Media, Culture, Genomics

Materialising Scientific Imaginaries Workshop

2008-01-25T13:51:00.000Z

Materialising Scientific and / or Biomedical Imaginaries

Venue: Institute of Advanced Studies / Conference Centre Lancaster University
22nd and 23rd January 2008

Proceedings
Cesagen researchers were invited to submit abstracts for presentations that fleshed out and / or specifed the concept ‘materialising scientific and biomedical imaginaries’ in ways drew together research already conducted or underpinned new work. This could involve using the concept as a lens through which to re-view empirical research. Alternatively, discussions of theoretical and methodological resources speaking to the concept were also welcome. Researchers were invited to think about ways in which it might provide a useful conceptual catalyst for future research.

Assumptions
It was assumed from the outset that the concept, ‘Materialising Scientific and / or Biomedical Imaginaries’ would be a contested one, with each of its component terms also open to critique. The workshop did not aim to achieve consensus; rather it was designed as a space for fruitful and focused discussion which will inform ongoing research within Cesagen, and may lead to new cross-site and cross-theme research relationships.

Organisation
The workshop comprised a single strand which all delegates attended to ensure that discussions were carried across all the presentations. Roughly half the time was devoted to presentations and half to dialogue.

Outputs
The proceedings published here are intended to provide an ongoing resource for Cesagen, and the wider research community. The abstracts, power points and papers are below (this will be updated as some are still forthcoming).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABSTRACTS

Panel 1
Genomic Imaginaries and Social Categories

Richard Tutton

There are differing expectations about the future conceptualization and utilization of race/ethnicity in the development of novel therapeutics and diagnostics. One expectation is that high-throughput genotyping technologies will allow geneticists in both medical and forensic contexts to develop well-characterized genetic markers that can be used to ascribe individuals to specific racial/ethnic groups as opposed to replying on self-perception or other subjective measures. There is also another expectation that these technologies will allow the identification of the precise alleles involved in differential drug response and disease susceptibility, and that this knowledge will lead to an era of personalized medicine. With this knowledge of individual genotypes to guide medicine, some also anticipate that racial identity will become biologically irrelevant. Every patient will be treated based on their specific genetic traits rather than on those they are presumed to have because of their affiliation to a particular racial/ethnic group. Taken together, these differing expectations suggest that understanding the genetic determinants of population variation in disease susceptibility and therapeutic efficacy may no longer require, or benefit from, the use of race/ethnicity as a proxy for genetic variation. This paper explores these future imaginaries and how they impinge on current practices to do with race/ethnicity in genetics, biomedicine and pharmaceutical research. I consider how they offer positive visions of the way technological advances might resolve some of the current difficulties associated with the use of current contested social categories in science and medicine. I also address concerns that these future expectations can serve to justify the continued use of crude proxies of genetic (and cultural) difference in what Fortun (2007) calls ‘the meantime’.

Biomedical Imaginaries: On the discourse of hopes and fears
Bernhard Weiser, Visiting Fellow at Cesagen, Cardiff

The discourse of promises and warnings plays a major role in the development of biomedical research. Researchers promise that a deeper understanding of the human genome will allow us to prevent diseases, to cure them or at least treat them more efficiently. But also warnings about possible risks and threats have become a vital part of the biomedical discourse.
In essence I understand such promises and warnings to be claims about the future. I propose that foretelling the future has become a strategic enterprise not only for scientists, but also for social scientists and ethicists. One of the key functions of such kinds of biomedical imaginaries is to mobilize capital. Funding bodies are susceptible to such accounts, but they also contribute in their own way to the discourse of promises and warnings. From scientists they request that research will be socially and economically beneficial and social scientists and ethicists they ask to explore the limits of acceptability. Along these lines I intend to problematise the rhetorical function of biomedical imaginaries when expressed either in the form of promises or warnings.
Inquiring into the materialisation of such imaginaries could be addressed as a methodological question. Where would we find traces of the aforementioned discourses? Of course public representations in the media would be a rich source of data. Beyond that it would be most interesting, what scientists write into their proposals if they apply for research grants and how they justify the greater social good of their work. However, it’s save to assume that such kind of data are very hard to obtain. But it would be possible to analyse for example the written outlines as provided along with the calls for research grants. Furthermore internet presentations of funding institutions could equally be examined regarding their biomedical imaginaries. I will try to do that in an exploratory form for the Austrian Genome Research Programme in order to exemplify how the discourses of promises and warnings materialise in the respective internet presentation.

Michael Arribas-Ayllon, Katie Featherstone, Flo Ticehurst and Paul Atkinson

Psychiatric genetics: pathways and futures

In this paper, I explore a range of potential pathways for imagining research within the `Biomedicine, identity and behaviour’ theme. `Psychiatric genetics’ is a relatively new field of scientific inquiry which promises to discover susceptibility genes for a range of mental illnesses – schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD, etc. Despite all the talk of `paradigm shifts’, the notion of susceptibility is not a new idea, but a reformulation of the distinction between predisposing/occasioning causes. Nonetheless, in the current climate wherein mental health services are considered a failing enterprise – under-resourced, disorganised and ineffective – talking cures and psychological therapies are giving way to pressure from neuro-genetic explanations. Chemical treatment based on an individual’s specific genotype will revolutionise mental health care and perhaps one day replace more expensive psychological treatment. Pharmaceutical companies and venture capitalists will almost certainly benefit from this new bioeconomy. But we can also imagine other utopian/dystopian trajectories. For instance, how do scientists themselves materialise and imagine the future of psychiatry? I will briefly examine some of the rhetorical strategies employed to defend discourses of hope and counter potential criticisms. Drawing on a small sample of articles, I will show how `ethics’ and `the social’ are crucial to promoting the moral accountability of the science. Lastly, I will draw on three concepts – autonomy, responsibility and blame – to visualise potential pathways of self-formation. In the predictive/molecular politics of the future, it is not impossible to imagine a form of life that must engage in the constant management of risk, the constant monitoring and modulation of his or herself, in order to fashion a life with and through these biomedical technologies.

Panel 2
Neil Stephens

Title: Materialising sterility - make cleanliness visible in a clinical grade laboratory space

This paper explores how a clinical grade laboratory environment is made material in the UK Stem Cell Bank. Clinical grade implies biological material that is suitable for transplant into a patient and the environments in which it is handled must demonstrate adherence with stringent standards of sterility. In relation to human embryonic stem cells the Bank is leading both the UK and world efforts to establish such facilities. The materiality of the space operates on several levels - in the physicality of the building and the documentary resources used to display its legitimacy. Yet there is a paradox here because sterility is imagined as a freedom from contamination and as such a clinical grade laboratory is 'materialising absence'.

The empirical work of the paper details the journey an individual must take to enter the UK Stem Cell Bank’s laboratory space, making explicit the crossing of boundaries and associated rituals that demark the sterile space from other areas. The paper then considers exactly what is happening in this materialising of absence, using the work of Mary Douglas to highlight further paradoxes in, what we term, the (potentially multiple) metaphorical vision(s) of sterility operationalised at the UK Stem Cell Bank. These visions play into the Banks social legitimacy. They constitute the imaginaries of the Banks various stakeholders of the Bank as a safe, pure and sterile environment. By highlighting the paradoxes within the practices of materialising absence I demonstrate a distance between that that is imagined and that that is materialised.

Adrian Mackenzie, Cesagen, Lancaster University
Ethico-dynamics: collective imagining in synthetic biology

This paper will present an initial set of conceptual approaches to the notion of a contemporary 'scientific imaginary' in the context of genomic sciences, with a particular focus on the 'ethics of speed.' It will also explore some theoretical approaches to imagining that move away from individual or shared mental states to imagining as a collective process that occurs across architectures, infrastructures, media and practices of design, narrative, experiment and argument. The key theoretical resources I will use are recent anthropological work on new economies and circulation processes (Gaonkar, Lipuma), feminist political theory (Gatens, Lloyd), and post-Marxist accounts (Lazzarato, Tarde) of the communicative subject. The paper will investigate the usefulness of these different approaches in making sense of the materials, processes and forces that comprise synthetic biology, particularly in its overlaps with media and information cultures in the New Economy. Although the paper does not draw on empirical research, it will make use of preliminary results drawn from online sources (news, corporate websites, databases and repositories). The two critical questions that motivate the paper will be: 1. how do the practices of imagining generate effects of speed? 2. how do different kinds of imagining generate different speeds of engagement and interaction with processes of change?

Paul Oldham and Brian Wynne

“Synthetic Biological Imaginations of scientific agency and public good”

Synthetic Biology, or Synbio, has become the latest in a historical succession of “flashes in the pan”, or promises of what are taken to be wonderfully beneficial social outcomes imaginable and feasible only through the agency of modern post-genomic biological sciences. Much of this scientifically-credentialed political economy of promise can be seen as a mode of stimulating big economic investment in the increasingly huge and concentrated R&D activities from venture-capital and other global investment houses. Articulation of promises of important social benefits directly from this scientific innovation is a central element of this process, such that implicit normative imaginations of what should count and be recognised (and given privilege and funds) as ‘the public interest’ are not only expressed but materially performed at least in expectation, experimentally, through this. These specialist arenas of articulation and ‘negotiation’ of such heavily-weighted social imaginations show no sign whatsoever of being exposed to normal forms of democratic political accountability, despite their extensive implications for particular forms of socioeconomic relations and their exclusion of other alternatives. In this paper we will take the case of synthetic biology as it has developed since the 1990s, much of it under the auspices of Craig Venter’s research group, and we will analyse aspects of the imaginations, technical and social together, which form the tacit vision of social futures shaping this field’s claim on the large volumes of social resources which fund it, and which may also be shaping technical choices, visions and directions of development within the techno-scientific research itself. This will include imaginations of technical fixes to climate change and related global environmental issues, and of developed world economies’ relations with those of developing countries in the synbio future as articulated thus far.

Panel 3
Joan Haran

Materialising Scientific and / or Biomedical Imaginaries

This presentation will outline some of the resources from gender studies and cultural studies that both provide tools for and emphasise the importance of exploring the material effects of discourse. In particular, I will highlight the work of Judith Butler and of du Gay and Hall et al. In the process, I hope to clarify the significance of the Media, Culture and Genomics team’s focus on mediation as practice, rather than media as artefact or institution.

Judith Butler’s focus on ‘the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names’, for example, is useful both for thinking through the subject positions made available by scientific and biomedical imaginaries, and to inspire commitment to constant and rigorous attention to the performative claims made by the various interested individuals and groups implicated in these imaginaries. I want to develop Butler’s insights to discuss the ways in which reiterative and citational practices may be flexed or spun in response to material threats to imaginaries.

I will also discuss what is gained through attentiveness to the plurality of imaginaries and / or cultures when researching the economic and social aspects of genomics. I want to point to the risks of conceptualising either imaginaries or cultures as unitary or simply cognitive. In relation to this discussion, I want to explore whether the ‘circuit of culture’ approach developed by du Gay, Hall et al, might provide a framework for articulating – without homogenising – different strands of Cesagen research.

The presentation will focus primarily on conceptual and methodological questions. It will do so, however, in relation to research on therapeutic cloning conducted within the Media, Culture and Genomics flagship project as well as research in process on the mediation of governance and regulation of human and transspecies embryo research.

Maureen McNeil, Cesagen, Lancaster University

The ‘scientific imaginary’: some theoretical resources

My contribution to this workshop will be a theoretically reflective piece in which I examine some key formulations and usages of the concept of the ‘scientific imaginary’. In particular, I wish to investigate Appadurai’s use of the concept which seems to have been influential in some science studies and feminist work in this field. I shall extend my investigation to include and to compare and contrast Jose Van Dijck’s and Sarah Franklin’s employment of the concept.

My intention is to tie the theoretical exploration back to the field of the biosciences to consider its strengths and limitations as a research tool in the field. I also hope to reflect about this concept (at least in the versions I explore) have been linked to materialisation or indeed what materialising might mean in this context.

Ian Welsh, Cardiff

Material Performance(s) of Public(s) and Genomics (Working Title)

There is a need to locate genomics as a series of fields depicted and represented within the public sphere, in both generic and specific terms, through sets of material practices in order to begin to produce an anatomy this emergent techno-science. As such Genomics cannot be analysed independently of the context within which emergence is taking place. Genomics became a key component of the ‘knowledge economy’ within the context of an ascendant global neo-liberalism with the selfish gene appearing as an adjunct to individual self(ish) interest, raising the prospect of a neo-liberal eugenics for some (Habermas 2003).
Genomic sciences offer the potential for new regimes of production and regulation based on knowledge which is being formalised in an entrepreneurial culture embracing the principle of prompt transfer of near market science to the corporate sector. This process of techno-scientific emergence has been accompanied by intensifying globalisation and hybridisation of social forms as national boundaries become increasingly permeable both physically and virtually. The intensification of these processes raise significant issues for influential formulations of reflexivity (Giddens 1990, 1991) and reflection (Beck 1992) associated with analyses of Modernity. Recognising that there is an inescapable contingency in terms of both scientific knowledge and wider symbolic claims framing them is an important starting point.
Bourdieu’s work on the symbolic use of language (Bourdieu 1992/ 2005) and his later ‘political’ writings (Bourdieu 1998/ 2004) emphasise the importance of sets of performative practices within specific institutional contexts. These establish, respectively, ‘new myths’ (broadly equivalent to dominant discourses) constituting identities and symbolic challenges with the potential for critical reflexivity on the neo-liberal context (Costa 2006). Bourdieu’s insights were useful in addressing the relationship between civilisation, terrorism and environmental politics (Welsh 2007) and can be applied to the genomics problematic sketched here. In particular the notions of ‘field’ and cultural resources offer a means of beginning to identify the key institutional and extra-institutional contexts and material performances consolidating ‘new myths’ and ‘symbolic challenges’ associated with genomics.
Given time constraints my focus will be limited to a brief outline of Bourdieu’s schema illustrations of their relevance in the declaratory stakes associated with genomics and the issue of critical cultural resources.

Panel 4

Kate O’Riordan, Department of Media and Film, University of Sussex

The genome incorporated: materialisation and reality genres

This presentation explores the concept of materialising scientific imaginaries through an analysis of reality television and human genomics (reality genomics). My interest here is in developing ‘incorporation’ as a way of bringing together materialisation (Butler, 1993), media ritual (Couldry, 2003) and biopolitics (Rose, 2007) more broadly, whilst examining the specificity of the television programs: The Face of Britain (Channel 4) and The Killer in Me (ITV).

This kind of ‘reality genomics’ is a location at which both science and media have stakes in authorising reality. I am interested in how this plays out at the level of the text – as spectators what do we see, and how are audiences positioned? I am also interested in how this plays out in relation to production – or industry alliances – what is brought together in the making of this kind of programming? What does incorporation mean at the level of the corporeal, and the corporation?

These examples are part of a set of public engagements, which I bring together, that operate at the intersection of mediation, publics and science. These include sciart, bioart, novels, films, and new media/biotech companies. Reality television reaches particular audiences, and looking at this, in the context of examples that are directed to other audiences, such as sciart and its ‘gallery going’ publics, provides a way of thinking across different and overlapping audience genres.

This presentation provides ways of thinking about the specificity of genre, audiences, publics, mediation, and genomics in the case of UK reality television, whilst attempting to widen this examination, in relation to other cases, through the lens of materialisation.

Brian Wynne (with Claire Waterton and Rebecca Ellis)

“Some half-baked ideas about imagined publics and their material manifestations in techno-scientific cultures”

In this paper I want to explore how we might begin more fully to bring out into the open some of the ‘public’ aspects of what I have called ‘public scientific knowledge’. By the latter I have tried to mean scientific knowledge or research which may have no explicitly intended or expected (‘imagined’) public interest or effects, but which may nevertheless carry some such implications. Indeed I would adopt a hard-line here and say that all such ‘knowledge’ has such ‘public’ dimensions, as it is always in some way practised with some such cultural-social reference-group(s) in mind. (Thinking laterally to theme 3 and political economies of bioknowledges, there are also connections which we need to develop here with ideas of ‘value’). I will use a draft paper which Claire, Rebecca and I have produced, which deals with the techno-scientific field of DNA-sequencing taxonomy (of global biodiversity – plant, microbe, animal, everything in principle). A particularly prominent here is promoting the commitment to doing this taxonomy by “DNA-barcoding”, based on the belief that given DNA-segments can differentiate and thus distinctively and reliably identify all species, via each’s particular identifying DNA-barcode. Consistent with the STS-SSK perspectives of ‘mutual construction’ (Latour et al) or ‘co-production’ (Jasanoff et al) of techno-scientific and social orders, we have documented the kinds of ‘public’ which are imagined and brought discursively into being in this DNA-barcoding field, as an integral element of that field’s self-imagination and self-ordering, technically and intellectually. We use the theoretical insights of Ernsto Laclau (esp. On Populist Reason, 2005) to explore the forms of construction and ‘engagement with publics’ which is already going on in such techno-sciences, well before the more self-conscious, explicit and often self-congratulatory processes of “public engagement with science” which are the obsession of current science-policy. We also raise some questions as to how such imagined publics are, or might be, brought into material modes of performative being, and what kind(s) of science-related politics might be implied by or possible in these?

Alexandra Plows, Cesagen, Cardiff University

Embodied and Materialising Social Engagement: Bioscience, Identity Politics and Citizenship Stakes

Previous qualitative research has produced a database of emergent actor groups engaging with bioscience. New forms of “identity politics” are being materialised through highly localised- embodied- and simultaneously globalised, impacts of the “bioeconomy” in relation to human genetics, genomics and bioscience. In many contexts, and in relation to many different bio techno- scientific (potential) applications, “Prime Mover” actors are framing risks, hopes, and – importantly- complexities and ambivalences, and mobilising accordingly, having staked out important territory. The body itself is often the site of resistance or engagement. Existing issues of identity, self and citizenship are thus being materialised or at the very least thrown into sharper relief by the (potential) impacts and implications of bioscience as it manifests within the bio economy, and this is the proposed start point for future research which cross- cuts Cesagen themes and draws on previous findings.

This contributes to an ongoing debate over citizenship stakes in relation to the nature of choices, rights, responsibilities and duties of imagined [bio] citizens, (embodied) expertise and knowledge claims, and conceptualisations of global civil society. Such an analysis also draws on and develops social movement concepts which theorise social engagement, and in particular develops a critique of bio-labelling in relation to these new forms of identity politics, informed by issues raised by the “bio economy” and concerns over biological (genetic) reductionism. Specific issues and applications demonstrate that there are multiple points of entry into such a debate on bioscience, self and citizenship; for example, the globalised trade flows of human biomaterial; the proliferation of genetic tests and screens and their increasing commercial availability; self and the body as a site of resistance or engagement in relation to enhancement discourse. An anatomy of specific issues, applications and sites of engagement can be provided through use of existing datasets, providing an empirical basis for future project work.

Feminist Issues in Contemporary Biopolitics 3

2007-08-14T18:25:00.000Z

Feminist Issues in Contemporary BioPolitics – Seminar 3 – ‘Getting Beyond the Usual Suspects’

This one-day event, on 14th September 2007 at Cardiff University, will discuss modes of theorising, researching and performing the relationship between scientists, clinicians, policy-makers and ‘the public’.

Drawing together academics researching these topics with stakeholders in the field of biopolitics, the session will combine presentations on work-in-progress with time for discussion and debate. The session will also include time to reflect on the previous seminars in the series, to draw out thematic links and explore the possibility of future work in the area.

Topics for discussion will include:

• The relationship between ‘public consultation’ and policy formation in biomedicine and technoscience
• Inclusion and exclusion in the practice and processes of public engagement and public consultation
• How ‘upstream’ can ‘upstream public engagement’ be when biomedical research and translation are framed as matters of extreme urgency?
• The appropriate role for feminists / academics / feminist academics in public consultation, public engagement and policy formation
• Citizens, consumers, patients and stakeholders as concepts for framing publics and audiences
• National and international contexts

The seminar will be held in the Glamorgan Building at Cardiff University between 9.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Friday 14th September 2007. Refreshments and lunch will be provided. There is no cost to attend the seminar, but places are limited so please register soon. Deadline for registration is Friday August 31st 2007. To register, please apply to Mel Evans at CESAGen (evansm6@cardiff.ac.uk). Full programme and joining instructions will be circulated week commencing Monday 3rd September 2007.

Feminist Biopolitics II: Report

2007-05-22T15:18:00.000Z

A report from this workshop, including notes from the discussions and further resources and references has been published on the Feminist Biopolitics website (linked above). The workshop included the following speakers:

Maureen McNeil

Feminist reproductive politics and analysis: maintaining a critical edge
Abstract

There is a strong tradition of feminist research in the area of reproductive science and medicine which began in the 1970s. Recently feminist scholars have begun to produce meta-narratives of the field itself (see esp. Thompson 2005). Awareness of this work and critical reflection on it is very important to ongoing research and policy in this field. In this presentation I want to reflect on some of the features of this field, some of the dilemmas arising within it, and some of the recent reviews of it. This will include consideration of:

technoscientific 'moral pioneers' (Rapp 1999)
technoscientific romance with innovation
technoscience in context

Clare Williams

Reflections on multidisciplinary research and innovative reproductive technologies
Abstract

All of my recent research collaborations have involved multidisciplinary research teams, and all have focused on the views of practitioners and scientists who work in the area of new medical technologies. In this paper, I focus on the implications for women’s health of the expansion of an innovative reproductive technology, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). I explore key ethical dilemmas which all focus around the ‘limits’ of reproductive autonomy. Drawing on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s three ethical principles (seriousness, risk and consistency) I examine discussions and debates around PGD for late onset/susceptibility conditions; the status of carrier embryos; the consistency of the reasons for PGD compared to prenatal diagnosis; and future developments such as pre-implantation genetic haplotyping, human embryonic stem cell research and increasing global reproductive tourism. To conclude, I highlight some broader questions in relation to multidisciplinary research on reproductive technologies and women’s health. Some points in the discussion of panel I:The discussion picked up on the issue of balance (which Maureen McNeil had highlighted as problematic) and compared this to ‘consensus’. It was noted that scholarship validates balance but that this is not necessarily a good thing – although it is normatively constructed as such. In relation to innovation it was noted that public engagement is now being built into the design of technologies (e.g. nanotechnology) and that this requires reflection on how ‘normalisation’ occurs.

Alexandra Plows

An autobiographical account of developing feminist methodologies

Sarah Parry

Doing and studying public engagement in stem cell research: Methodological issues for developing inclusive events on gender sensitive topics
Abstract

In this paper I will briefly discuss our findings from our first phase of fieldwork collected as part of an ESRC funded project: The Social Dynamics of Public Engagement in Stem Cell Research. Focusing on the issues raised by different tissue sources used to obtain stem cells, I will highlight some of the divergent views we have heard. From here, I will move on to discuss the methodological aspects of this project as we move into our next phase of research, which aims to bring different actors together around specific issues raised by stem cell research. Key issues for the research team include methods for encouraging a sociologically informed discussion and how to bring in our sociological analysis from the first round, thus avoiding over- privileging 'scientific' accounts of stem cell research. The need to balance participants' request for further information about stem cell research with our research aims for accessing complex issues, such as how women's bodies are constructed in stem cell research practices and discourses, remains a difficult balancing act for the research team.

Contemporary Issues in Biopolitics

2007-04-06T08:33:00.000Z

Confirmed speakers are:

Maureen McNeil
Michal Nahman
Sarah Parry
Alex Plows
Celia Roberts
Clare Williams

The event is free but please register so we have an idea of numbers. Details at the link above and in the January post below.

Virtual Symposium On Visual Culture and Bioscience

2007-03-08T10:24:00.000Z

A fantastic discussion facilitated by Suzanne Anker and joined by a really interesting collection of contributors. Well worth stopping by this discussion of bioscience, the arts and visual culture. Live from 8th-13th March 2007 but likely to be online for a while.

Feminist Issues in Contemporary UK biopolitics

2007-01-16T14:42:00.000Z

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

Pre-empting resistence to hybrid embryos

2007-01-10T10:20:00.000Z

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

Sourcing Eggs for Research: A Reponse

2006-12-07T17:08:00.001Z

The seminar; Feminist Issues in Contemporary UK Biopolitics - 'Sourcing eggs for biomedical research' went really well. It was attended by a group of engaged and reflective participants and we managed to pull together a response to the HFEA as a result. It was a very productive event, many thanks to all who attended and contributed towards making this a great day. The response document is linked above and includes a list of participants.

This was the first in a series of three seminars, the second one will be on the theme of 'Relationships in Feminist Research' and will consider issues around relationships with other researchers, scientists, respondents, publics and new relationships in biopolitical formations such as bioart. This will be in late spring. Details to follow.

Feminist Issues in Contemporary UK Biopolitics

2006-10-18T09:40:00.000Z

Feminist Issues in Contemporary UK Biopolitics

Cesagen Seminar: Sourcing Eggs for Biomedical Research

Date: November 20th 2006
Time: 10.00 am – 4.30 pm
Place: Cesagen, 6 Museum Place, Cardiff University, Cardiff

This is a one day event organised to discuss urgent issues regarding the sourcing of human eggs for biomedical research.

There will be presentations by key researchers and others engaging with this topic, and an opportunity to debate and discuss the many social, economic and ethical challenges raised, as well as the existing and prospective feminist resources available to respond to them.

The aim of this seminar is to catalyse 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. This will be an opportunity to ‘fast track’ knowledge about key policy and scientific moves, developing forms of public engagement, and to debate their social/ political/cultural/ethical implications.

Invited speakers include - Michal Nahman, Sarah Parry, Celia Roberts, Sarah Sexton, Karen Throsby,

The seminar is free of charge and lunch will be provided.
Places are limited so please contact Mel Evans by 10th November

There will be a dinner for seminar participants on the night of 19th November. To book for dinner, and for accommodation, travel and other inquiries please contact
Mel Evans

Seminar Organisers: Alex Plows, Joan Haran, Kate O’ Riordan

Contact details for admin: Mel Evans (0)29 2087 0024
E-mail: evansm6@cardiff.ac.uk

Also see the event in Edinburgh on similar issues:

Share your views about women donating eggs for Stem Cell Research: A public debate

Eggs for research - public consultation

2006-10-14T00:04:00.000Z

The Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority (HFEA) is carrying out a public consultation about the issue of egg donations and egg sharing for research. Respond to the consultation at the HFEA site (link above) or take part in the public discussions in relation to this:

Talking about stem cell research

Another event is planned at CESAGen cardiff on the 20th November, details to follow shortly.

Women who give eggs to science to get cut price IVF

2006-08-01T16:35:00.000Z

Global news coverage has provided a variety of perspectives on this significant development. The HFEA approval of cheap treatment for IVF patients who are prepared to give some of their eggs to cloning research, precedes their autumn consultation on this issue.

Also in the news this week - Tony Blair has been represented as divided from George Bush on the issue of licensing stem cell research.

Blair to lure US stem cell firms
The UK's Blair is in the US to build bridges with US businesses
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to promote Britain as an ideal place for stem-cell research when he meets US biotechnology firms later.
Mr Blair is on a four-day visit to California to try to boost co-operation between the state and the UK.

'Maverick scientist' produces peer reviewed papers

2006-07-22T10:51:00.000Z

On Thursday of this week the UK Guardian newspaper reported that Dr Panos Zavos had now published evidence of his experiments in reproductive cloning. Whilst not addressing the legal and ethical issues, the paper appears to offer evidence that is more acceptable, in scientific terms, than the announcements made directly to the media in 2004.

In the Guardian article Dr Zavos is interestingly described as a 'reproductive scientist' - a description that reinforces the impression that the lines between scientific research and clinical application are ever more blurred in the areas of both 'therapeutic' and 'reproductive' cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer).

Following up on Professor Hwang - is this a possible political economy of human genomics?

2006-07-17T16:02:00.000Z

In relation to the faking of evidence by scientists in general, and in relation to the case of Professor Hwang in particular, Lisa Jardine makes the following observations:

"Political pressure from governments, pouring money directly into work in research areas they have set their hearts on leading, surely does have the capacity to distort even the best-established procedures.

What we must be watchful for are situations where the funding of science demands a rate of return on research investment that increases intolerably the temptation to gamble. Might the blame for Hwang's deception lie, ultimately, at the feet of those who financed him so lavishly, and the state machine that over-inflated his reputation?"

From The pressure to hoax: A POINT OF VIEW By Lisa Jardine

Summer Events

2006-07-17T15:53:00.000Z

Getting Underneath the Fact:natural categories & biological facts as historical and emergent objects

A conference organised by the Centre for Science Studies in conjunction with the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, at Lancaster University.
To be held at the Institute of Advanced Studied from the 28th to 29th August 2006.

Reviewing Humanness: Bodies, Technologies and Spaces
EASST Conference, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 23rd-26th August 2006

Updates

2006-07-17T15:49:00.000Z

Cloning
1) Much earlier this month the ‘10th Anniversary’ of Dolly the sheep was noted in ‘BioNews’ the newsletter of the Progress Educational Trust. Roger Highfield, the co-author of Highfield and Wilmut ‘s (2006) After Dolly: The Uses and Misuses of Human Cloning, noted that he and Professor Ian Wilmut have faith about the future of cloning, and have confidence in particular groups in the governance of that future:

‘We have faith in people too. We have confidence that a well-informed democracy can keep abuses in check; we have confidence in women who would not donate eggs to clone a dictator, but would to help a patient with an urgent clinical need; and above all else we have faith in the vast majority of scientists, who are no different from anyone else in wanting to reduce suffering and make the world a better place’ (Highfield in BioNews 366:10/7/06)

The Centre for Genetics and Society (USA) reported on ‘A Decade After Dolly’ rather differently - and amongst other things - highlighted the reporting of some of the complexity, and confusion around financial incentives for female students, and egg donation in the Boston area.

Embryo Screening
2) Last month, announcements of advances in embryo screening techniques were made by UK researchers, and were reported in terms of both hope, and of concern:

‘Embryo test offers hope to parents’ (The Guardian UK, 19 June 2006)

‘New Embryonic Test Raises Concerns: Technique To Detect Genetic Disorders Spurs Fears Of 'Designer Babies'

WisCon and Teknolust in Madison, Wisconsin

2006-05-23T15:06:00.000Z

The fabulous WisCon is running this Memorial Day weekend in Madison, Wisconsin.

As we are in town for this event we are also screening ‘Teknolust’ by Lynn Hershman Leeson. Details of the film can be found on the Teknolust website and the Internet Movie Database. Many, many thanks to the people at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who helped us organise this!

Screenings are here:

University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, 1180 Observatory Drive, Room 610 Social Science, Wednesday May 24th 4-6pm and Thursday May 25th 3-5pm, discussion afterwards.

All welcome!

We are really interested in your views on this film and human genomics in the media more generally – please contact us if you have more to say on this.

Eggs, Embryos and Misplaced Concerns?

2006-05-12T13:19:00.000Z

This Tuesday's Guardian letters page brought together some interesting debates about research and applications of women's eggs and embryos. http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1770438,00.html
'Altruistic' egg donation by women for cloning research purposes, the exploitation of vulnerable women in, for example, Romania and Bulgaria who provide their eggs to women undergoing 'infertility treatment' in other countries as well as ongoing criticism of the actions of Dr Patricia Rashbrook, "The 63-year-old child psychiatrist set to become Britain's oldest mother", feature. http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1768138,00.html

Take advantage of the Guardian's excellent archiving and cross-linking facilities to trace some of the debates further.

Or go to the website of the California-based Center for Genetics and Society and see how this organisation draws links between all the issues discussed in the Guardian letters page and the ongoing scandal about therapeutic cloning and stem cell research fraud in South Korea: http://www.genetics-and-society.org/index.asp. Today's Guardian reported on Professor Hwang's indictment under the headline: Prosecutors charge disgraced cloning scientist: http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,,1773595,00.html

Interesting spin on eugenics debates

2006-05-12T12:46:00.000Z

IVF may allow women to spare daughters breast cancer said a science correspondent for The Guardian, reporting in advance of deliberations by the HFEA this week: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1770510,00.html

In the event, the HFEA decided that extending screening was something they were prepared to consider. Suzi Leather said: "At our open meeting today, the Authority agreed that we should consider the use of PGD embryo testing for conditions such as inherited breast, ovarian and bowel cancers that given the aggressive nature of the cancers, the impact of treatment and the extreme anxiety that carriers of the gene can experience. These conditions differ from those already licensed before because people at risk do not always develop cancer, it may occur later in life and some treatments may be available.

"The inherited conditions suitable for PGD testing are very uncommon. This is not about opening the door to wholesale genetic testing. This is about considering a particular group of genetic conditions to be sufficiently serious to merit the use of PGD embryo testing.

"These genetic tests can still only be used for a minority of people if there is a clear history of cancer across generations of a family.

http://www.hfea.gov.uk/PressOffice/Archive/1147269507

Potential eugenic implications of these screening extensions were voiced but largely dismissed by contributors to the Have Your Say on embryo screening hosted by bbc.co.uk/news at: http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=1735&&&edition=1&ttl=20060512135407

So this call for compulsory contraception for drug addicts from an MSP is an intriguing reminder that population control measures and the desire to implement them have not always (have they ever?) been in the hands of the health consumer: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=709822006

Art, Politics and the Life Sciences

2006-05-10T11:09:00.000Z

Workshop today - the third in a series on Art, Politics and the Life Sciences at Lancaster University

Other random interesting links/refs in this area:

The Arts & Genomics Centre (Amsterdam)

ArtSci Chicago (Chicago)
Connecting Scientists, Artists, and Everyone In-Between in the Chicago Area (& Beyond...)

Art and Science Collaborations Inc (New York)

Travelling Science: Testing Women

2006-04-26T07:58:00.000Z

April 23rd 2006 - The Observer (UK) reported that:

"A revolutionary system for testing unborn babies for life-threatening diseases has been launched by British scientists."

In the language of ‘revolutions’ and ‘breakthroughs’, with the emotive ‘babies’, the dramas of ‘life-threatening’ etc we were brought the story that a UK team were going to provide safe (but revolutionary) foetal testing which, through the use of a blood test for the mother; 'ends risk to foetus'. Great.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1759357,00.html

In October 2005 Prof Dennis Lo, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was also providing results that could help to develop a DNA test for the foetus without invasive procedures, through blood testing the mother. Interestingly the issue of identity, and how a foetus and mother can be made to appear as separate entities in the maternal bloodstream was more visible last autumn:

"The team in Hong Kong has found a way of picking out what is baby and what is mother, by looking at a molecular biology level."

Meanwhile, in the Journal of the American Medical Association [Dhallan R et al. (2004) JAMA 291, 1114-1119] the message that foetal blood could be tested through the maternal bloodstream was news in 2004.

Mother is baby: old news

Flawed Consent Form Claims

2006-04-12T08:22:00.000Z

A harder hitting critique of Parexel's consent form than that in Sunday's Observer appears in today's BioEdge newsletter (Issue 199) which quotes from Bloomberg News. According to the report, Michael Goodyear, a Canadian cancer physician and research ethicist argued that: "The risks were well known. They're not disclosed in the consent form."

http://www.australasianbioethics.org/Newsletters/currentbioedge.html

How Meaningful is Informed Consent with Novel Drug Testing?

2006-04-11T16:40:00.000Z

The Northwick Park clinical trial story seems to have ceded the media spotlight to bird flu. But a story in last Sunday's Observer suggests that the side effects of TGN1412 weren't entirely unpredictable: http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1750062,00.html

Regulation, regulation

2006-04-11T09:46:00.000Z

Linda Nordling reports in The Guardian today on a new UK initiative 'to raise awareness of research misconduct and promote best practice in health and bioscience in the NHS, universities and industry.' http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,1750825,00.html
She concludes that: 'Strategies can be set up for how to deal with scientific misconduct once it is spotted. But, as long as results are tied to prestige and money, and beneath the white coat beats a very human heart, the problem will never be eradicated. The flip side of academic freedom - scientific misconduct - is here to stay. '

In other news, the New York Times reports an 'End Run Around Legal Challenge' as the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine has found a way to award grants ranging from $347,160 to $1.23 million for embryonic stem cell research despite being embroiled in court cases that 'allege the agency is unconstitutional because it lacks proper government and public oversight'. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/us/11cell.html?n=Top%2fNews%2fHealth%2fDiseases%2c%20Conditions%2c%20and%20Health%20Topics%2fStem%20Cells

Media Effects - More Complicated Than You Might Think

2006-03-27T08:16:00.000Z

Good news on the drug trial volunteers at Northwick Park who continue to recover from their massive reactions to the trial doses of TGN 1412.

Intriguingly, the final paragraph of the story in today's Guardian includes a claim from the Medical Research Council that the adverse coverage of the trial has led to a surge of people contacting them who are keen to participate in medical trials: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1740229,00.html

More Doubts Raised About Novel Drug Trials - Meaningful Scrutiny?

2006-03-17T09:46:00.000Z

In today's Guardian Simon Jenkins applauds the process of 'trial by media' as a legitmate means of scrutinising politicians: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1732805,00.html

Does the same apply to drug companies? How will the spectacular failure of the Paraxel trial of TGN1412 affect the various commercial enterprises involved in its conduct? Will it open up a wider and / or more long-running debate about medical trials? Or is it simply the source of some dramatic copy and visuals that will be supplanted by the next scandal?

http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/news/0,,1732973,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4815780.stm

Medical Ethics under Scrutiny

2006-03-16T11:48:00.000Z

Today's UK national news foregrounds medical ethics. Two key stories, one on a legal battle between the parents of terminally ill child and the NHS trust caring for him, and one on a drug trial gone horribly wrong, touch on major issues that bring into question social attitudes about the scope of medical determinations of quality of life, and the risks that are acceptable in the pursuit of 'cures for life-threatening diseases'. Links below are to The Guardian. Some of the tabloid headlines were rather more lurid. According to the front page of The Sun 'We Saw Human Guinea Pig Explode'.

Relatives' fury over calamitous drug trial: http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1731920,00.html

Parents win right to life legal battle: http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1731996,00.html

Safety expert sounds biotech alarm:
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/news/0,,1732002,00.html

'Hands off our ovaries' and 'Donate eggs'

2006-03-16T10:32:00.000Z

Interesting dialogues:

Professor Wilmut suggested that egg donations might be necessary in 2005: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/press_releases/05-07-26_wilmuteggdonors.htm

'Hands off our ovaries' formed in 2006:
http://www.handsoffourovaries.com/