Abstract:
Since the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), biomedical sciences have moved away from a gene-centred view and towards a multi-factorial one in which environment, broadly speaking, plays a central role in the determination of human health and disease. Environmental exposures have been shown to be highly prevalent in disease causation. They are considered as complementary to genetic factors in the etiology of diseases, hence the introduction of the concept of the \"exposome\" as encompassing the totality of human environmental exposures, from conception onwards (Wild in Cancer Epidemiol Biomark Prev 14:1847-1850, 2005), and the launch of the Human Exposome Project (HEP) which aims to complement the HGP. At first sight, and seen as complementary to the genome, the exposome could thus appear as contributing to the rise of novel postgenomic deterministic narratives which place the environment at their core. Is this really the case? If so, what sort of determinism is at work in exposomics research? Is it a case of environmental determinism, and if so, in what sense? Or is it a new sort of deterministic view? In this paper, we first show that causal narratives in exposomics are still very similar to gene-centred deterministic narratives. They correspond to a form of Laplacian determinism and, above all, to what Claude Bernard called the \"determinism of a phenomenon\". Second, we introduce the notion of \"reversed heuristic determinism\" to characterize the specific deterministic narratives present in exposomics. Indeed, the accepted sorts of external environmental exposures conceived as being at the origins of diseases are determined, methodologically speaking, by their identifiable internal and biological markers. We conclude by highlighting the most relevant implications of the presence of this heuristic determinism in exposomics research.
摘要:
自从人类基因组计划(HGP)完成以来,生物医学科学已经从基因中心的观点转向了多因素的观点,广义地说,在人类健康和疾病的决定中起着核心作用。环境暴露已被证明在疾病因果关系中非常普遍。它们被认为是疾病病因中遗传因素的补充,因此,引入了“暴露”的概念,涵盖了人类环境暴露的全部,从概念开始(癌症流行病学中的野生生物公园Prev14:1847-1850,2005年),以及旨在补充HGP的人类外显子组项目(HEP)的启动。乍一看,被视为与基因组互补,因此,暴露组似乎有助于将环境置于其核心的新型后基因组确定性叙事的兴起。真的是这样吗?如果是这样,什么样的决定论在暴露组学研究中起作用?这是环境决定论的例子,如果是这样,在什么意义上?还是一种新的确定性观点?在本文中,我们首先表明,暴露组学中的因果叙事仍然与以基因为中心的确定性叙事非常相似.它们对应于拉普拉斯决定论的一种形式,最重要的是,克劳德·伯纳德称之为“现象的决定论”。第二,我们引入了“反向启发式决定论”的概念来描述暴露组学中存在的特定确定性叙事。的确,被认为是疾病起源的公认类型的外部环境暴露被确定,从方法论上讲,通过它们可识别的内部和生物标记。最后,我们强调了这种启发式决定论在暴露组学研究中存在的最相关含义。