IAS/WUN Symposium on Biocapital & Bioequity

21 February 2012

10.00-16.30, Verdon Smith Room, Institute for Advanced Studies, First Floor, Royal Fort House

Convener

Professor Donna Dickenson, School of Social and Community Medicine

The international rise of ‘biocapital’-- the commodification of human tissue from BC (before conception) to AD (after death) in newly globalised ‘tissue economies’-- has posed profound problems for public policy, legal regulation and academic analysis. Particularly in Britain, the dominance of utilitarianism in bioethics has led too readily to an acceptance of the commodification of human tissue as a boon to science and progress, when in actuality restrictive licensing and monopoly patenting are widely thought to impede both medical research and clinical care.

Because the new biotechnologies are constantly evolving, only a comparatively small number of academic analysts around the world have both the technical understanding and the conceptual background to analyse them in any depth. Often they face a hostile climate in their own countries: in the UK, China, India and the US, neoliberal market policies markets have frequently combined with a largely uncritical government attitude towards new technologies, so that critics of commercialisation are portrayed as unpatriotic enemies of scientific progress. Because research on biocapital is almost by definition interdisciplinary, scholars of the global bioeconomy are additionally somewhat isolated in their own fields. However, these handicaps have not prevented them from proposing conceptually sophisticated and politically productive models to enhance ‘bioequity’—a novel, two-edged concept encompassing both new concepts of individuals’ property in their own tissue, and distributive justice of benefits and risks associated with the new biotechnologies.

The IAS/WUN seminar series on Biocapital and Bioequity, of which this is the third and last, brings together a number of those key figures from WUN partners in the UK, Australia and the United States. Their approaches are rooted in a range of social sciences (primarily sociology, politics and economics), medical law, medical ethics, philosophy and feminist theory—the latter crucial because it is women’s tissue and labour which powers much of ‘biocapital’. Five WUN universities have been involved (Bristol, Leeds, Sheffield, Sydney and York). The network now also includes academics from many other institutions (Birmingham, Exeter, Lancaster, Newcastle, University of the West of England and Queen Mary, University of London). A principal focus of this final meeting will be to find ways to continue the network’s activities in the future and to build it further.

At this meeting, Professor Julie Kent of the University of the West of England will discuss a chapter from her forthcoming book Regenerating Bodies: Tissues and Cells in the 21st Century, followed by a commentary from Professor Anne Kerr of the University of Leeds. Two further papers will be presented on ‘A model for morally regulating biomedicine’ (given by Dr Amanda Warren-Jones, University of Sheffield) and ‘The phenotype goldmine - direct-to-consumer genotyping companies discover patents’ (presented by Professor Sigrid Sterckx, University of Ghent, Belgium, and Dr Julian Cockbain, patent law expert).

Programme

Because it is an active workshop rather than a lecture series, the meeting is by invitation only, but anyone interested is welcome to contact Professor Donna Dickenson (d.dickenson@bristol.ac.uk).