ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a narrative account of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, giving examples of how a number of different publics have engaged with it during 2003-7 – what sorts of public debates have been had, how they have been ‘framed’ and by whom. It identifies what research has been carried out, how a regulatory framework has been constructed around the science, and what the hopes and expectations of the science are. The UK is at the forefront of encouraging such research and its legislature has facilitated this. Policy facilitation, scientific research and the particular significance accruing to the use of human embryos, means that hESC have been the focus of much of the public engagement in the UK in the timeframe covered by this book and it is thus hESC which is the primary focus of this chapter. hESC research is seen by patients, many scientists and policy makers, as a
potential therapy for some named diseases, a potential route for tissue and cell replacement, and as an important resource for further R&D. The chapter gives some examples of how different publics, including policy makers, have ‘framed’ the debate, identifying that some issues and frames are very loudly heard, such as the tendency for the debates on hESC to be reduced to ‘cures or embryos’. Discourses of hope and opposition relating to the use of the human embryo are common; however other publics are framing a more complex and ambivalent set of risks and concerns relating to the use of women’s bodies as a source of hESC. This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section provides a nar-
rative account of what stem cells are, and what research is being done on them, focusing on hESC. The second section focuses more on a specific case study; policy shifts by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) in 2006-7 to allow ‘egg sharing’ and ‘altruistic egg donation’ for cloning to create hESC for research. This section first identifies the ‘usual suspect’ pro and anti framings of hopes for cures by patient groups, set against ‘pro-life’ concerns about the status of the embryo; discourses which have set the tone for public debate. The second part of this section provides a detailed account of responses from feminists to HFEA policy shifts in 2006-7,
identifying that these prime movers provided a more complex and ambivalent set of issue frames relating to the use of women’s bodies in biomedical research.
