A New Clinical Collective for French Cancer Genetics

Collaborative forms of work such as extended networks, expert groups, and consortia increasingly structure biomedical activities. They are particularly prominent in the cancer field, where procedures such as multicenter clinical trials have been instrumental in establishing the specialty of oncology, and subfields such as cancer genetics, where bioclinical activities—for example, testing for breast and ovarian cancer (BRCA) genes and follow-up interventions—are predicated on the articulation of a number of tasks performed by new clinical collectives. In this article, we examine the founding and development of a French bioclinical collective—the Groupe Génétique et Cancer (GGC)—that coordinates and structures the activities of most French actors in cancer genetics and operates simultaneously in the clinical, research, and regulatory domains. To examine the group’s structure and dynamics, the article combines information gathered through traditional fieldwork methods with information elicited from a coauthorship and semantic-network analysis of the publications of GGC members from 1969 to 2001.