Bioethics and the Global Moral Economy of HESC Science

Abstract

As the last chapter indicated, ethical reasoning and the creation of national bioethics committees or boards have played an important part in dealing politically with the regulatory challenges of hESC research. For the most part, these bioethical actors have been supportive of hESC research, and they have also played a central role in separating reproductive from therapeutic cloning. Such separations have been essential for the further development of regulations concerning hESC research and cloning for medical purposes. Although these bioethics institutions and argumentations have not necessarily reconciled existing conflict constellations, they have provided the vehicle whereby ethical reasoning could contribute to the solutions of often apparently irreconcilable conflicts. This is a critical contribution because the business of politics normally advances through manoeuvring, negotiation and the search for compromise. Standoffs may occur, but in the absence of a resort to force, agreements are reached through an adjustment of positions influenced by the relative power of the participants. It is sometimes thought that because cultural values are frequently deontological (absolute statements of right and wrong) they are therefore non-negotiable, particularly when they concern a cultural object as fundamental as the basis of human life. However, this view underestimates the inventiveness of the political process when substantial resources such as national economic advantage are at stake.