Repositioning biological citizenship: State, population, and individual risk in the Framingham Heart Study

The social implications of recent developments In the life sciences have widely been theorized In terms of 'biological citizenship'; a notion that suggests that claims on collective resources are Increasingly brought forward by groups of Individuals organized around shared molecular biological characteristics, outside of traditional Institutional formations centered on the state. In this paper, I propose to amend this notion by situating biological citizenship In Its specific context of emergence. I suggest that the notion of molecular biological citizenship from below, with Its focus on Individual responsibility for disease risks, was In part facilitated by the development of Ideas of Individual responsibility for phenotypic 'risk factors' In the government-funded Framingham Heart Study In the United States. I reconstruct how the federal government retreated from direct operational responsibility for the Study, defined and maintained the boundaries of the population and contributed particular risk-based notions of life over more than six decades of cardiovascular disease research. I suggest that government, population, and life as defined In the Study are Indispensable for contemporary notions of biological citizenship and that analysts need to attend to these situated origins In order to productively understand biological citizenship In relation to wider transformations of citizenship at present.