Translating genetics beyond bench and bedside: A comparative perspective on health care infrastructures for ‘familial’ breast cancer

Developments in genomics research are considered to have great potential for improving health care – making genomics an urgent site for translational efforts. Yet while much emphasis is put on the technical challenges of translation, there is less scholarly attention for the social infrastructures through which novel medical interventions may be delivered to patient populations. Reflecting the idea that cancer is at the frontier of genomic applications in health care, this paper explores how the assessment of familial breast cancer risks was ‘translated’ into routine health care in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The paper identifies regulation, institutionalization and standardization as key mechanisms of translation that find distinct expression in particular sociocultural contexts and shape both the social and technical making of genomics into routine clinical practice. Translation is therefore an area of social as well as technical concern, and therefore requires collective decision-making.