Juridification In Bioethics: Governance Of Human Pluripotent Cell Research

by Calvin Wai-loon Ho

Overview

What is 'legal' about bioethics? What are the ideas and artefacts that bioethics encompasses, and how are they related to law? What is the role of law in bioethics? In this work, Calvin Ho attempts to address these questions in the context of the governance of human pluripotent stem cell research. In essence, he argues that the hybridization of law, through processes, devices and techniques of juridification, has helped to constitute bioethics as a public sphere and an emergent civic epistemology.Drawing on his multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork and on Actor-Network-Theory, Ho explains how the law has, through bioethics, contributed to the scientific and public understanding of human pluripotent stem cell research and its artefacts, particularly the embryo and human-animal combinations. Although the focus of his work is on bioethical developments in Singapore over a period of more than 15 years, parallel developments in key jurisdictions (especially the United States of America and the United Kingdom) and in international science policy are also evaluated. It is through appreciating how it has progressed that bioethics will be better able to engage with future challenges presented by advances in human embryo research and gene editing techniques, among others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781911299615
Publisher:	Imperial College Press
Publication date:	09/22/2016
Pages:	504
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

Foreword v

Preface vii

About the Author xi

Abbreviations xiii

1 Juridification in Bioethics 1

1.1 Why Study Juridification? 1

1.2 What is Bioethics? 8

1.3 Juridification in ELSIfication 14

1.4 Bioethics as Governance 22

1.5 Overview of Juridification in Bioethics 31

2 Regulating Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Research 43

2.1 The Embryo Rendered Visible 46

2.2 Unsettled Moral Status of an Embryo 49

2.3 Regulatory Approach in the UK 52

2.4 Drawing on Bioethics as a Deliberative Space 56

2.5 From Pluripotency to Chimeras 66

2.6 Chimeras and Hybrids as Regulatory Concerns 70

2.7 Regulatory Framework in Singapore 78

2.8 Pragmatism in Bioethics and in Law 87

3 Comparison as Bioethical Practice 91

3.1 Introduction 91

3.2 Enabling Comparison through De-Juridification 95

3.3 Translational Extension of the Normative Framework 124

3.4 Positional Relationality in Comparative Tables 128

3.5 Open-Endedness in Relational Solidarity 135

3.6 Functionality in Open-endedness 139

3.7 Similitude through Framing in Bioethics 142

3.8 Overcoming Incommensurability 146

3.9 Relationality in Comparative Tables as Policy Devices 153

3.10 Comparison in Bioethics 159

4 Scripting Bioethics from the Bottom Up 163

4.1 Starting from the Top 163

4.2 The National Academy of Sciences 172

4.3 International Society for Stem Cell Research 179

4.4 California Institute for Regenerative Medicine 183

4.5 Academy of Medical Sciences 188

4.6 Danish Council of Ethics 192

4.7 European Union 199

4.8 Synthesising an Approach 205

4.9 Policy Construction of a Limited Anthropology 208

4.10 Public Acceptability and the 'Common Good' 217

4.11 Global Scripts on Hybrids and Chimeras 223

4.12 Bioethical Accounts Scripted Upwards 228

5 Chimeras and Hybrids as Regulatory Placeholders 235

5.1 Constituting Chimeras and Hybrids 235

5.2 Defining Human-Animal Combinations in Singapore 240

5.3 Ethical Evaluation in the HA Consultation Paper 248

5.4 Reactions from the Scientific Community 253

5.5 Between Humans and Animals 259

5.6 Categorisation and Classification 268

5.7 Reaction of the Singaporean Public 276

5.8 Contributory Developments in the UK 279

5.9 Report on Human-Animal Combinations 284

5.10 Chimeras and Hybrids as Regulatory Objects 288

5.11 Metaphors that Arrest the Slide Downwards 290

5.12 Metaphors as Placeholders 294

5.13 Bioethical Instauration 298

6 Risks in Bioethics 303

6.1 Risks in the Visibility of Human Eggs 303

6.2 Risks Object Identification and Issues Framing 309

6.3 Genealogy of Risk 315

6.4 Public Consultation on Egg Donation 333

6.5 The Public Sphere 340

6.6 Allocating Responsibilities 348

7 An Emergent Civic Epistemology 357

7.1 Introduction 357

7.2 The BAC as a Pseudo-Juridical Entity 362

7.3 The State - Decentred but not Disinterested 370

7.4 Risk and Precaution 379

7.5 Anticipatory Knowledge and Governance 391

7.6 Bioethics as Public Reason and an Emergent Civic Epistemology 396

Methodology: Ethnography and Actor-Network-Theory 405

Fieldwork and Ethnography 405

Organisations, Documents and Meetings 421

Actor-Network-Theory 425

Bibliography 433

Index 473