New Biotechs in BRICS Countries: Brazil and India

• In Event: Innovation, Biocapital and the Making of Post-Genomic Medicine - III

Abstract

The incursion of research in molecular biology and its applications in biomedicine represents an important pillar of analysis. Molecular biology was able to alter the standards of medical research, giving it a scientific status unprecedented in the twentieth century. The knowledge of the structure and cellular functioning conferred an increasingly important and necessary legitimacy for the trajectory of the biomedical research in formation. Gradually, the research agenda in molecular biology has translated into significant changes in the field of medical activity, research in biomedicine in general and in the relations between doctor-patient-researchers and, by extension, in new relationships on the body, besides new social relationships between patients (biosocities) and researchers.
Over the past 150 years, the perception of health and disease in Western societies has changed dramatically. On the one hand, technical and scientific advances have promoted the cure of numerous diseases and the increase of life expectancy. New treatments, medicines and professional specialties have deepened the scope of the medical sciences in an unprecedented way, expanding its thematic domain and its centrality to life in society (Conrad, 2007). On the other hand, paradoxically, these same advances have complicated the perception of the subject, multiplying controversies and uncertainties: during the last century, changes in the epidemiological profile contributed to the emergence of new diseases and, with them, new perceptions about environmental and behavioral; new methods of diagnosis and intervention have been established but, at the same time, inequalities in access to health have been maintained or intensified (Albrecht et al., 2000).
These contradictions are even more evident when we think of peripheral and developing countries in contexts such as Latin America. At the same time as chronic and occupational diseases become increasingly prevalent, many inhabitants of the region are still excluded from basic sanitation, food security and medical care (Paim et al., 2011). In this sense, the emancipatory promise of modern science and technologies seems not to be fulfilled, since the populations of the region are still far from the ideal health conditions. How is it possible that, despite scientific and technological breakthroughs, health has not in fact become a universal right? How and for what reason do these tensions manifest so markedly in Latin America? How can the Human Sciences, in general, the Sociology of Health and the CTS Studies (Science, Technology and Society), in particular, collaborate to understand and remedy this situation?
From 'green' to 'red', this proposed paper examines the interaction between state, citizens / consumers and research on human stem cell technologies in India and Brazil. The main objective is to critically understand the agencial and structural processes of new developments in stem cell research and therapies in Brazil and India. These processes are captured from four interconnected themes: I) identification of research agendas; II) Promissory health: State, citizens and cellular biotechnologies; III) bioeconomics and biotechnology: public or private health ?; and IV) the ethics of governance, governance of Ethics.

Author

• Maria da Costa, State University of Campinas