Abstract
This paper describes the efforts of scientists at the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and their allies in the National Toxicology
Program to molecularize toxicology by fostering the emergence of a new
discipline: toxicogenomics. I demonstrate that the molecularization of toxicology at
the NIEHS began in a process of ‘co-construction’. However, the
subsequent emergence of the discipline of toxicogenomics has required the deliberate
development of communication across the myriad disciplines necessary to produce
toxicogenomic knowledge; articulation of emergent forms, standards, and practices
with extant ones; management of the tensions generated by grounding toxicogenomics
in traditional toxicological standards and work practices even it transforms those
standards and practices; and identification and stabilization of roles for
toxicogenomic knowledge in markets and service sites, such as environmental health
risk assessment and regulation. This paper describes the technological,
institutional, and inter-sectoral strategies that scientists have pursued in order
to meet these challenges. In so doing, this analysis offers a vista into both the
means and meanings of molecularization.