate monopolies over life-saving knowledge. The Human Genome Project's initial exclusion of non-Western populations set a precedent for genomic colonialism that persists today.
The AI-quantum genomics narrative exemplifies how technosolutionism obscures structural violence, framing health as a computational problem solvable by Silicon Valley elites while ignoring the colonial legacies of biomedical research.
Indigenous epistemologies and Global South perspectives reveal that 'personalized medicine' often reproduces extractive capitalism, where marginalized bodies become data mines for corporate profit. The historical continuity of eugenics in genomic patenting and racialized medicine demands a reckoning with who benefits from these technologies. A systemic solution requires dismantling the monopolies of Big Tech and Big Pharma, replacing them with community-governed genomic commons and public health infrastructure that addresses root causes of disease. The trickster's role is to expose the absurdity of reducing human complexity to quantifiable genomes, while the future modeling reveals that without democratic control, these technologies will deepen health apartheid rather than alleviate it.