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Medical innovation and national experimental pluralism: Insights from clinical stem cell research and applications in China

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Abstract

The article focuses on the integration process of clinical stem cell research in China in the international arena of high-profile science. This development is analyzed against the background of a well-established landscape of informal and frequently for-profit forms of clinical experimentation with stem cells. In doing so, I trace the institutionalization of experimental clinical stem cell research and applications in China, its stepwise problematization and metamorphosis into an object of regulatory concern and intervention. It will become clear that the transition toward adoption of an internationally recognized standard system in the clinical stem cell field is a complex and highly contested process. The long-standing absence of a coherent state-centered regulatory approach for clinical stem cell research and applications in China has not only given rise to the realization of new economic opportunities, but also to a multi-stranded innovation culture, which is characterized by knowledge exchanges and collaborations between highly diverging socio-technical and epistemic communities. I will make sense of these processes through the concept of ‘national experimental pluralism’.

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Notes

  1. While basic stem cell research falls under the joint responsibility of the Ministries of Health, and Science and Technology (see Salter and Qiu, 2009), clinical research and applications falls solely under the responsibility of the MOH.

  2. See the list with ‘treatable diseases’ on the website of Beike Biotech: www.stemcelltreatmentnow.com/index.php/treatment/treatable-diseases.html.

  3. www.neuralstemcell.com.cn/ksjj/.

  4. www.sfdachina.com/info/50-1.htm.

  5. See: www.chinascinet.org/.

  6. See BioTimes Asia: (www.biotimeasia.com/).

  7. This information is based on a presentation of this draft regulation, generously provided by Professor Chingli Hu and his team in Shanghai, on 21 January 2011.

  8. www.moh.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/mohkjjys/s3582/201201/53890.htm.

  9. This document has been put on the MOH website. www.61.49.18.65/publicfiles///business/cmsresources/mohkjjys/cmsrsdocument/doc13829.docx Translations of these two documents can be requested from the author of this article via e-mail.

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Acknowledgements

The research for this article has been conducted under ESRC grants RES-062-23-0215 and RES-062-23-2990. Aside from the ESRC, I am grateful in particular to Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, Marilyn Strathern and Bob Simpson for their generous support, and to three anonymous reviewers for their substantial and extremely useful comments.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, Arts C, Room 211, Brighton, BN1 9SJ, East Sussex, UK

    Achim Rosemann

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Rosemann, A. Medical innovation and national experimental pluralism: Insights from clinical stem cell research and applications in China. BioSocieties 8, 58–74 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2012.39

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