Stem cell research in Asia: looking beyond regulatory exteriors

This double special issue concerns the embedding of stem cell research in Asian societies: by examining the interplay between regulation and the contexts in which it is given meaning and affects the people that use the regulation, the special issue looks beyond formal regulatory guidelines for stem cell research. Much debate has been held on the regulatory, ethical and philosophical aspects of stem cell research, which usually emphasizes the political, moral and organizational aspects of the research. These discussions often study the decisions made by individual persons, ignoring the particular cultural and socio-political contexts of debates on regulation. In some cases, philosophical perspectives on bioethics project the ideologies of particular political cultures on to society. Thus, Confucian approaches advocate a Confucian society and utilitarian approaches advocate a society based on “free choice” (Sleeboom-Faulkner 2007, 2010). Rather than looking for ethical principles, this special issue tries to understand bioethical principles and research regulation in their societal embedding, which includes the socio-economic and politico-ideological aspects of the society. Contributors to the special issue, then, adopt an empirical approach to the study of stem cell research, using various methods based on fieldwork and interviews to fortify our insight into the practical workings of bioethics in societies.

In recent years discussions on the social aspects of stem cell research have especially focused on concepts of governance in the life sciences (Salter 2008, Gottweis 2009, Gottweis et al. 2009). In discussions of stem cell research in Asia, concepts of governance used to understand socio-political processes of change in Europe are widely applied to an Asian context. But such understandings of China may be premature. After all, the formulation of European concepts of governance has grown out of detailed and substantial research in a European context (cf. Foucault 1978, 1991). There is no reason for Asian societies not to have developed diverging notions of governance. This double special issue, then, is an appeal for readers to consider the Euro-American and high-income country origin of many of the analytical concepts we use, including that of governance and bioethics.

Bioethics regulation is often seen as crucial to the practice of stem cell research. Yet, the increasingly similar looking sets of national guidelines for stem cell research in different countries yield diverging research practices. In the special issue, we proceed from the idea that the rationales for establishing, interpreting and implementing regulation of hESR vary under different circumstances. Thus, in developing countries the advancement of science, including the shaping of research regulation, has a different weight on the national agenda, and evaluation of the progress of scientific research is measured with a different yardstick depending on the political climate and research environment of a country. Moreover, research institutions have diverging cultural, legal and political histories, so that the regulatory tools take on different shapes, varying from formal guidelines and legislation to soft guidelines and social control, depending on the institutional settings they play a role in. The aim of the double special issue, then, is to stimulate discussion on the informal research cultures, social conventions and traditions that are crucial to the way in which stem cell research (including fetal stem cells and somatic stem cells) is evolving in Asia. In brief, in the special issue we try to address themes and discussions crucial to the social organization of stem cell research, and the socio-political embedding of formal regulation.

Using examples from India, Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel, the special issue shows that formal regulation of stem cell research is not adequately understood outside the socio-economic and political embedding of the regulation. Comparing research conditions in countries that differ in their financial capacity, level of science development, and politico-religious outlook, the double special issue shows that research regulation takes shape through a great variety of informal bioethical practices and social institutions, including religion, politics, social movements and the state. From an international, comparative point of view, the regulation of stem cell research is shown to be influenced by a constellation of factors, including the availability of research facilities, the need for attracting foreign investments and companies, the wish to maintain a clean reputation, and policies for promoting national interests, but also the social and political desire to keep the peace in society, the wish to root regulation on controversial subjects in public opinion, and the religious and cultural belief in doing what is “right.”

In large developing countries, such as China and India, the questions of research funding for stem cell research, healthcare targets and the donation of embryos, fetuses and oocytes must take into account different considerations from those that apply in affluent welfare societies. This is due partly to the diverging histories of science and medical institutions, partly to different methods of regulating ethical behavior, ranging from soft socio-economic checks and controls to political and legal sanctions, and partly to the existence of different views on what socio-cultural and economic costs can and should be paid for scientific undertakings and public health projects. But crucial may be the different constellation of choices policy-makers, researchers and patients face in countries where the resources to fund science and healthcare institutions are severely restricted. International guidelines for stem cell research were set up in and for countries with particular institutional infrastructures and socio-economic provisions. Where these infrastructures are absent or inadequate, the interaction of high-tech research, socio-economic setting and unstable regulatory environment entails ethical issues of a particular nature: in such societies debates usually focus on socio-economic inequality, political (mis-) representation and competition, in addition to and intertwined with issues concerning the bioethics of using embryos, eggs and fetuses in the tissue economies of stem cell research. How problems related to the embedding of stem cell research in society play out differently in high- and low-income societies will become clear in this double special issue.