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Framing regenerative medicine: culturally specific stories of an emerging technoscience

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Abstract

Civic forms of knowledge, tacitly built around scientific knowledge, reflect culturally specific meanings employed that are put to use in public arenas. Science, technology and society scholarship (STS) has developed a theoretical approach to coproduction of science, and postcolonial science studies critique the universalization of Western epistemologies. The present study extends these perspectives in relation to regenerative medicine in Brazil, examining relevant official documents and the understandings of 15 leaders in the local field about scientific progress, international collaboration and intellectual property rights. The majority of these Brazilian stakeholders hold a techno-deterministic view of scientific progress, and lack any thorough critique of Western scientific premises. While most interviewees ascribe legitimacy to Brazilian public research centres, representatives of civic society organizations express distrust about certain attitudes of local scientists, and criticize the communication of scientific discoveries to the lay public. Furthermore, stakeholders’ reflections on international collaboration are distinctly polarized, reflecting the unequal distribution of roles and power among local indigenous and internationalized actors. Although opposition to exclusive patenting is widespread, limited reflection is apparent on such topics as the role of private capital, cell therapy approval and the specificity of ethical and regulatory frameworks.

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Notes

  1. The paper is based on qualitative information gathered as part of a research effort undertaken intermittently since 2009, in order to analyse RM innovation, regulation and governance in Brazil. Projects have studied the representations voiced by 15 leaders in that country and 15 in the UK, extracted from face-to-face interviews in 2012 and currently being updated via the internet and from 30 structured interviews of different Brazilian stakeholders (see Acero 2010, 2011a, 2019, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c).

  2. The main sources were the Department of Health (2011); Regenerative Medicine Expert Group (2014), House of Lords Science and Technology Committee (2013) and House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (2017); and the Medical Research Council (2012, 2019).

  3. The most important policy sources were, on the government side, ANVISA (2015, 2018a, 2018b, 2019), Lei de Biossegurança, Lei de Inovação Tecnológica, and the National Commission on Ethics (CONEP); within the scientific community, the National Network of Cellular Therapy (RNTC), INCT-Regenera and the Centres of Cellular Therapy (CTC); and the websites of the main active civil society organizations focusing on diseases, ethics, advocacy and gender and race and health, such as Tay-Sachs-Brasil, Retina-Brasil, Católicas pelo Direito a Decidir, Crioula, ANIS and ABRELA.

  4. An anticipatory affective state enables temporary orientation and can mobilize subjects collectively (Adams et al. 2009, p. 249). In global RM, modes of anticipating bodily futurity, hopes about health and responsible ageing may contribute to its resolution (Van de Wield 2015; Brekke and Sirnes 2011; Montgomery 2017).

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the three reviewers and the BioSocieties Journal Editors who provided most useful comments on previous versions of this paper. I am also thankful to Prof. Maria Tereza Leopardi and Prof. Ana Celia Castro, Coordinator and Vice-Coordinator of the Postgraduate Programme on Policy, Strategy and Development (PPED) of the Institute of Economics (IE) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil, for their support of my academic work and, most especially, I am very grateful to Prof. Emeritus Ian Miles, The University of Manchester, for his very useful comments to an earlier version of this manuscript.

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    Liliana Acero

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Acero, L. Framing regenerative medicine: culturally specific stories of an emerging technoscience. BioSocieties 17, 644–675 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-021-00236-6

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