ArgumentThis paper brings together the history of risk and the history of DNA repair, a biological phenomenon that emerged as a research field in between molecular biology, genetics, and radiation research in the 1960s. The case of xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), an inherited hypersensitivity to UV light and, hence, a disposition to skin cancer will be the starting point to argue that, in the 1970s and 1980s, DNA repair became entangled in the creation of new models of the human body at (...) risk – what is here conceptually referred to as the vulnerability aspect of body history – and new attempts at cancer prevention and enhancement of the body associated with the new flourishing research areas of antimutagenesis and anticarcinogenesis. The aim will be to demonstrate that DNA repair created special attempts at disease prevention: molecular enhancement, seeking to identify means to increase the self-repair abilities of the body at the molecular level. Prevention in this sense meant enhancing the body's ability to cope with the environmental hazards of an already toxic world. This strategy has recently been adopted by the beauty industry, which introduced DNA care as a new target for skin care research and anti-aging formulas. (shrink)

While philosophers of science have marginally discussed concepts such as ‘nutrient’, ‘naturalness’, ‘food’, or the ‘molecularization’ of nutrition, they have yet to seriously engage with the nutrition sciences. In this paper, I offer one way to begin this engagement by investigating conceptual challenges facing the burgeoning field of nutritional ecology and the question of how organisms construct a ‘balanced’ diet. To provide clarity, I propose the distinction between nutrient balance as a property of foods or dietary patterns and nutrient balancing (...) as an evolved capacity to regulate nutrient intake. This distinction raises conceptual and empirical issues, such as what properties constitute this capacity and whether they are the same in all organisms. Additionally, while scientists use the term ‘balancing’, its intension and extension need further clarification. Based on the literature, the properties of external nutrient detection, internal sensing of nutrient levels, and organismal regulation could provide a basic recipe for nutrient balancing. Next, using an evolutionary lens, I examine nutrient acquisition in some prokaryotes, slime molds, simple multicellular eukaryotes, and in the quirks of multicellular metabolism to raise questions about the origins and universality of balancing. Finally, I build on this explication of balance and balancing by considering how obesity and cancer might respectively elucidate problems of organismal nutrient imbalances versus disrupted cellular nutrient balancing. (shrink)