This article addresses how people who handle transgenic animals in practice—laboratory workers and members of animal ethics committees—talk about and handle dilemmas with transgenic animals. It is shown how dilemmas associated with transgenic animals become back-grounded through rhetorical comparisons with ‘something else’. Through these comparisons, transgenic animals are framed as normal, ordinary and thereby unproblematic on the one hand, and as valuable treasures in which are embedded hopes and expectations of future medical treatments on the other. This tension builds up to a discourse on transgenic mice as ordinary treasures. Towards the end of the article we discuss how this discourse tends to exclude possibilities of discussing specific dilemmas of genetically modified animals. Instead the discourse is contributing to certain transgenic silences. This article is based on the project ‘Dilemmas with transgenic animals’, in which notions of culture and nature, risk and safety, innovation and organism, science and technology, are investigated in the scientific production, use and ethical evaluation of transgenic animals. The project builds on case studies in two different contexts: laboratories and animal ethics committees. The methods used are interviews and ethnographic fieldwork.

The long-standing concerns about the measurement and communication of race and ethnicity in genetic research have spilled over into the editorial columns of a growing number of biomedical journals. Nature Genetics has played a prominent role in this debate with a series of editorials published between 2000–2004, culminating in the publication of an open-access Special Issue (Genetics for the human race) in November 2004. The Special Issue brought together contemporary research on the relationship between race, ethnicity and genetic variation, and a range of views on the social and ethical implications of this research. In this article we analyse interviews with each of three the editors in charge of Nature Genetics during this period to show that scientific concerns related to the measurement and communication of race and ethnicity in genetic research had been responsible for making this a ‘special issue’ for the journal. Two broad strategies for tackling these concerns were identified from an analysis of contributions to the Special Issue: continuing to use racial and ethnic categories until such time as these become obsolete; or replacing racial and ethnic categories with alternatives based on socio-cultural and geographical ancestry. We also identified additional suggestions for improving the communication of genetic findings disaggregated by race or ethnicity, which were: developing guidelines for measurement and interpretation; and greater ‘community engagement’. We argue that neither of the broad strategies and neither of the suggestions for improving communication can be wholly effective. We suggest that this is because these proposals do not adequately confront the notion that race and ethnicity are difficult concepts to operationalize or examine in scientific research precisely because they have meanings and uses which exist beyond the domain of scientific practice or control.

The scientific community has shown unusual leadership in early and proactive identification of some of the social, environmental, ethical and security concerns raised by synthetic biology. The current influx of social scientists focusing their attention on the technology has, however, broadened the concerns and challenges of synthetic biology and, to some extent, altered the focus of the debate about social context. This article provides a snapshot of some of the main events and discussions that have taken place in the United Kingdom over the last few months on socio-political aspects of synthetic biology.

‘Molecular biology’ emerged in the first half of the twentieth century as a fundamentally novel type of biology. Its coming into being was by no means simply a linear continuation of classical genetics, the biological Leitwissenschaft of the time, and it took much more than new methods and technologies for the new discipline to arise. In this article I outline the development of molecular biology—from its beginnings to its zenith and dissolution as a discipline in its own right—in its historical context and from an epistemological perspective.

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.

In China ideology has played an important role in the research and teaching of the biological sciences since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). After the 1978 reforms, it was recognized that the discontinuation of political interference with the sciences was essential for their survival and development. However, not much later, when the fields of genetics and molecular biology became redefined as life sciences, internationally, bioethical regulation became an essential element of research regulation. The evolution of medical textbooks in the PRC reflects this. Using the cases of human cloning and human embryonic stem cell research, this article shows how science regulation incorporates cultural and political ideologies. These, on the one hand, form a continuation of modes of state propaganda and, on the other hand, embody newly formulated notions of Chinese society. This article provides a historical background of the role of ideology during the first decades of the PRC, after which it discusses the evolution of bioethical discussion of human cloning and human embryonic stem cell research in 17 medical textbooks over nine years (1996–2005). It concludes with a discussion on the changing role of ideology in bioethical policy-making for the life sciences.

In this article we aim to expand the traditional ethical issues related to the use and storage of genetic information in forensic DNA databases by exploring the Portuguese practices of informed consent in the context of DNA sample collection for forensic processing. This article focuses on three interrelated domains: the practice of volunteering to contribute to the Portuguese forensic DNA database; the portfolio of risks presented to DNA donors; and the ethical implications of requesting donors’ ethnic group among their personal data. We argue that the Portuguese forensic DNA database is an interesting case study to re-focus the ethical debate on the implications of collecting genetic information, elucidating how this activity reconfigures interpersonal relations and social hierarchy, the power of legal medicine and criminal justice, and the social construction of personal autonomy, privacy and individual rights. The practices of informed consent need to incorporate answers to risks and uncertainties posed by collecting DNA samples and DNA profiling in forensic genetic databases.

Judging from attendance records worldwide, Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies is perhaps the most successful exhibition ever. But while it has been the subject of intense legal, ethical and cultural controversy in Europe, the exhibition has been hailed by the American press, museum curators, theologians and medical professionals as a homage to the wonders of the human body, a wonderful educational vehicle and an admonition to healthful living. The article explores this affirmative American response to Body Worlds, considering changes in the exhibition venue and presentation, as well as discourses surrounding it, that have conferred a new respectability on Body Worlds and suppressed a critical engagement with its ethical, aesthetic, ideological and economic implications.

After an interruption of almost 20 years, psychopharmacological research on hallucinogenic drugs was revived in several countries simultaneously around 1990. Most of the projects that have been initiated since then have been based on the conception of model psychosis: by administering hallucinogens to healthy test subjects, psychiatrists induce a state regarded as an artificial and temporary psychosis, which can be studied under controlled experimental conditions in the laboratory. As a model of psychosis, the hallucinogen intoxication is meant to provide important clues to schizophrenia research. This article examines the history of the concept and practice of model psychosis in order to demarcate the peculiarities of its most recent articulation in the vocabulary of cognitive neuroscience. It highlights the shift from phenomenological to biological psychiatry. The analysis contributes to an understanding of the ‘regional epistemology’ of psychopharmacology by reflecting on the question: what kind of a model is the hallucinogen model of psychosis?

As part of my interest in the persistence of unproductive debates about the relative importance of nature and nurture, I focus here on the especially problematic relation between nature and the natural. For if the definition of nature is problematic, its semantic relation to ‘natural’ is even more so. I explore some of the problems that arise from slippage between substantive and normative conceptions of ‘natural’ (inviting collateral slippage between is and ought), from the bifurcatory structure of its negation and from changing assumptions about nature’s domain.

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.

One of the big success stories in synthetic biology is the re-engineering of an existing organism to produce the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. The drug is also found naturally in extracts of the plant Artemisia annua (Wormwood), but demand is far oustripping supply and extracting the drug from the plants is complex, time-consuming and expensive. In this lecture, Jay Keasling describes how he and his laboratory re-designed yeast microbes into living mini anti-malaria drug factories producing artemisinin more cheaply and efficiently. The lecture was given at the 12 May 2009 launch of the Imperial-based Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation—established in partnership with the London School of Economics and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of a science and innovation award.

Cloned animals are often understood as ‘models’ whose embodiments demonstrate the viability of somatic cell nuclear transfer and its applicability to a species body. In conceptualizing models through the trope of technoscience, Evelyn Fox Keller has argued that scientific models are not simply cognitive representations of something else, but are also embodiments of action and practice that constitute the kinds of scientific questions that can be asked and how those questions can be answered. Drawing on Keller’s language, I would say that, while we understand cloned animals as ‘models of’ somatic cell nuclear transfer, little empirical scholarship has explored what these animals are ‘models for’. This article asks what practices cloned animals embody, focusing on endeavours to clone endangered wildlife in the United States. Based on a multi-sited, ethnographic study, I show that these animals are models for conducting science in zoological parks, which entails questions regarding the kinds of knowledge practices that should be used to reproduce zoos and, in turn, meaningfully reconstitute wildlife. Based on this analysis, I contend that cloned animals not only model technique and scientific practices, but also new assemblages in the reproduction of zoos and, in turn, nature.

Regulatory activities are intended to safeguard the health of citizens by ensuring that new drug therapies meet the highest standards of safety, efficacy and quality. Recent initiatives emphasize streamlining and speeding up approval, and are intent on harmonizing standards for international competitive advantage. In Canada and the United Kingdom, a second order of evaluation is necessary in order to have the costs of a federally licensed drug covered under provincial or state health insurance programmes resulting in wider patient access to potentially cost-prohibitive products. While new therapies can get approved by federal regulatory scientists based upon acceptable evidence from data meeting the standards of safety, quality and efficacy, the determination of the formulary committees, such as the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), or the Canadian Common Drug Review (CDR), take into consideration the economic costs and benefits of the therapeutic agent. This analysis considers the technical-political-social-moral positions taken by various actors involved in legitimizing and contesting the effectiveness of cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEIs) for treating people with Alzheimer’s disease. It examines ambiguities in the ‘norms of appropriateness and legitimacy’ of clinician researchers, and the construction and legitimization of what is appropriate in clinical research and regulatory practices.

‘Racial’ or ‘ethnic’ drugs, a product of the new genetics and its mapping of genomes and populations, are now being developed and manufactured on a large scale. This article focuses on the conceptualization and identification of genetic signatures at the population level, many of which, I argue, evoke the ancient and quite common folk idiom of bodily inscription—in particular, fingerprints and birthmarks. The current geneticization of ‘colour’ and the biosociality engendered by it, I suggest, invite critical rethinking of the concept of insular populations and the distinction between bodily surface and deep structures (phenotype and genotype). While the new genetics has shifted the conceptual ground for discussions of human variation, moving away from phenotypic traits such as markings of the skin, drawing attention to what some molecular biologists refer to as the ‘universe within’, the notion of racial difference is repeatedly reinvented along familiar lines, under the banner of populations studies. I argue that, although human variation is both a legitimate and important subject in its own right and some approaches to variation do a better job than others, researchers need to be attentive to their assumptions about sampling. Circularity and subjectivity seem to be inevitable parts of the exploration of human diversity, and sampling cannot take place without a subjective, pragmatic judgment about how to proceed.

In this lecture, Pam Silver describes some of the exciting work her laboratory has carried out in synthetic biology and illustrates how engineers are not only bringing new tools to traditional biology but also a new perspective. Traditional biology has emphasized understanding the causes and mechanisms of biological processes, but bioengineers put that knowledge to practical use. Our progress in understanding life, particularly the detailed molecular biology of cells, coupled with new technologies and computing power, is starting to transform biology from a ‘soft’ science focused on description to a ‘hard’ science focused on quantifying, predicting and controlling its properties. The lecture was given at the 12 May 2009 launch of the Imperial-based Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation—established in partnership with the London School of Economics and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of a science and innovation award.

This article discusses how cultural concepts of marriage and reproduction play a primary role in how genetic disorders are regarded in Japan. The article examines the anxieties that accompany the taking of genetic tests in the context of Japanese cultural concepts of family, care and genetic disorders. The analysis draws on data from two studies conducted over two years (2006–2008), based on semi-structured interviews with individuals affected by a genetic disorder, and a study of prenatal decision-making as regards the taking of tests during pregnancy, which also involved interviews with medical professionals, including certified clinical geneticists, genetic counsellors and scholars. A number of studies, as well as governmental documents, have emphasized the importance of respecting culture in dealing with a genetic disorder and genetic information. Though we regard respect for culture as important, we show that respect for culture might hide superstitions and culturally embedded prejudices about genetic disorders. We show this by analysing the given motivations of couples for taking a genetic test and by tracing the ways in which ‘genetic information’ is understood in a socio-cultural context.