Since 1919, when the Hirszfeld established a link between blood groups and the racial composition of populations, developing a “biochemical index” to characterize the “racial type” of human groups, several methods and visualization techniques have been developed, based on blood groups, to assess the contribution of different “races” in a population, and to graphically represent human genetic diversity. These included Bernstein's method for measuring admixture between different races in a population, and the visualization technique known as “Streng's Triangle”, proposed by the team of Helsinki serologist Oswald Streng in 1926, in line with Bernstein's model. This presentation will study some of the appropriations of these techniques, which circulated in extremely different contexts over the XXth century. Initially designed to represent the proportion of different alleles related to blood groups A, B, O in populations, Streng's triangle was adapted (along with Bernstein's method) to describe the contribution of the three “great races” in numerous studies of the so-called “tri-hybrid” populations of the American continent. It became widely diffused, through the popularization of “admixture studies” in the 2000s. But these techniques were also appropriated and used to describe human genetic diversity in many other areas, notably in Europe. Our aim is therefore to highlight the plasticity of these visualization techniques (and the models to which they are linked), while insisting on the fact that they nonetheless convey visual schemas and a priori frames of analysis that endure long after the theories on which they are based have been called into question.

The global governance of human genome editing (HGE) is in its nascent stages, with Global Bioethics actively seeking its role within this framework. The current bioethical discourse emphasises the need for governance that is transparent, inclusive, and accountable. However, Bioethics must transcend procedural calls and engage with the moral values of agents involved in HGE. This study explores the rationale and methods for participating in public dialogue on gene editing, focusing on the values underpinning the framework for global governance of HGE, published by the World Health Organization. In this paper, these values are categorised into three primary areas: respect for individual rights (understood as autonomy in health and reproduction), protection of those unable to express their wishes (primarily future generations), and equality-solidarity. The task of Global Bioethics is to refine these values by reinterpreting and expanding their meanings. Firstly, respect for individual rights and autonomy should extend beyond personal health and reproductive desires to include humility, responsibility, and sociability, while being mindful of both explicit and implicit coercions. Secondly, the protection value, initially aimed at future generations, should encompass all vulnerable populations. Lastly, the value of equality-solidarity should incorporate considerations of intrinsic equality and extrinsic diversity to ensure consistency and robustness. This paper argues that such a refined ethical framework is essential for guiding the global governance of HGE, ensuring it aligns with broader moral and social values.

Caenorhabditis elegans is notable for its status as a model organism in molecular biology and developmental genetics. This roundworm was also the first multicellular organism to have its genome fully sequenced. For their respective, foundational contributions to research in C. elegans, Sydney Brenner, John Sulston and H. Robert Horvitz were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 2002. Building on scholarship in the History of Science and STS that centers on how C. elegans became a postwar Cambridge laboratory tool, I linger on an earlier appropriation of the worm into an object of knowledge: its initial collection and characterization in Algiers by Émile Maupas (1842-1916) at the turn of the century. A French-born archivist and director of the National Library of Algeria, Maupas observed specimens with a microscope in his bedroom. His residence was posthumously commemorated by the French Academy of Sciences. I attend to Maupas’ professional and private milieus, and his alternating status between unknown amateur and official public figure, for critical insight on practices of lineage-making, transmission, and inheritance shared across settler colonialism and science. The dramatic marginalization of Maupas (and French colonial Algeria) in the Anglophone history of molecular biology and genetics – quite literally reduced to a footnote – raises the question of how, exactly, one obtains a room, or a worm, of one’s own. A forgotten precursor to the “era of the gene,” Maupas’ study of C. elegans compels reflection on this model organism’s colonial legacy of species collection, classification and circulation.