Making the future (socially) robust: ELSI as authoritative endorsement of biomedical promise

• In Event: Making Biofutures: Anticipating the futures of biomedicine, healthcare, and life itself

Abstract

It is argued that future visions of science and/or technology have important functions in present time, such as inviting more investment of a range of resources in their development and making arrangements suitable for their future adoption. In this presentation, I examine development of regenerative medicine in Japan and discuss in what ways discussion about its ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) has served such functions. As I have argued elsewhere, after the invention of a novel cell reprogramming technique to produce stem cells from somatic cells by Shinya Yamanaka and its application to human cells in the mid-2000s, regenerative medicine research became a national endeavour in the country, despite that its clinical advantage and commercial potential still remain uncertain.
From the beginning, ELSI of stem cells were critical for the research to achieve this special status, and there are several key moments over the last decade when addressing ELSI highlighted and increased desirability of the technology for the country. Analysis of some such moments suggests that ELSI discussion is a powerful social device to construct the past, present, and future of the technology, potentially strengthening the promise that the society will benefit from its development, though simultaneously acknowledging that it has some ‘side effects’ to be addressed. And I argue it is powerful because such discussion is often led not by researchers of the technology but by other experts including scholars of humanities and social sciences – i.e. those believed to belong to the other side of the science-society divide.

Author

• Koichi Mikami, KOMEX, University of Tokyo