Embodied values: Post-pharmaceutical health and the accumulation of surplus vitality in regenerative stem cell medicine

Autores

  • Christian Haddad Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and in the Department of Science and Technology Studies of the University of Vienna; Scientific Researcher in Austrian Institute for International Affairs. http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9656-1619

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1590/15174522-02105002

Palavras-chave:

bioeconomy, biovalue, regenerative stem cell medicine, pharmaceuticals, post-pharmaceutical health

Resumo

Stem cell medicine promulgates a notion of regenerative health that is strikingly at odds with the notion of health found in pharmaceutical regimes of drug research. Hence, regenerative stem cell medicine presents one key site in struggles and strategies that seek to overcome the limitations of conventional drug therapies and their entrenched political economies of research and innovation. This paper analyzes an emerging politics of “post-pharmaceutical health” and their underlying logics of generating health and value in the global bioeconomy.  

This paper analyzes an emerging form of post-pharmaceutical health and its underlying regime of value in the global bioeconomy of regenerative stem cell-based medicine (RSCM). Animated by a vision to overcome drug-based therapies and their underlying political economies, RSCM pursues a form of regenerative health that is strikingly at odds with pharmaceutical regimes of drug research, regulation and therapy. To offer a theoretical account of these competing forms of health, the paper provides an analysis of the regimes of values that underpin pharmaceutical and regenerative health respectively. This analysis is done alongside three dimensions: the interlinkage between knowledge, technology and economic value creation; its relation to normative values and ethics; and conceptions and valuations of the biomedical subject and his/her body in biomedical research, intervention and innovation. Contrasting these two diverging regimes of health and value suggests that in RSCM the pharmaceutical logic of accumulating “surplus health” is not entirely dismissed but re-articulated in a regime based on the (re-)generation of regenerative biovalue through the extraction and ex vivo accumulation of “surplus vitality”. Finally, the article discusses “post-pharmaceutical health” as a sensitizing concept that offers new research avenues into emergent forms of health, value, and subjectivity beyond RSCM. 

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Biografia do Autor

Christian Haddad, Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and in the Department of Science and Technology Studies of the University of Vienna; Scientific Researcher in Austrian Institute for International Affairs.

Dr. Christian Haddad is a researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) and a lecturer at the University of Vienna (Dept. of Political Science; Dept. of Science & Technology Studies). At the oiip he works in the thematic research area on Internationalization of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy. Trained in political science and philosophy, Haddad’s overarching research focus is at the intersection of critical policy studies and science & technology studies (STS) with a strong interest in social and political theory. Currently, Haddad’s work revolves around the relationships between innovation policy and broader societal transformations. He is particularly interested in studying how innovation policy materializes in different domains and across (national, epistemic, societal) boarders and how different discourses and practices of technological innovation are articulated in close relationship with normative visions of (desirable) socio-political order, societal transformation or socioeconomic development. Empirically, Haddad has been studying these issues extensively in the field of biomedical innovation, the global political economies of pharmaceutical research, and the emerging “bio-economies” of regenerative medicine. His doctoral thesis has explored techno-political controversies over biomedical innovation policy in the field of emergent stem cell therapies. In recent projects, Haddad has expanded this focus on issues of technology transfer beyond Europe, international cooperation in STI policy, global health policy, and emerging regimes of digital safety and security.

Publicado

2019-02-23

Como Citar

HADDAD, C. Embodied values: Post-pharmaceutical health and the accumulation of surplus vitality in regenerative stem cell medicine. Sociologias, [S. l.], v. 21, n. 50, 2019. DOI: 10.1590/15174522-02105002. Disponível em: https://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/sociologias/article/view/84415. Acesso em: 29 mar. 2024.