Experiments in Democracy: The Science, Politics and Ethics of Human Embryo Research in the United States, 1978--2007 (2010)
Hurlbut, James Benjamin (Author)
Harvard University
Jasanoff, Sheila
Edition Details: Advisor: Jasanoff, Sheila
Physical Details: 401 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation examines the scientific, ethical and political deliberations surrounding human embryo research in the United States from 1978 to 2007. During this thirty-year period, debates about the biological and moral status of the human embryo led to vigorous arguments about technology and the public good, about the forms of deliberation appropriate to public policy making, and about the tacit social contract between science and the state. The dissertation examines how a series of public bioethics bodies responded to scientific and technological developments from in vitro fertilization to human embryonic stem cell research. Each had to contend with the technical uncertainties of embryo research and with America's moral pluralism; and each proposed a mode of public reasoning to resolve the tensions. I argue that each of these bodies accepted the notion that scientific knowledge stands outside of politics, but that they conceptualized the role of scientific authority differently because they varied in their conceptions of democracy. Debates over the definition of scientific terms like "preembryo" and "therapeutic cloning" were conducted simultaneously with arguments about whether the public was "confused" and whether such confusion should be corrected by experts or through democratic politics. I examine how these issues spilled over from ethics bodies into politics as states like California and Missouri became laboratories for new approaches to public support of biomedical research. By tracing the successive controversies that laid bare competing visions of democratic deliberation--from scientific technocracy to procedural pluralism, and from Rawlsian public reason to anti-Rawlsian communitarianism--the dissertation paints a dynamic picture of the co-production of science and politics. A central contention of the dissertation is that the ways in which science figured in politics--as a source of knowledge, as a wellspring of life-improving goods, and as a locus of rational and ostensibly extra-political authority--depended on the ideas of democracy that were advanced in parallel. Thus, the dissertation is at once a history of the human embryo as an object of laboratory research, of public and private institutions of biomedical research in America, and of the changing political role of public bioethics.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 71/07 (2011). Pub. no. AAT 3414767.
Similar Citations
Book
Banchoff, Thomas F.;
(2011)
Embryo Politics: Ethics and Policy in Atlantic Democracies
(/isis/citation/CBB001212716/)
Article
Sarah Franklin;
(2019)
Developmental Landmarks and the Warnock Report: A Sociological Account of Biological Translation
(/isis/citation/CBB966472875/)
Article
Strasser, Bruno J.;
(2011)
The Experimenter's Museum: GenBank, Natural History, and the Moral Economies of Biomedicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001022861/)
Thesis
Rogers, Susan Nadia;
(2011)
Social Arrangements in Genomic Science: How Microarray Data and Researchers Shaped Each Other
(/isis/citation/CBB001562822/)
Book
Katerina Sideri;
(2016)
Bioproperty, Biomedicine and Deliberative Governance: Patents as Discourse on Life
(/isis/citation/CBB016823973/)
Article
Almeida, Carla;
DalCol, Franciane Lovati;
Massarani, Luisa;
(2013)
Controvérsia científica no telejornalismo brasileiro: um estudo sobre a cobertura das células-tronco no Jornal Nacional
(/isis/citation/CBB001420697/)
Essay Review
Fordyce, Lauren;
(2013)
“Life” Histories: Examining Embryo and Fetal Politics in Modern Western Democracies
(/isis/citation/CBB001566485/)
Article
Daniel J. Hicks;
(2017)
Genetically Modified Crops, Inclusion, and Democracy
(/isis/citation/CBB212227086/)
Book
Ong, Aihwa;
Chen, Nancy N.;
(2011)
Asian Biotech: Ethics and Communities of Fate
(/isis/citation/CBB001023125/)
Article
Medeiros, Flavia Natercia da Silva;
(2013)
Fora da ordem natural: a natureza nos discursos sobre a clonagem e a pesquisa com células-tronco em jornais brasileiros
(/isis/citation/CBB001420696/)
Book
Erin Heidt-Forsythe;
(2018)
Between Families and Frankenstein: The Politics of Egg Donation in the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB151853995/)
Article
M'charek, Amade;
Hagendijk, Rob;
Vries, Wiebe de;
(2013)
Equal before the Law: On the Machinery of Sameness in Forensic DNA Practice
(/isis/citation/CBB001320664/)
Book
Elliott, Carl;
Chambers, Tod;
(2004)
Prozac as a Way of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB000630048/)
Book
Fox, Renée C.;
Swazey, Judith P.;
Watkins, Judith C.;
(2008)
Observing Bioethics
(/isis/citation/CBB000952014/)
Article
Briggle, Adam;
(2009)
The Kass Council and the Politicization of Ethics Advice
(/isis/citation/CBB000953543/)
Article
Aoibheann McLoughlin;
(2022)
The Goldwater Rule: A bastion of a bygone era?
(/isis/citation/CBB676775470/)
Article
Sarah Babb;
(2021)
The Privatization of Human Research Ethics: An American Story
(/isis/citation/CBB733380502/)
Book
Mark Coeckelbergh;
(2013)
Human Being @ Risk: Enhancement, Technology, and the Evaluation of Vulnerability Transformations
(/isis/citation/CBB944837263/)
Article
Maurizio Balistreri;
(2018)
La ricerca sugli embrioni umani alla luce dei nuovi scenari riproduttivi: considerazioni sull’individualità dell’embrione e sui limiti alla sperimentazione
(/isis/citation/CBB886964637/)
Book
O'Neill, Onora;
(2002)
Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics
(/isis/citation/CBB000771273/)
Be the first to comment!