Ontogeny, Ontology, and Phylogeny: Embryonic Life and Stem Cell Technologies

Abstract

Tissue Economies" (unpublished MS, 2003) on the now well analyzed case of Moore v. the Regents of University of California for accounts of the stakes in such cases. Biomedicine and biotechnology increasingly draw on marginal forms of living tissue as sources of therapeutic substances. More and more biomedical treatments rely on the collection, storage, transformation, and redistribution of tissues, the development of new kinds of "separable, exchangeable, and reincorporable body parts." 1 Some of these tissues-cancerous cells, placentas, DNA extracted from saliva-are considered marginal, or indeed dangerous, to the continuing life of the donor. As Robert Mitchell points out, these tissues are, generally speaking, collected and technically transformed with little social objection or controversy, precisely because of their status as waste. 2 As such, they are relatively open to forms of commodification and patent, and form the basis for an increasingly lucrative biotechnology industry: From the sale by hospitals of infant foreskins (used to manufacture artificial skin) and aborted embryo gonads (a source of stem cells) to the patenting of

Enculturating Cells: The Anthropology, Substance, and Science of Stem Cells

“…In this respect, the intersection of local and global can be productively seen as mirroring the ubiquitous interpenetration of science and commerce. These emerging tissue economies (Waldby & Mitchell 2006) typify the implosion of the cellular and the commercial around the globe. Landecker (2003) argues, "[T]he cell is a site through which all kinds of changing material, semantic, economic, and conceptual relationships are played out" (Landecker,p.…”

The posthuman: the end and the beginning of the human

“…When 21st century high-technologies enter this scene, the question of what it means to be human undermines modern legal judgments. The technological complexification of the state of humanness has made it profoundly difficult to apply traditional law, ranging from cases of humans in persistent vegetative states (Protevi, 2006), the commodification and international trade of human organs (Hables Gray, 2001;Scheper-Hughes, 2001), the Human Genome Project (Waldby, 1995(Waldby, , 2000, transsexuality (Stone, 1997;Stryker, 2000) and xenotransplantation (Waldby and Squier, 2003). In all cases, humanness is not a simple, a priori state; it is in perpetual motion, fractured across legal jurisdictions, technologies and markets.…”

The Cyborg Embryo

“…For public debate of embryos see Banchoff (2004), Becker (2000), J. Edwards (2000), Franklin (1995Franklin ( , 1997bFranklin ( , 1999aFranklin ( , 2003d, Kitzinger et al (2003), Mulkay (1997), Spallone (1996), Strathern (1992aStrathern ( , 1992b, Waldby and Squier (2003) and note 3 above. 5.…”

“…10. Without having the space here to do justice either to the considerable literature on reproductive biomedicine and stem cells, or what Squier (2000) calls the 'tissue culture point of view', I can only point the reader toward some of the many recent sociological accounts of 'the social life of stem cells' (Banchoff, 2004;Cooper, 2006;Ganchoff, 2004;Gottweis, 2002;Hogle, 2003;Landecker, 2000Landecker, , 2003Landecker, , 2006Liddell and Wallace, 2005;Lock, 2001;Rapp, 2003;Resnik, 2002;Sperling, 2004;Squier, 2004;Waldby and Squier, 2003), the geneticization of kinship (Konrad, 2005b;Nash, 2004) and some of the authors who have examined how these phenomena can be culturally analysed (Konrad, 2005a;Rose, 2001Rose, , 2006Strathern, 1992aStrathern, , 1992bStrathern, , 1999Strathern, , 2005Thompson, 2005). 11.…”