Empowering Epidemiology with Life-Based Ethics: A Study of the Exposome and Exposomics

Abstract

This dissertation examines the overarching beliefs and values driving exposomics, an innovative research venture in environmental science. Inspired by the success that the Human Genome Project had in creating technology to sequence the entire human genome, many environmental epidemiologists saw the need to improve their ability to measure environmental exposures. The idea of the exposome spurred a lot of research activity: exposomics researchers created new cohorts, improved measurement technologies and data analytics, and published many hundreds of studies. However, exposomics lacks an identification of overarching beliefs and values that allows researchers to drive the field toward scientific and technological progress. In particular, more research needed to be done to map the values that are relevant to exposomics. Using a systematic literature review and focus groups, this dissertation essentially identifies these values as: research goals, research standards, research tools, the trade between researchers and participants, health at a population and an individual level, occupational health, forensic science, and justice (in various domains). On the basis of this map and a conceptual-ethical analysis, this dissertation identifies and evaluates the fundamental beliefs and values of exposomics. It defines exposomics as a research program in environmental health aimed at enabling a comprehensive and discovery-driven approach to identifying environmental determinants of human health. Exposomics should fundamentally value the creation of such a comprehensive and discovery-driven approach. To uphold this value, exposomics requires a view of human beings as agents with the authority to master the environment for the pursuit of human health.