ABSTRACT
This chapter is about tacit features, but of a different map. Mapping the ethical, legal and societal issues (ELSI) of emergent sciences and technologies (S&Ts) has been consolidated as an institutional approach to handle complex and oft conflict-laden moral and political issues. It analyzes how a particular ELSI map was employed to facilitate ethical and efficient mass transactions of human biological material for research purposes, so-called research biobanking. Again, in optimistic moments, the ethicist might hope for a politically less severe regime, both in terms of public and political debate, regulation, research funding and academic ethics discourses, in which the functionalities of the currently prevailing ethical maps are rendered suitable. However, when opening the chapter with Borges, the intention was to portray the unhappy location of the Deserts of the West, and play the role of the Animals and Beggars who did not accept, or have access to, the prevailing political regime.
