If the first half of the twentieth century was a golden age for physics, the second half saw the coming of age of the life sciences. As we enter the twenty-first century, our individual and collective lives are being fundamentally altered by developments in cellular and molecular biology. The drivers of these developments, and the stakes in them, are not merely scientific-they are therapeutic, economic, political, ideological and ethical. Put another way, developments in genomics, stem cell research, pharmacology, neuroscience all raise questions, not just about the nature of living processes and their amenability to understanding and manipulation, but also about the forces and ambitions shaping progress in the life sciences themselves, and the ways in which the life sciences are transforming different societies, locally, nationally and globally, in a multitude of different practices from the clinic to the factory.

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.

We are so impressed by the present and future cornucopia of mind-altering and bodyenhancing drugs that we tend to ignore what really works, namely medical engineering. The announcement for the launch of BioSocieties runs through a list of fundamental topics from genomics to bioterrorism. Surgery barely gets a look-in under ‘biomedical and reproductive technologies’. It is fitting that ‘reproductive’ should be the other half of theheading, for those technologies also, as I have put it, really work now. Unlike surgery, they get a lot of attention because we seem to be playing around with life itself. Even so we hardly pay any attention to what really really works in the case of a husband’s infertility, namely artificial insemination by a donor.

Dor Yeshorim, a genetic testing programme focusing on the ‘genetic compatibility’ of prospective couples in Orthodox Jewish communities in Europe, the US and Israel, is at the centre of our paper. We discuss the specific understandings of risks that enable the effective implementation of the Dor Yeshorim model in Orthodox populations. Furthermore, we compare Dor Yeshorim to the premarital genetic testing programme for thalassaemia in Cyprus and analyse the particular social practices which generate different notions of genetic identity in these two projects. In the Cypriot programme, where individual carrier status is disclosed, unfavourable genetic carrier status is conceptualized on the individual level and often solved by resorting to prenatal genetic diagnosis upon pregnancy. In the case of Dor Yeshorim, where no information on carrier status but only on the ‘genetic compatibility’ of both partners is revealed, a notion of ‘genetic couplehood’ arises which conceptualizes ‘genetic risk’ not individually but as a matter of genetic jointness. If a prospective couple is found out to be ‘genetically incompatible’, marriage plans usually are cancelled. Furthermore, by not disclosing individual carrier information, Dor Yeshorim successfully avoids a pressing issue which ‘secular’ genetic testing programmes struggle with: the peril of ‘knowing too much’.

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.

The John Moore case in the United States and the Alder Hey scandal in Britain raised many urgent questions about the legal and ethical status of human tissue collections. This article intervenes in the current debates by posing an ontological question about tissue banking. The present discussions of the regulation of tissue archiving often rely upon a crisp, yet ill-defined, distinction between bodily ‘material’ and medical ‘information’, each bringing with it different legal and ethical considerations. Arguing that the distinction is actually difficult to draw and in urgent need of clarification, we propose that the term ‘information’ is too broad and vague to do the necessary work and suggest replacing it with a carefully theorized account of the precise ontological differences between material and textual resources. In the second half of the article we explore one particular case of the extraction of information from human tissues—the DNA sequence. We conclude by deploying the definitions reached in the first section in an effort to clarify some of the legal and ethical concerns about ‘genetic information’.

Umbilical cord blood has proved an effective substitute for bone marrow in the treatment of blood disorders, and most nations in the developed world have public programmes for the harvesting and storage of cord blood for allogenic transplantation. Private cord blood banks have sprung up alongside public banks, offering parents the opportunity to bank their child’s cord blood for later personal use. Private cord blood banking has been largely condemned by bioethical and medical professional bodies, on the grounds that the likelihood of any particular individual needing a cord blood transplant is very low, and that public, redistributive banking is a more efficient use of resources. This article investigates the appeal of private cord blood banking in the face of such condemnation, and the social norms implied in public and private cord blood banking. It locates cord blood banking in the field of regenerative medicine, and considers the two different models of biological regeneration implied in public, gift-based banking and private, autologous banking. In the first case, regeneration of sick bodies is an effect of social redistribution and intercorporeal generosity between citizens. In the second, regeneration is promised by the retention of cord blood as a form of personal property. The private cord blood account appeals to certain neoliberal norms of entrepreneurial embodiment, acting as a kind of asset or venture capital invested in the future of biotechnological innovation.

Human Embryonic Stem (hES) cell research has met with a mixed reception internationally, but in the UK remains a significant national priority. Management of what is called the ‘national embryo supply’ in the UK involves new forms of governance at the ‘IVF-Stem cell Interface’, where questions about the provenance of donated embryos, including the ethics of their sourcing, are at a premium. This article explores the question of embryo donation to stem cell research from the perspective of the increasing proximity of IVF and hES cell derivation, using a model of ‘double reproductive value’ to explore what forms of exchange and flow are occurring, and how these are defined and negotiated in the context of a national hES cell coordination network of practitioners.

The Dutch approach to genomics and society is taken as an example to show that the dream of achieving a symmetrical dialogue between social and bioscientists is not easily realized. Dutch social science and genomics experts aspired to create a bottom-up network for society and genomics that would enable social scientists to bring their own expertise and views into the dialogue with bioscientists. However, in the final stage of founding the network, this aspiration was nipped in the bud. As a result, the genomics and society research agenda has become primarily governed by the desire to adequately implement genomics in society.

Developments in the brain sciences are a key focus for BioSocieties, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. We are thus pleased that our first issue of BioSocieties includes three articles devoted to the interrelated issues of psychopharmacology, enhancement, and the body. We take this as an opportunity to provide some framing remarks from the Editorial team, which might also stimulate further contributions on these issues.

Our brains are the substrate of all thought, emotion and behavior. Because our brains are the most complex objects of human inquiry, brain science is still at a relatively early stage of its development. Nonetheless, success in influencing brain function is already raising significant social, ethical and policy issues. Here, I highlight concerns related to one aspect of clinical neuroscience: the use of psychotherapeutic drugs, originally developed to treat illness, for individuals who are not ill. I focus on this issue, sometimes described as the use of drugs for ‘enhancement’ of normal function, because it is already upon us even as science is focused on the development of safer and more effective drugs for an expanding list of indications related to alertness, mood and cognition.

The prospect of being able to take safe and effective drugs to improve mental functioning is becoming a reality. With the potential for widespread use of cognitive enhancers by large sectors of the population, this article discusses the rationale behind the development of these drugs and how society might benefit from them. Important ethical questions and scenarios are also raised. Scientists are urged to explore the implications of their work and engage in active debate with a wide range of interested stakeholders about the ethical and moral consequences of these new technologies to ensure maximal benefit with minimal harm.

Most feminist analyses of pharmaceutical medication engage with social or cultural concerns. This commentary will be more organic in focus. Is it possible that biological treatments of depression are more politically interesting than hitherto imagined in feminist scholarship? I will argue that innovative analyses of the body and psychological distress are possible when one is closely attuned to the detail of psychopharmaceutical treatment.

In February 1929, James McKeen Cattell, the editor of Science, published an editorial about book reviews, opening with his opinion that, ‘[t]he reviewing of scientific books is the most difficult situation that the editor of Science must meet’. The difficulties he outlined included competency in diverse subjects, the physical limitations of journal space, and the questions of ‘impartiality’, collegial tact and whether reviewers should remain anonymous.