Contested Governance: Uncertainty and Standardization in Research and Patenting

Abstract

In the previous chapters, we have mapped some of the diversities and uncertainties of the hESC field. We have seen the range of cultural reactions to embryo research and the volatility of national political responses to the challenge of integrating a stem cell research programme into society. We have also seen that, to an extent, national regulatory regimes appear to be converging and losing some of their volatile character. We saw in Chapter 5 that the rise of bioethical governance has produced a certain regularization of the international debates, identifying particular moral demarcation points in the new hESC technologies — SCNT but not reproductive cloning, for example, or the acceptability of discarded reproductive embryos but not the manufacture of embryos for research — and ordering national legislative responses accordingly. Many nations have moved, over time, towards the liberal end of the regulatory spectrum. While the previous two chapters focused on the global regularizing effects of bioethical governance, in this chapter we focus on another force for global convergence and governance — the demand for standardization. Standardization processes are essential for any scientific field to develop and are applicable to all stages of the knowledge-production process from the basic science to the market product.