Centre of Genomics and Policy, Department of Human Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
OMICS. 2011 Sep;15(9):637-46. doi: 10.1089/omi.2011.0087. Epub 2011 Aug 17.
Vaccinomics is the convergence of vaccinology and population-based omics sciences. The success of knowledge-based innovations such as vaccinomics is not only contingent on access to new biotechnologies. It also requires new ways of governance of science, knowledge production, and management. This article presents a conceptual analysis of the anticipatory and adaptive approaches that are crucial for the responsible design and sustainable transition of vaccinomics to public health practice. Anticipatory governance is a new approach to manage the uncertainties embedded on an innovation trajectory with participatory foresight, in order to devise governance instruments for collective "steering" of science and technology. As a contrast to hitherto narrowly framed "downstream impact assessments" for emerging technologies, anticipatory governance adopts a broader and interventionist approach that recognizes the social construction of technology design and innovation. It includes in its process explicit mechanisms to understand the factors upstream to the innovation trajectory such as deliberation and cocultivation of the aims, motives, funding, design, and direction of science and technology, both by experts and publics. This upstream shift from a consumer "product uptake" focus to "participatory technology design" on the innovation trajectory is an appropriately radical and necessary departure in the field of technology assessment, especially given that considerable public funds are dedicated to innovations. Recent examples of demands by research funding agencies to anticipate the broad impacts of proposed research--at a very upstream stage at the time of research funding application--suggest that anticipatory governance with foresight may be one way how postgenomics scientific practice might transform in the future toward responsible innovation. Moreover, the present context of knowledge production in vaccinomics is such that policy making for vaccines of the 21st century is occurring in the face of uncertainties where the "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent and where no single one of these dimensions can be managed in isolation from the rest." This article concludes, however, that uncertainty is not an accident of the scientific method, but its very substance. Anticipatory governance with participatory foresight offers a mechanism to respond to such inherent sociotechnical uncertainties in the emerging field of vaccinomics by making the coproduction of scientific knowledge by technology and the social systems explicit. Ultimately, this serves to integrate scientific and social knowledge thereby steering innovations to coproduce results and outputs that are socially robust and context sensitive.
疫苗组学是疫苗学和基于人群的组学科学的融合。基于知识的创新，如疫苗组学的成功不仅取决于获得新的生物技术。它还需要新的科学治理、知识生产和管理方式。本文对前瞻性和适应性方法进行了概念分析，这些方法对于负责任地设计和可持续地将疫苗组学过渡到公共卫生实践至关重要。前瞻性治理是一种新的方法，用于管理创新轨迹中固有的不确定性，通过参与式预测来制定治理工具，以对科学和技术进行集体“引导”。与迄今为止对新兴技术进行的狭义框架的“下游影响评估”形成对比，前瞻性治理采用了更广泛和干预性的方法，承认技术设计和创新的社会建构。它在其过程中包括明确的机制，以了解创新轨迹上游的因素，如专家和公众对科学和技术的目标、动机、资金、设计和方向的审议和共同培养。这种从创新轨迹上的消费者“产品接受”焦点向“参与式技术设计”的上游转变，是技术评估领域的一个适当的激进和必要的突破，特别是因为相当多的公共资金用于创新。最近，研究资助机构要求对拟议研究的广泛影响进行前瞻性预测的例子表明，具有前瞻性的前瞻性治理可能是后基因组科学实践在未来向负责任创新转变的一种方式。此外，疫苗组学知识生产的现状是，21 世纪疫苗的政策制定是在面对不确定性的情况下进行的，在这种情况下，“事实不确定、价值观存在争议、利害关系重大、决策紧迫，而这些维度中的任何一个都不能孤立于其他维度来管理”。然而，本文得出结论，不确定性不是科学方法的偶然，而是其本质。具有参与式预测的前瞻性治理通过明确技术和社会系统共同产生科学知识，为应对疫苗组学这一新兴领域中的固有社会技术不确定性提供了一种机制。最终，这有助于整合科学和社会知识，从而引导创新共同产生具有社会稳健性和上下文敏感性的结果和产出。
