Feminist Issues in Contemporary UK Biopolitics - a CESAGen dissemination seminar series
Seminar 2 - 'Methods, tools and approaches: research relationships'
Date: April 27th 2007
Time: 10.00 am – 4.30 pm
Venue: CESAGen, Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University
This is the second in a series of one day events, organised to discuss issues regarding research relationships in social research on biomedicine and technoscience. There will be presentations by key researchers and others engaging with this topic, and an opportunity to debate and discuss the challenges raised, as well as the existing and prospective feminist resources available to respond to them.
Potential issues for discussion include the challenges and opportunities – methodological and epistemological, amongst others – arising from relationships between:
* Social scientists and life scientists, clinicians and other health professionals
* Practitioners in the arts and practitioners in technoscience and biomedicine
* Researchers and their co-respondents
* Interdisciplinary research teams
* Science and policy actors and publics
The aim of this seminar is to encourage informed debates with and between feminist academics and other engaged stakeholders. Following a morning of short presentations, the event will have a workshop style format, with emphasis on relatively informal participation and interaction, discussing key issues and themes.
Invited speakers include:
Alexandra Plows
Celia Roberts
Sarah Parry
Clare Williams
Maureen McNeil
The seminar is free of charge and lunch will be provided. Places are limited so please contact Keith Calvert (k.calvert2@lancaster.ac.uk or 01524 510842) to book a place.
http://www.cesagen.lancs.ac.uk/events/current/feminist_biopolitics.htm
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Pre-empting resistence to hybrid embryos
Leading members of the scientific community are pre-empting, and presumably hoping to influence the HFEA’a attempts to regulate research around the creation of animal/human embryos.
Pre-empting any official decision by the HFEA (more usually credited as a permissive body and seen by scientists as making the right decision in allowing therapeutic cloning and in sourcing human eggs for research) - those applying for hybrid-embryo research licences, and other supporters, appear to be subjecting the HFEA to a trial by PR in an attempt to get permission for this kind of research through.
The early and unofficial indication that the HFEA might not agree to hybrid embryos is one of the first instances of resistance by the HFEA to a licence application - resulting in numerous simultaneous press releases and a letter to the media. The resulting headlines have focussed on the risk to patients that opposition to the research allegedly poses. Such hyperbolic imaginings seem rather exaggerated – the relationship between experiments of this kind and clinical trials is tenuous and the relationship to treatment and cures is beyond anyone’s experience - time lines for such hopeful futures are constantly moved beyond the horizon of the life time of current patients. Through these news stories the risk to an imagined future humanity is being figured as an immediate concern which should outweigh any other considerations. This doesn’t seem like the best way to understand or regulate science.
The ability of the HFEA to stand as an independent body is surely under question, when placed under such widely circulated and publicly mediated pressures to licence any proposals involving embryos.
These events have yet to fully unfold but if the licences are issued as a result of this aggressive PR it does not bode well for any claims that independent regulation can operate in the UK.
Other stories:
Scientists support hybrid embryos
Why are ministers opposed to hybrids?
Hybrid embryo work 'under threat'
Scientists attack plan to ban 'hybrid' embryos
Pre-empting any official decision by the HFEA (more usually credited as a permissive body and seen by scientists as making the right decision in allowing therapeutic cloning and in sourcing human eggs for research) - those applying for hybrid-embryo research licences, and other supporters, appear to be subjecting the HFEA to a trial by PR in an attempt to get permission for this kind of research through.
The early and unofficial indication that the HFEA might not agree to hybrid embryos is one of the first instances of resistance by the HFEA to a licence application - resulting in numerous simultaneous press releases and a letter to the media. The resulting headlines have focussed on the risk to patients that opposition to the research allegedly poses. Such hyperbolic imaginings seem rather exaggerated – the relationship between experiments of this kind and clinical trials is tenuous and the relationship to treatment and cures is beyond anyone’s experience - time lines for such hopeful futures are constantly moved beyond the horizon of the life time of current patients. Through these news stories the risk to an imagined future humanity is being figured as an immediate concern which should outweigh any other considerations. This doesn’t seem like the best way to understand or regulate science.
The ability of the HFEA to stand as an independent body is surely under question, when placed under such widely circulated and publicly mediated pressures to licence any proposals involving embryos.
These events have yet to fully unfold but if the licences are issued as a result of this aggressive PR it does not bode well for any claims that independent regulation can operate in the UK.
Other stories:
Scientists support hybrid embryos
Why are ministers opposed to hybrids?
Hybrid embryo work 'under threat'
Scientists attack plan to ban 'hybrid' embryos
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