Conferences
Sponsored by:
- University of California Humanities Research Institute, UC Irvine
- Dept of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine Humanities Fund, UC San Francisco
- Project in Stem Cells and Society/Stem Cell program and Science, Technology and Society Center, UC Berkeley
- Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley
- The Institute for Health and Aging, UC San Francisco
- International and Area Studies, UC Berkeley
- Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine, UC San Francisco
- Science, Technology, and Society Center, UC Berkeley
Conference Description
Stem cell medicine, including both research and potential clinical applications, has introduced some of the most innovative medical possibilities of the 21 st century, from cellular therapies for previously untreatable conditions to actualized alliances between research and industry, patients, scientists, and politicians, generating a surfeit of promissory biocapital. Simultaneously, stem cell medicine has heightened public and political concerns over the ethics of research, intervention, and translation. Ethical debates have been re-ignited over: the religious and ontological status of embryos; cultural knowledge of and tolerance for chimeras; the genetic and bodily integrity of human subjects and donors; the distribution of benefits and burdens among patients, publics, industry, government, and science; the profit boundaries between academy and industry; the implications of globalization for this emergent science.
In this two day conference, we will explore the “ethical worlds” that have become more visible, critical, and in some cases refigured because of the research and therapeutic possibilities and promises of stem cell medicine. The goal of the conference is to create a forum for serious intellectual debate and discussion on possibilities of theorizing the “ethical” in science between those who examine the social and cultural, ethical and political, historical and philosophical, legal and economic circumstances of its engagements. The focus is on theory building for scholarship on ethics in this emergent field. This conference will help ensure that ELSI (ethical, legal, and social) components of stem cell research are advanced alongside scientific programs. Our goal is to elucidate the contours of the ethical worlds that have been created by the growing number of stakeholders in stem cell science, to see where these stakeholders agree and where they disagree and why, and to openly discuss the ethical territories they have invested in, and then to ask the further question: how do these engagements ask us to rethink a theory of “the ethical” in relation to science. While the intent of the conference is primarily to foster scholarly interchange and understanding, it is hoped that such a mapping and exploration of ethical worlds will greatly strengthen policy efforts and practitioners' work as California enters a new era of stem cell research.
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