EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF 2022)

Dans le cadre de l’EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF 2022: crossing borders, engaged science, resilient societies), qui se tenait à Leiden du 13 au 16 juillet 2022, j’ai pu prendre part à la session organisée par l’Université de Leiden et ses partenaires du consortium d’Universités européennes EUniWell sur la thématique : “Health and Well-Being in a Urbanized Context: The Academic Living Lab Approach in Europe”. L’enjeu était de présenter le travail en cours sur la création d’un Master européen.

Mon propos portait sur  le concept d’Exposome et les questions épistémologiques et éthiques qu’il pose.

Résumé :

Exposome/Exposomics have been first introduced in 2005 by the cancer epidemiologist Christopher Paul Wild as a molecular approach aiming at achieving a global knowledge of our exposure to environmental factors, with a focus on individual health conditions. Designed as a comprehensive approach, it integrates internal and organic processes (eg. intestinal microbiota) as well as external factors, ranging from  physico-chemical or biological agents (pollution, radiation, infectious agents, etc.) to life style considerations (drinking, smoking, etc.) and psycho-social environment (stress, education, socio-economic situation, etc.). For every individual case, it tends to agregate an exhaustive dataset. In the USA, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention defines exposome as the measurement of everything an individual can be exposed to, starting from the prenatal period.

In the institutional and academic context of EUniWell, we would therefore like to address strong ethical concerns about the hegemonic ambition of such a data and science-based model when applied without any critical distance to the care of people.  Since it could be dealing with everything that shapes human beings, we should be aware of the risks of its misappropriation within social and political agendas in the very name of Well-Being.