National risk signatures and human embryonic stem cell research in mainland China

Abstract

The international development of human embryonic stem cell research has become closely tied to global bioethics, which places moral responsibility on stem cell researchers. This article argues that the development of bioethical regulation of human embryonic stem cell research is better understood by approaching the institutionalisation of bioethics in terms of risk perceptions of stem cell scientists. Eschewing approaches that understand bioethical risk as a mere matter of morality or as a social construct, this article emphasises the materiality and strategic reasoning of bioethical views on risks associated with human embryonic stem cell research. Such an approach allows the identification of forms of risk rooted in the everyday practice of Chinese human embryonic stem cell research, including moral risk (as a violation of cultural values), material risk (in relation to the distribution of material resources and wealth), political risk (in terms of the political economy of bioethics and public debate) and reputational risk (in terms of personal and national honour). Although this analysis builds on Tom Horlick-Jones's concept of risk signatures of new technologies, which emphasise the capacities of different technologies to engender and delimit the particular social and cultural interpretations of the risks they generate, the article reveals the existence of a certain global awareness among stem cell scientists of risk signatures. They display a creative and strategic awareness regarding the possible opportunities and constraints the risk signature of human embryonic stem cell research affords in their particular institutional context compared to those of others abroad and at home in different environments. The existence of this form of reflexivity requires recognition and methodological accommodation.

Keywords:

• national risk signature
• stem cell research
• China
• bioethics
• reputational risk

Acknowledgements

This article has benefited from research support provided by the Netherlands Organisation of Science (NWO) and the ESRC (RES-350-27-002; RES-062-23–0215). I am very grateful to the reviewers and Alex Faulkner for their helpful comments on this article.

Notes

1. Nevertheless, variation exists between Germany and the UK in regard to the strictness with which researchers adhere to regulation (Weber and Wilson-Kovacs 2008).

2. The Beijing-based National Institute of Biological Sciences (NIBS). The Ministry of Science and Technology and the Beijing Municipal government invested 500 million RMB (62.5 million US dollars) into the newly inaugurated institute (People's Daily Online, 25 December 2005).

3. The regrouping of CAS Institutes into the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences also serves this goal (Triendl 1999).

4. Mainly through the funding schemes of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST, over 5.7 billion Yuan), the China Petrochemical Development Corporation (CPDC, one billion Yuan), the National Science Foundation of China (1.5 billion Yuan), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (500 million Yuan) and local governments (one billion Yuan) Available from: www.finproevents.fi/tiedostot/default/finpro1000000264.pdf.

5. Available from: http://www.gov.cn/english/2006-02/09/content_183426.htm.

6. In the mid-1980s the government cut research funding (known as ‘shock therapy’) to push research units to the market. A decentralisation of science institutions meant that provinces and municipalities made available large sums of research funding, especially in the more prosperous regions (Hong 2008, p. 582).

7. This phenomenon was corroborated as common in labs in Shanghai and Beijing, also by the PIs themselves.