Good Science ─ The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research

After a decade and a half, human pluripotent stem cell research has been normalized.There may be no consensus on the status of the embryo -- only a tacit agreement to disagree -- butthe debate now takes place in a context in which human stem cell research and related technologiesalready exist. In this book, Charis Thompson investigates the evolution of the controversy overhuman pluripotent stem cell research in the United States and proposes a new ethical approach for"good science." Thompson traces political, ethical, and scientific developments that cametogether in what she characterizes as a "procurial" framing of innovation, based onconcern with procurement of pluripotent cells and cell lines, a pro-cures mandate, and aproliferation of bio-curatorial practices. Thompson describes what she calls the "ethicalchoreography" that allowed research to go on as the controversy continued. The intense ethicalattention led to some important discoveries as scientists attempted to "invent around"ethical roadblocks. Some ethical concerns were highly legible; but others were hard to raise in thedominant procurial framing that allowed government funding for the practice of stem cell research toproceed despite controversy. Thompson broadens the debate to include such related topics as animaland human research subjecthood and altruism. Looking at fifteen years of stem cell debate anddiscoveries, Thompson argues that good science and good ethics are mutually reinforcing, rather thanantithetical, in contemporary biomedicine.

Charis Thompson is Professor in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies (MIT Press).