ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand what happens when disputants hold and promotes quite contradictory arguments about nature and morality, specifically within the context of debates about biotechnology. At the centre of this account are two familiar figures: the biotechnology industry and opposition Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs). A number of biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms have invested heavily in the field, particularly in the mid 1990s though somewhat more modestly of late. The innovation history of xenotransplantation has been played out against numerous risk crises, characterised by ferocious antagonism between industry and animal advocacy NGOs. Animal advocacy NGOs have also begun to exploit scientific debates about the dangers of pathogenic risk. A number of Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars have focused on the relationships between formal scientific institutions and various opposition constituencies. The STS perspectives tend to present NGO organisations as being at something of a disadvantage when they try to occupy the epistemologically privileged territory of science.
