Stem Cell Therapy and the Governance of Uncertainty

In her recent study on China’s stem cell research, Margaret SleeboomFaulkner argued that a ‘risk-based approach’ is the key to comprehending the development of bioethics and research governance in China. More specifically, she found that among Chinese scientists, ‘a global awareness and reflection exists of the different risk signatures of the “same” technology, i.e. human embryonic stem cell research, in different global institutional settings’ (Sleeboom-Faulkner, 2010, p. 493). The acknowledgment of these ‘risk signatures’ (or various social interpretations of risk), according to her, are deployed by Chinese scientists ‘reflexively and strategically’ to ‘take advantage of the different risk constellations ... in affluent welfare societies and in China as a developing country, and in urban and in rural environments within China’ (Sleeboom-Faulkner, 2010, p. 493). Developed from a Beckian perspective, the term ‘risk’ in her study does not mean known ‘danger’ or ‘hazard’. It should be more properly understood as unpredictable and incalculable harms that are primarily understood ‘based on casual interpretations’ which can be ‘changed, magnified, dramatized or minimized’ and ‘are particularly open to social definition and construction’ (Beck, 1992, p. 23, original emphasis). Beck later further developed his risk theory and emphasized the ‘non-knowing’ aspect in his definition of ‘risk’, which includes ‘provisional non-knowing, unacknowledged non-knowing, willful ignorance and ... conscious and unconscious inability-to-know’ (Beck, 2009, p. 115)

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