Bioethics, politics and the moral economy of human embryonic stem cell science: the case of the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme

Focusing on the case of the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme and drawing on a range of documentary material from the European Commission, Council of Ministers, Parliament and numerous committees, this paper analyses the cultural politics surrounding the debate about the funding of human embryonic stem cell science. First, it places HESC science within the context of the global struggle over the moral status of the human embryo and a conceptual understanding of the cultural politics produced by that struggle. Secondly, it outlines the primary components of cultural trading in HESC science, constructs a framework for the analysis of the EU's moral economy in this policy field and, using the same components, outlines a policy profile of the regulatory positions of the then 15 Member States as a context for the FP6 debates. Thirdly, it applies this framework to the cultural conflict surrounding FP6 and HESC science, the institutional manoeuvring that accompanied and to an extent channelled that conflict, and the contribution of bioethics to the operation of the EU's growing, if inefficient, moral economy in this field.