The purpose of this article is to comment upon an interesting gap in the criticism heaped upon Woo Suk Hwang following the revelation that his apparently groundbreaking stem cell research involved both the falsification of data and the unethical recruitment of egg donors. It is, of course, unsurprising that his fraudulent research and a possible breach of the Helsinki Declaration have come under considerable scrutiny. More interesting, in my view, is that there has been very little interest in the fact that human embryos may have been pointlessly destroyed. It is generally believed that research involving human embryos is legitimate only when it serves an important scientific purpose. Hwang’s research could serve no useful scientific purpose, and hence it would be difficult, if not impossible, to justify the destruction of embryos. I ask whether the comparative lack of interest in this aspect of the Korean stem cell research scandal points to a shift in our attitudes towards the instrumental use of the early human embryo.

Foot and mouth disease (FMD) ceased to be endemic—continually present—in Britain in 1889. It is reasonable to suppose that all subsequent outbreaks have had the importation of virus as their starting point. So when on 3 August this year two cases were confirmed in cattle on a farm in Surrey the origin of the virus was an immediate question. Surrey is commuter belt country. Its farms are small. They are dotted between medium-sized towns and large villages and so are not the loci of the kinds of intensive agriculture thought to be particularly at risk from exotic and imported animal diseases. But a potential source was close by, at Pirbright, only about 6 kilometres from the farm.

While social phobia is a well-known disorder in North America, it has been little known among the general French population. For several years now a small group of French clinicians and members of a social phobia support group have begun fighting for its recognition. Their voices have had a significant impact, and today information about the disorder has reached thousands or even millions of French citizens. The introduction of social phobia in France involves more than the acceptance of this one condition. Social phobia is a part of a standard North American diagnostic system that remains marginal in France; this therapeutic framework must be adopted in order for social phobia to be accepted. This article focuses on the words of French physicians, many of whom reject social phobia as a diagnosis, and a smaller number who are desperate for its acceptance. Through their words, I trace the multiple factors that are slowing the acceptance of social phobia, but not preventing it. Culture, history, economy and single-minded careerism are among the factors that clinicians link to the appearance of social phobia in France. In conclusion, I consider the argument that social phobia in France is an example of the global exportation of North American conceptions of mental health and mental disorder.

This article challenges the idea that there could be a convincing secular version of the principle that human life is sacred, and explores the significance this has for the law. A number of secular justifications for the claim that there is something intrinsically, as opposed to instrumentally, valuable about human life have been mooted, most eloquently by Ronald Dworkin. While secular explanations for the sanctity of human life are undeniably attractive, this article will maintain that they do not have logic on their side. Having argued that the ‘sanctity principle’ makes sense only as an article of religious faith, the implications this has for the law are explored. In relation to end-of-life decision-making, the sanctity principle has been invoked to justify a sharp line between deliberately ending life and failing to prolong it. This article will conclude by arguing that a rejection of the sanctity principle might, in certain circumstances, cause us to focus instead on the extent to which death harms someone.

Genomics is a field where almost every sentence begins with the words ‘we will be able to … ’This article is based upon remarks offered at the opening of the BIOS Centre at the LSE, June 2003. When dealing with the ethics of the field, one must distinguish very carefully between impotence and chastity; it is important to distinguish between‘can’t’ and ‘won‘t‘.

The history leading up to our current situation on the basic scientific level is well known, but is worth recalling for context. In 1953, Watson and Crick published a paper in which they showed the familiar icon of our times, the double helical structure of DNA. For the first time, one could see a solution to major problems of biology and especially to major problems of genetics. More particularly, we could begin to study the chemistry of information. Chemistry, of course, could also be called very low energy physics; and so for the first time we were on the verge of a physical analysis of information in biology. As is well known, biological systems are unique complex systems in the universe in that they carry an internal description of themselves in the form of their genes. No other complex system has this property. The weather is a complex system, but you can’t clone the weather because there is no physical internal description.

Scholarship on midwifery in the North American context has tended to evaluate the recent legalization of the professional practice of midwifery across the United States and Canada as evidence of the success of women’s claims to broader reproductive rights concerning pregnancy and birth. This article, however, approaches the efforts to legalize midwifery in North America through the question of claims to reproductive autonomy, arguing that midwifery’s legalization is one effect of the entrance into modern scientific practice and state health policy of a new political subject: one whose emotional satisfaction is the target of reproductive health-care policy. As such, the ‘new’ midwifery in Québec encourages pregnant and birthing women to invest intimately in the project of staking claims for reproductive self-determination. Counter to claims that the ideal citizen of contemporary liberal regimes is ‘unattached and unbiased’, midwifery compels women to invest ‘deep down’ in claims to reproductive self-determination. An examination of policy and activist discourses circulating during the time leading up to the period of experimentation (1993–1998) and eventually to the legalization (1999) of midwifery in Québec provides a useful lens onto broader transformations in the liberal governance of pregnancy and birth.

Human genome research has indeed re-ignited the sparks of long-standing discourse and debate on the definition, measurement and existence of human ‘races‘. On the one hand, this genome revolution is increasingly challenging the notion that the groups traditionally called races are truly and innately biologically distinct (Jorde and Wooding, 2004; Tishkoff and Kidd, 2004), yet, on the other, one could argue that it is facilitating the reification of race (Duster, 2005). While it is undeniable that the latter part of the twentieth century ushered in a scientific era brimming with new technology, new data and new terminology, many elements of the ‘race and biology’ controversy are not at all new and still it appears that a resolution is not yet within reach. One might ask: ‘Why?’ ‘How will current knowledge about human genetic variation inform the treatment of race and ethnicity in science, medicine, and society?’ ‘Is it even possible to come to consensus on some of the fundamental issues?’

This article provides an empirical account of the application of genetic counselling in China based on interviews, clinical observation and literature research during a field study from September 2008 to February 2009, carried out mainly in China and partly in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. Making comparisons with the situation in the UK and in Hong Kong, and from a social science perspective, the article outlines the situation of genetic counselling in China, discussing the qualifications for genetic counselling providers, the model of genetic clinical services, and their governance and supervision in Chinese social contexts. The article discusses Chinese practitioners’ understanding of and practice around ethical issues such as non-directiveness, informed choice and decision-making, and explores the extent to which this reflects the administrative, political and socio-economic environments in Chinese society. The article argues that the current state of genetic counselling in China arises mainly from its executive governance, non-professional genetic counselling provision, economic conditions and the lack of full healthcare coverage.

In this article I explore attributions of credibility, important to designations of ‘expertise’, within the area of DNA patenting. I define ‘credibility’ as a relationship of recognition people establish to other actors. Through repeated interviews, interspersed with the provision of information, I have identified two different ways in which respondents position themselves in relation other actors as a way of assessing their credibility: when assuming a ‘partisan position’, they explicitly draw on ideological convictions; when assuming a ‘hierarchical position’, the ranking of credibility depends on how informed and objective others are perceived to be. The positions embody different roles for the respondents as ‘citizens’ and as ‘lay persons’, respectively; that is, they indicate the possession of contrasting ideas about their own relevance in policy matters. This raises the question of how to interpret the fact that people disqualify themselves from policy making, seeing themselves as incompetent. Challenging current conflict-focused models in the public understanding of science (PUS) literature, I argue that the hierarchical position can be interpreted as a broader desire for consensus. In the patent area, I show that paying attention to the hierarchical position is crucial to understanding why an industry representative is regarded by some to be a credible ‘expert’. The study sheds light on the ‘public understanding of expertise’ more broadly, and within the bioeconomic field in particular.

A cautionary tale of technological innovation in eleventh-century Venice leads to reflection on human desire for and fear of such change. The story also shows that while individuals make choices about whether to adopt or reject technologies, their choices are social, not personal, in their effects. The vocation of social science is to help people see past both their hopes and fears of biotechnologies; in this way social science can at least deflect the advance of biotechnologies.