2009-02-10EESCN's Steering Group member Brian Salter, Professor of Politics of Biomedicine and Director of the Global Biopolitics Research Group in the Centre for Biomedicine and Society at King’s College London has published a new book called "The Global Politics of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Science".

Regenerative medicine is a field characterized by a global struggle for scientific, economic andnational advantage. Drawing on a wide range of interviews, primary and secondary sources, thisbook investigates the dynamic interactions between national regulatory formation and the globalbiopolitics of regenerative medicine and human embryonic stem cell science. Today governmentsare under intense competitive pressure to fund and develop attractive national environments forembryonic stem cell science, which promises both to improve the health and productivity of agingpopulations and to develop therapies for global health markets.

This study traces the development of internationally circulating arguments for and against stem cell research, and the various transnational bioethical spaces that have opened up to try and steer these arguments towards compromise and implementation. It considers the flow of embryonic and reproductive biological materials from south to north, and the ways these flows play into broader relations around global biopolitics. It investigates the place of transnational regulatory bodies like the EU and the UN in organizing and modifying the international and national debates around stem cell science, and ways in which national debates and policies influence each other. It makes a major contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of power that fuels the emergence of global regenerative medicine in the age of biotechnology.

CONTENTS: Introduction: Stem Cell Research and Global Biopolitics * Globalization, Stem CellMarkets and National Interests * Embryos, Oöcytes, Cell Lines: HESC Science and the HumanTissue Market * Global Regulation and Local Policy Narratives: Making Sense of Dolly * FromDolly to Therapies? Stem Cell Regulations in the Making I – the United Kingdom and theUnited States * From Dolly to Therapies? Stem Cell Regulations in the Making II – Germany,Italy, Japan and South Korea * Bioethics and the Global Moral Economy of Human EmbryonicStem Cell Science * Human ESC Science and the Cultural Politics of the EU’s FrameworkProgrammes * Contested Governance: Uncertainty and Standardization in Research andPatenting.

HERBERT GOTTWEIS is Professor at the Department of Political Science and Director of the Life Science Governance Research Platform at the University of Vienna, Austria. His books includeBiobanks: Governance in Comparative Perspective, (with A Petersen) and Governing Molecules: TheDiscursive Politics of Genetic Engineering in Europe and in the United States.

BRIAN SALTER is Professor of Politics and Director of the Global Biopolitics Research Group in theCentre for Biomedicine and Society at King’s College London, UK. His books include The NewPolitics of Medicine and The Politics of Change in the Health Service.

CATHERINE WALDBY is Associate Professor and International Research Fellow at the University ofSydney, Australia. She researches social studies of biomedicine and the life sciences. She is afoundational member of the global biopolitics research group, an international consortium ofscholars who investigate the effects of cultural, political and economic globalization on the socialrelations of biomedicine. Her books include (with Robert Mitchell) Tissue Economies: Blood, Organsand Cell Lines in Late Capitalism.