Conclusion: Regenerative Medicine — A New Paradigm?

Abstract

The preceding chapters have shown how the boundaries of the field of regenerative medicine (RM) are far from stable, and how this is true whether one focuses on its local or global contexts. Indeed, it is the interaction between these two contexts that creates much of the tension, uncertainty, and activity in the field, illustrated, for example, by stem cell tourism, by the move towards international standards in research paralleled by competing local conventions and regulation, and by the competition between innovation models in the ‘West’ and China and Japan. Both Chapters 2 and 3 have shown that these dynamics create a complex mix of corporate activity allied to clinical trials across different global regions, notably in the United States, in Germany, the United Kingdom, and France in Europe, and in China, South Korea, and Japan in East Asia. The tissue economy being built is highly uncertain and will require a wide range of codifying, standardising, and authorising (via regulatory approval) moves to be made. As we have argued in different ways across the chapters, these socio-technical challenges merely reflect the ways in which RM is a disruptive technology, a form of innovation that is poorly aligned with existing regulatory infrastructures, clinical practices, and commercial markets. In order to grow, as in any other emergent field, such as nanotechnology or synthetic biology (Calvert, 2012), RM networks need to be built and form, in Latour’s (2005) terms, new ‘assemblages’ that bring together diverse material, technological, and political entities to form a socially robust field called regenerative medicine.