Tora Holmberg, Uppsala universitet

2010-2015

In the early 21st century, the field of stem cell research made progress, but was also subjected to setbacks. Economical resources were invested into the area of regenerative medicine, to which the hope was set to solve the lack of organs and new therapies for incurable diseases and injuries. However, there were few signs of actual progress. One problem for scientific and medical success was the lack of human embryos, from which stem cells could be extracted and cultivated. Prohibitions to produce human embryos for scientific purposes, made the invention of cybrids in 2006, eg. interspecies embryos containing human DNA in an egg from a different species (e.g. cow), appear as a possible solution. From a policy perspective, these kinds of hybrid innovations are problematic, since they challenge established categories, such as human/animal, life/non-life, represented in legal, institutional and social organisation and governance of science. In this project, we have used the theoretical notion of 'bio-object' to understand and analyse such new life forms. The aim with this project has been to develop theoretical tools to understand and regulate the embedded problems of novel bio-objects. The project investigated the challenges these novel embryos pose, and how they are understood, handled and regulated in different areas of society. The method was to trace the cybrids' multiple cultural meanings and the phrases used for various scientific and political purposes, as they circulate, and become transformed, through different sectors of society. By studying these different social arenas separately and together, we wanted to analyse the development of a debate on a new biotechnological area, and contribute to a general understanding of the processes steering the debate and policy-making in a specific direction.

The plan was to follow a growing Swedish debate on cybrids across several arenas; media, the advisory board of medical ethics, policy-work, and research. However, the expected Swedish debate never appeared (as in e.g. Denmark and UK) and we were forced to widen our empirical focus while holding on to the theoretical aim. This resulted in a study of diverse representations of stem cell research within regenerative medicine and its technologies, along with the conditions and dilemmas that follow, while holding on to the original design of entering different arenas; in the end news media, art and research policy.
With the new direction, we have genealogically traced the bio-object, following it through different arenas (policy and media) back to when it was hot in Swedish debate - the 1990's. We have analysed representations and bio-identities concerning stem cell research and animal experimentation in different texts (news media, public investigations, protocols from debates in the parliament, research policy documents, project proposals, etc.). The analytical focus has been implications of cultural boundary work and how bio-identities of the stem cells have been challenged and stabilized.
Furthermore, we have mapped and analysed arenas where on-going negotiations over bio-objects and their bio-identities occur, focusing on transgressions of boundaries, and their implications. For instance, we have studied negotiations concerning conflicting notions of aims regarding stem cell research: what happens when funding bodies want to fund innovations with commercial possibilities, while the researchers are more concerned with e.g. basic knowledge?
In addition to the funding from RJ, we were able to attract co-financing for the project from Craaford foundation and Uppsala university to employ a post-doc for 12 months full time: Shai Mulinari, Phd in Developmental Biology and a trained sociologist. The three of us have been working as a team, with regular project meetings, continuous discussions and joint publications. To conclude the project, we arranged a workshop on the theme "Politics in/of bio-medicine" in November 2014.
The three most important outcomes
The scientific, ethical and political dilemmas that come out from novel life forms could have the potential to work as tools for interesting debates about bio-medicine. However, in comparison to other European countries, there is a lack of public debate concerning stem cell research and re-generative medicine in Sweden - which we interpret as a normalization of new bio-technologies and a routinization of the handling of ethical, political and legal dilemmas. The project has historicized this normalization through studying nationally situated controversies from the end of the 1990's. Through negotiations and stabilizations, hybrids became normal and their potentially controversial nature, was excluded from the public and political debate. The fear of "polluting" medical research with economic interests has been successfully replaced, and today, these bio-objects represent promises of medical break-throughs through potentially profitable innovations.
Alongside with a hegemonic discourse on economic gains with stem cell research, more traditional scientific values remain; basic research (advancing scientific knowledge) and the importance of clinical research (in the name of the patients). To be able to understand how different discourses can co-exist without much fuzz, we have used the notion of "politico-moral discourses" to shed light on how political strategies (what kinds of research that are prioritized) and ethical positions (which values are "right") together organize possible ways to think, talk and handle biomedical issues. Discursive struggles exist between different positions, even though the conflicts remain unspoken and the embedded discourses seem impossible to resist. Thus, potential conflicts are seemingly overcome and alternative positions hidden.
The politico-moral discourses prescribe and limit how ethical, scientific and moral dilemmas in stem cell research can be framed and expressed. We further find that bio-medical technologies, have been not only been normalized through politico-moral discourses, but they have also become de-politicized. The public debate has now moved into closed institutions like research foundations and ethical boards. However, we can see possibilities to re-enchant the issue, through using representations addressing alternative and novel ethical and other dilemmas - for instance through art. In arenas outside the formal policy one, questions of life and death, sustainable futures and scientific responsibility (verses potential hubris), are raised and discussed.

The two most important publications
The most important publications from the project are the co-authored articles "För Sverige i framtiden. Ny medicinsk teknologi, bio-objektifiering och politikens frånträde" (published in Sociologisk Forskning 2013) and "Imagination laboratory - making sense of bio-objects in contemporary art" (submitted to Theory, Culture & Society).
In the article "För Sverige i framtiden. Ny medicinsk teknologi, bio-objektifiering och politikens frånträde" ("Taking Sweden into the future - Bio-objectification of new medical technology"), we analyze how contemporary discursive silences around new biotechnologies such as cybrids and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), have been enabled by earlier po-licy processes in the area, e.g. boundary work around what is human and non-human, living and non-living, subject and object. The analysis of policy processes around xenotransplanta-tions and the use of human embryonic stem cells, shows that the stem cells' and xenografts' bio-identities become stabilized through high expectations of future scientific break-throughs, a lack of thera¬peutic possibilities and struggles over definitions of life. The policy processes around human embryonic stem cells and organs from other animals, are characterized by a normalization of certain understandings of "life", trust in scientific progress, hopes of national economic growth and a categorization of criticism as irrational. (Similar politico-moral discourses have been explored and analyzed in two other of the project's publications (Mulinari, Holmberg & Ideland, in press; Ideland, 2014). Through the genealogical analysis of dilemmas concerning human/animal hybrids and human embryonic stem cells, we were able to contextualize (historically and culturally) the contemporary discursive silence in Sweden. The "bio-objectification processes" involve the political non-handling of biomedical technologies and the paper discusses how these bio-objects could be re-politicized, since the analytical framework of bio-objectification is proven useful in the understanding of how bio-objects are challenged and stabilized, and thus can be challenged again.
The other publication we would like to put forward a is "Imagination laboratory - making sense of bio-objects in contemporary art". After witnessing how Swedish debates on human embryonic stem cells was strictly limited by hegemonic politico-moral discourses, we decided to study a new context - searching for novel questions to be raised. Thus, the article turns to contemporary "genetic art" as sites for such ethical reflections - as an "imagination laboratory", through which un-framing and rupturing of contemporary rationalities are facilitated and, in addition, enable sense-making and offer connections otherwise not articulated. In the article, the framework of bio-objectification is enriched with Jane Bennett's notion of enchantment in modernity and the importance of wonder and openness to the unusual, as an entry to problematize modernity-saturated policy institutions' belief in rationality and calculations. Through this conceptual framework we highlight ethical matters of concern, rather than those ethical matters of fact found in utilitarian calculations of pros and cons. The analysis demonstrates that while some modern boundaries and rationalities are highlighted and challenged through the "imagination laboratory" of the art process, others are left untouched. For example, while some art works invite novel and alternative understandings of humans and animals and posthumanist futures, others consolidate the fear of mixing humans and animals and depict science as risk.
The aim is to understand with what kind of "magic" genetic art can enchant and thus open windows to new ethical questions rather than establishing hegemonic discourses. One conclusion is that bio-objectification is performed through innovative and "magical" assemblages of human and non-human actors. In addition, the connections made between texts and materialities in the imagination laboratory create provoking formulations of extraordinary bio-objects: plantimal, childbird, facetrace, cellcritters. Monstrous morphings, formlessness or other unusual forms can foster rejection of gene technology as well as inclusion of human-made creatures into an extended ecological kinship.
International collaborations and presentations
The study shares theoretical framework with a COST Action Program which the project members have been firmly involved in (Bio-objects and their boundaries, IS1001). Tora Holmberg has been leader for Working Group 1 and member of the program's steering group. WG1 has developed the theoretical framework and a "tool box" for analyzing bio-objectification processes. The results have been disseminated at network meetings and symposia, and have contributed to the work of our current project. The COST Action Program has also contributed to international contextualization and comparison, and Dr. Lonneke Poort from Utrecht visited Malmö University for two weeks of intense joint work in December 2012. This meeting resulted in a co-authored article.
This project has also been presented and discussed at international conferences, and Shai Mulinari spent two months as a visiting scholar at London School of Economics 2013.

Further research
New research themes that come out of the project: 1) How can the bio-objectification framework be used in practical ethical and policy work? This work has been initiated by the COST Action program at an European level, through involving policy actors in testing and evaluating the bio-objectification tool kit. 2) Explore new arenas for extended politico-moral discourse; 3) Study novel organizations for the entrepreneurial-researchers, for instance the institutionalization of Technology Transfer Offices at Swedish universities.

Publication strategies inside and outside the field of research
All scientific publications from the project have so far been published in Open Access Journals, with parallel publication in Uppsala and Malmö university's databases. In addition, we have been publishing three popular scientific articles with quite diverse audiences. The overall project was presented in International Innovation and Europe 24 Organisation. The specific study on art as an arena for raising ethical issues was discussed in the article "Konsten kan lämna nytto-tänkandet" in Fria Tidningen.

Publications

Peer-reviewed articles:
 
•    Holmberg, T.  (2011) "Unfamiliar biological futurities: Animals in techno-science," Humanimalia, 2(2): 60-66.
•    Holmberg, T Schwennesen, N Webster, A. (2011) "Bio-objects and the bio-objectification process," Croatian Medical Journal 52(6): 740-742.
•    Holmberg, T, Ideland, M (2012) "Challenging bio-objectification: adding noise to transgenic silences," in Vermeulen, N., Tamminen, S., Webster, A. (eds.) Bio-objects. Life in the 21st century, Ashgate Publishing: Gower: 13-26.
•    Holmberg, T, Ideland, M (2013) "För Sverige i framtiden – ny medicinsk teknologi, bio-objektifiering och politikens frånträde," Sociologisk Forskning, 31-49.
•    Poort, L., Holmberg, T. & Ideland, M. (2013) "Bringing in the controversy: re-politicizing the de-politicized strategy of ethics committees," Life Sciences, Society and Policy Journal, 9(11): 1-13.
•    Ideland, M. (2014) "Stem Cells between Ethics and Entrepreneurship: How a Contested Bio-Object Became ‘Normal’," Studies in Media and Communication, 2 (2): 82-92.
•    Mulinari, S. (2014) "The specificity triad: notions of disease and therapeutic specificity in biomedical reasoning," Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine 9 (14): 1-11.
•    Mulinari, S., Holmberg, T. & Ideland, M (forthcoming) "Money, money, money? Stem cell research in a grant allocation process," Science and Technology Studies.
•    Holmberg, T. & Ideland, M. (under review) "Imagination laboratory: making sense of bio-objects in contemporary art," submitted to Theory, Culture & Society.

Conference papers:
 
•    Holmberg, Tora, Ideland, Malin, "Bio-objekt på 2000-talet. Chimbrider och andra arthybrider," STS-konference, Tema T, Linköping University, 23-24 March: 2011.
•    Holmberg, Tora, Ideland, Malin, "För Sverige i framtiden. Ny medicinsk teknik, bio-objektifiering och politikens frånträde," Paper presented at the conference Sociologdagarna, Stockholms University, 15-17 March: 2012.
•    Ideland, Malin, "Different views on ethics. How animal ethics is situated in a committee culture," Invited Key-note speaker. Human-animal interactions. The 42nd Scand-LAS Symposium and Annual Meeting. Trondheim, Norway: 2012. 
•    Mulinari, Shai, Holmberg, Tora, Ideland, Malin, "The moral economies of the human stem cell crowd," Paper presented at the EASST & 4S conference Design and displacement – social studies of science and technology, Copenhagen, 17-20 October: 2012.
•    Holmberg, Tora, "Imagination laboratory – narrating new life forms in contemporary bio-art," Paper presented at the international conference Life Matters: Affect, Sex & Control, Linköping University, 26-29 May: 2014. 
•    Holmberg, Tora, Ideland, Malin, "Imagination laboratory. Making sense of bio-objects in contemporary art," Paper presented at The 27th Conference of the Nordic Sociological Association, Lund University, 14-16 August: 2014.

Popular science:
 
•    Holmberg, T, Ideland, M, Mulinari, S, "Determining discourse on bio-objects," International Innovation (2012) (available through www.research-europe.com)
•    Holmberg, T, "What are bio-objects?" Europe 24 Organisation (2012) (available through www.publicservice.co.uk)
•    Holmberg, Tora, Ideland, Malin (2014) ”Konsten kan lämna nytto-tänkandet”, Fria Tidningen, nr. 2 (http://friatidningen.se/artikel/113053)