Open-Access Genomic Databases: A Profit-Making Tool?

A database organizes information, but since information is produced by actors, it also coordinates the different actors involved with data. Here, focusing on the newly created ClinVar, a genomic clinical variant database, we will see how it helps the government, academia, and industry (represented mainly by the company Illumina) find their positions relative to one another. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Histories of Data and the Database edited by Soraya de Chadarevian and Theodore M. Porter.