Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 26 No. 1 2004 ISSN 0141–9889, pp. 102–106 © Blackwell Publishing Ltd/Editorial Board 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA Blackwell Publishing Ltd Oxford, UK SHIL Sociology of Health & Illness 0141–9889 © Blackwell Publishing Ltd/Editorial Board 2004 January 2004 26 1 000 Original Article A comment on Hedgecoe’s ‘Expansion and uncertainty’ Anne Kerr Giving up on geneticization: a comment on Hedgecoe’s ‘Expansion and uncertainty: cystic fibrosis, classification and genetics’ Anne Kerr Department of Sociology, University of York In his latest paper on the issue of geneticization, Adam Hedgecoe explores the expansion of the cystic fibrosis (CF) continuum (Hedgecoe 2003), drawing on my previous paper on the relationship between CF and a form of male infertility called Congenital Bilateral Absence of the Vas Deferens (CBAVD) (2000). He extends my story beyond the 1990s, noting some recent disagreements about the expansion of CF to include CBAVD. He sug- gests, however, that these debates have recently ‘died down’ (2003: 59) and he reiterates the main argument in my earlier paper, stressing ‘the nosological expansion of the disease to include a certain form of male infertility’ (Hedgecoe 2003: 50). The bulk of his analysis is based upon a review of two articles concerning CF (Davis, Drumm and Konstan 1996 and Stern 1997) and an outline of several discursive strategies that make a link between CF and male infertility in these papers. He supplements this with discussion of other more recent articles on the classification of CF (such as Stuhrmann and Dörk 2000, Rosenstein and Cutting 1998, Bush and Wallis 2000) and similar work on the link between CF and pancreatitis (e.g. Cohn et al. 1998). Referring to my earlier work, Hedgecoe also states that the fact that ‘we both reached largely the same position regarding the expansion of CF classification sup- ports both our individual approaches’ (2003: 53). I beg to differ. Whilst I must thank Hedgecoe for his generous acknow- ledgement of my 2000 paper, I am uneasy about the ways in which he has interpreted and developed my work. Although we both focused upon CF and CBAVD, my analysis stopped at 1999. I based my paper upon a thorough analysis of 80 papers published during the 1990s. I argued that the establishment of the CF clinical continuum involved dynamic processes of expansion and contraction and significant levels of interpretative flexibility and I noted in the conclusion of my paper that, in relation to CF overall, the clinical continuum between CF and CBAVD was a minor theme. The interviews that I have since conducted with CF clinicians and scientists, and my on-going analysis of the history of CF 1 , have underscored my sense that