Digital Twins in Translational Research and Health Care: An Anthropological Perspective

In this essay, I consider the "social life" of digital twins in translational medicine, exploring how the United States is culturally unprepared for the arrival of digital twins at whole person scales. By looking more closely at our anticipated individual and collective interactions with digital twins for biomedical research and health care purposes, I attempt to highlight how our current approach to biomedical innovation could impede the realization of precision medicine rather than enable it. Extensive translational bioethics research-including specifically more deliberate anthroengineering research-is urgently needed so that we can better understand how these dynamic, data intensive, artificial intelligence-enabled technologies can be responsibly developed, organized, and engaged, and so that we can co-create the necessary cultural conditions for us all to thrive.