Promising Genomics examines the case of the Icelandic biotechnology company deCODE Genetics. Fortun tells the story of a company, created in 1996 in Iceland by a predominantly foreign group of shareholders, that negotiated a contract with the Icelandic government for 12 years of exclusive access to the Health Sector Database, a biobank which included the medical, genetic and genealogical records of the Icelandic population. This controversial union of public and private sectors, which was further complicated by deCODE's relationship with the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche, aimed to leverage the supposed genetic homogeneity of the Icelandic population to identify genes responsible for common diseases. Consequently, as deCODE became caught up in cycles of excitement and scepticism, it produced a number of promises about the use and value of genetic information. The book explores the character of such genomic ‘promises’, and also examines the political and ethical ramifications of genomic ‘speculating’. Drawing on ethnography in scientific, commercial and political arenas, Fortun discusses the controversy surrounding deCODE without condoning the company's activities. Rather, Fortun focuses his analysis on how deCODE, in seeking access to Iceland's health records, made questionable decisions regarding consent, privacy and ethical business practices.

To discuss the events surrounding the creation and establishment of deCODE genetics, Fortun uses the rhetorical device ‘chiasmus’ (denoted as ‘X’) to discuss ‘volatile couplets’ of terms that are ‘conventionally taken as distinct or even opposed, but that in fact depend on each other’ (p. 14). This allows Fortun to examine important concepts related to deCODE's activities, and to explore how meanings and values are constructed through oppositions. Fortun uses chiasmus not only as an analytical construct, but also as a means to structure the chapters throughout the book. Each chapter deals with a chiasma of sorts – public×private, distance×complexity, promise×disclosure – and tries to relate the opposing terms to deCODE's activities. Fortun also discusses in detail ‘what is promising’ about deCODE Genetics, presenting his book as an ‘anthropology of promising’ juxtaposed against ethnographies of genomics, financial speculation, Iceland and bioethics. Fortun sees promises as an instrinsic feature of genomics on many levels: biologically, genomics is a field of scientific research that is based on predictions into the future, as genomic information indicates the mere probability of developing a disease. Socially, genomics enterprises make promises that create special types of relationship between entities, and thus promises have meaning in the larger discourse surrounding biomedical discoveries and their commercial applications. Promising Genomics examines various aspects of deCODE Genetics – its CEO Kári Stefánsson (Chapter 5), its relationship to the biotechnology boom and crash of 2000 (Chapter 13), the legal ramifications of deCODE's policies regarding data privacy and risk disclosure (Chapters 16) – in order to construct an ethnography of the promises and ‘forward-looking statements’ that surround the global genomic political economy.

Overall, Promising Genomics is an engaging work of writing; by crafting his ethnography like a story, Fortun has employed a novel and creative ethnographic approach that textures and historicizes the case of deCODE Genetics. In addition, Fortun's use of ‘chiasmus’ provides an innovative new category of analysis that may be of potential use for other studies in anthropology and science and technology studies. Yet it is Fortun's creativity – his willingness to jump between actors, locations and themes – that can make it difficult to follow the narrative, or to understand how the various stories relate back to the book's primary focus, deCODE. Despite the wandering nature of the narrative, Fortun does effectively emphasize that in order to understand the story of deCODE Genetics, we must understand the wider history of Iceland and the wider scientific and political environment of genomic research. Ultimately, I would recommend the book not as a classic ethnography of genomic research, but rather as an interesting and insightful work crafted to help us understand – with the help of such seemingly random characters as Keiko the killer whale and Haldor Laxness the Icelandic novelist – how the ‘speculating’ and ‘promising’ events surrounding deCODE unfolded.