This article explores the changing expectations and contested identity of blood stem cells (haematopoietic stem cells or HSCs). While much social science critique has of late been focused on embryonic stem cells, relatively little attention has been given to the historical emergence of stem cell biology, especially the importance of blood innovation stretching back through the middle of the twentieth century and beyond. Present-day stem cell networks inherit much from the historical engagement of medical technology with blood, especially in the contexts of blood processing, bone marrow transplantation and, more recently, gene therapy. In making sense of the shaping of blood stem cells this article draws on perspectives in the ‘sociology of expectations’ in exploring the way current expectations of stem cells are historically constituted. In this way we examine the way biological entities—HSCs in this case—become the focus and bearers of future value in contemporary global stem cell economies.

The John Moore case in the United States and the Alder Hey scandal in Britain raised many urgent questions about the legal and ethical status of human tissue collections. This article intervenes in the current debates by posing an ontological question about tissue banking. The present discussions of the regulation of tissue archiving often rely upon a crisp, yet ill-defined, distinction between bodily ‘material’ and medical ‘information’, each bringing with it different legal and ethical considerations. Arguing that the distinction is actually difficult to draw and in urgent need of clarification, we propose that the term ‘information’ is too broad and vague to do the necessary work and suggest replacing it with a carefully theorized account of the precise ontological differences between material and textual resources. In the second half of the article we explore one particular case of the extraction of information from human tissues—the DNA sequence. We conclude by deploying the definitions reached in the first section in an effort to clarify some of the legal and ethical concerns about ‘genetic information’.

This article considers how threats become constituted as problems requiring policy responses, and how one might account for such problematizations and responses. Focusing specifically on the threat from bioterrorism, it draws on a broadly constructivist approach to risk, and highlights how ideas around political rationalities, styles of thought, forms of risk and frameworks of knowledge can be useful in thinking about emerging biosecurity policies. It suggests that a comparative study of Britain and the United States might help to clarify how the threat of bioterrorism is being constructed by various groups, how support for particular ‘framings’ of the threat is being mobilized and taken up in policy networks, and how this is linked to different courses of action in response to the possibility of bioterrorism.

While social phobia is a well-known disorder in North America, it has been little known among the general French population. For several years now a small group of French clinicians and members of a social phobia support group have begun fighting for its recognition. Their voices have had a significant impact, and today information about the disorder has reached thousands or even millions of French citizens. The introduction of social phobia in France involves more than the acceptance of this one condition. Social phobia is a part of a standard North American diagnostic system that remains marginal in France; this therapeutic framework must be adopted in order for social phobia to be accepted. This article focuses on the words of French physicians, many of whom reject social phobia as a diagnosis, and a smaller number who are desperate for its acceptance. Through their words, I trace the multiple factors that are slowing the acceptance of social phobia, but not preventing it. Culture, history, economy and single-minded careerism are among the factors that clinicians link to the appearance of social phobia in France. In conclusion, I consider the argument that social phobia in France is an example of the global exportation of North American conceptions of mental health and mental disorder.

Umbilical cord blood has proved an effective substitute for bone marrow in the treatment of blood disorders, and most nations in the developed world have public programmes for the harvesting and storage of cord blood for allogenic transplantation. Private cord blood banks have sprung up alongside public banks, offering parents the opportunity to bank their child’s cord blood for later personal use. Private cord blood banking has been largely condemned by bioethical and medical professional bodies, on the grounds that the likelihood of any particular individual needing a cord blood transplant is very low, and that public, redistributive banking is a more efficient use of resources. This article investigates the appeal of private cord blood banking in the face of such condemnation, and the social norms implied in public and private cord blood banking. It locates cord blood banking in the field of regenerative medicine, and considers the two different models of biological regeneration implied in public, gift-based banking and private, autologous banking. In the first case, regeneration of sick bodies is an effect of social redistribution and intercorporeal generosity between citizens. In the second, regeneration is promised by the retention of cord blood as a form of personal property. The private cord blood account appeals to certain neoliberal norms of entrepreneurial embodiment, acting as a kind of asset or venture capital invested in the future of biotechnological innovation.

It is widely recognized that traditional informed consent requirements are highly problematic in the context of population-based genetic research. This article is based on a qualitative study that describes and analyses the consenting procedures and perceptions of donors to the North Cumbria Community Genetics Project (NCCGP), a DNA bank in northwest England. The NCCGP collected placenta and cord tissue, as well as maternal blood samples and health and lifestyle information, in order to conduct genetic epidemiological studies. The findings show that the nature of the sample (i.e. afterbirth) significantly impacted donors’ decision to donate. The antenatal context also influenced the way the request was framed to potential donors, who had a limited understanding of the aims of the biobank. However, the article concludes that a lack of understanding on the part of donors is not necessarily an ethical problem and that efforts to re-think informed consent guidelines may benefit from paying greater attention to the factors that motivate people to donate in the first place.

The purpose of this article is to comment upon an interesting gap in the criticism heaped upon Woo Suk Hwang following the revelation that his apparently groundbreaking stem cell research involved both the falsification of data and the unethical recruitment of egg donors. It is, of course, unsurprising that his fraudulent research and a possible breach of the Helsinki Declaration have come under considerable scrutiny. More interesting, in my view, is that there has been very little interest in the fact that human embryos may have been pointlessly destroyed. It is generally believed that research involving human embryos is legitimate only when it serves an important scientific purpose. Hwang’s research could serve no useful scientific purpose, and hence it would be difficult, if not impossible, to justify the destruction of embryos. I ask whether the comparative lack of interest in this aspect of the Korean stem cell research scandal points to a shift in our attitudes towards the instrumental use of the early human embryo.

There has been much recent debate and controversy over the apparent expansion of the use of certain psychiatric classifications, and the treatment of those so diagnosed, in particular their treatment with psychiatric drugs. Some have suggested that this arises from ‘disease mongering’ by a pharmaceutical industry keen to sell its products. Others have implied that psychiatrists are the key agents, acting as ‘moral entrepreneurs’ claiming that society is ignoring an area of suffering that they are best placed to understand and treat. Others have suggested that the expansion is part of a social and cultural malaise, in which individuals increasingly define problems of living as disorders in need of treatment. This article reviews the evidence of the expanding scope of psychiatric diagnosis, focusing on depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and personality disorder. It examines a number of arguments that seek to account for this expansion and suggests that we need a more complex approach to understand the growth of these diagnoses, not only addressing marketing of drugs by pharmaceutical industry and the role of doctors, but also examining the pressures and incentives that lead to the ascription of such diagnoses and their treatment with drugs.

Human Embryonic Stem (hES) cell research has met with a mixed reception internationally, but in the UK remains a significant national priority. Management of what is called the ‘national embryo supply’ in the UK involves new forms of governance at the ‘IVF-Stem cell Interface’, where questions about the provenance of donated embryos, including the ethics of their sourcing, are at a premium. This article explores the question of embryo donation to stem cell research from the perspective of the increasing proximity of IVF and hES cell derivation, using a model of ‘double reproductive value’ to explore what forms of exchange and flow are occurring, and how these are defined and negotiated in the context of a national hES cell coordination network of practitioners.

The Dutch approach to genomics and society is taken as an example to show that the dream of achieving a symmetrical dialogue between social and bioscientists is not easily realized. Dutch social science and genomics experts aspired to create a bottom-up network for society and genomics that would enable social scientists to bring their own expertise and views into the dialogue with bioscientists. However, in the final stage of founding the network, this aspiration was nipped in the bud. As a result, the genomics and society research agenda has become primarily governed by the desire to adequately implement genomics in society.

Developments in the brain sciences are a key focus for BioSocieties, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. We are thus pleased that our first issue of BioSocieties includes three articles devoted to the interrelated issues of psychopharmacology, enhancement, and the body. We take this as an opportunity to provide some framing remarks from the Editorial team, which might also stimulate further contributions on these issues.

Our brains are the substrate of all thought, emotion and behavior. Because our brains are the most complex objects of human inquiry, brain science is still at a relatively early stage of its development. Nonetheless, success in influencing brain function is already raising significant social, ethical and policy issues. Here, I highlight concerns related to one aspect of clinical neuroscience: the use of psychotherapeutic drugs, originally developed to treat illness, for individuals who are not ill. I focus on this issue, sometimes described as the use of drugs for ‘enhancement’ of normal function, because it is already upon us even as science is focused on the development of safer and more effective drugs for an expanding list of indications related to alertness, mood and cognition.