Abstract
AbstractAt a crucial meeting during their proceedings, on 9 November 1983, the sixteen members of Britain's influential Warnock Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology reached a key decision on how to base proposals for comprehensive legislation governing this largely uncharted territory. Famously, they chose the formation of the “primitive streak” in the early embryo as the basis for the fourteen-day rule that has now served as the global benchmark for experimental research in this area for nearly thirty years. Based on newly available archival material and interviews, this article offers a sociological account of the ways in which a specific translation of biological facts became the basis for an enduring social contract governing controversial bioinnovation in the UK. In particular, the combined roles of Committee Chair Mary Warnock and biologist Anne McLaren are examined in terms of how a decision, or “iterative settlement,” was reached as to “where to draw the line” using specific “developmental landmarks” to establish a basis for legal regulation. Drawing from this analysis, I offer a broader argument concerning the sociology of biological translation and biogovernance that is germane to ongoing debates such that over how to limit CRISPR-Cas 9 gene editing. I contend also that we have yet to fully grasp the historical and sociological lessons to be drawn from the early histories of establishing governance over new forms of technological assistance to human reproduction, and in particular the formation of the “Warnock Consensus.”
Highlights
The analysis offered here begins from the premise that in vitro fertilization (IVF) was one of the last century’s most significant translational technologies, but that its translational importance is under-theorized and that we are missing some of its vital sociological and historical lessons as a result
All but one of the sixteen members of the Warnock Committee attended their twelfth monthly meeting in Hannibal House, the iconic London headquarters of the former Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) based in Elephant and Castle
A fifth briefing document, Paper 59, “Research on Human Embryos In Vitro,” was prepared by the Secretariat just prior to the 9 November meeting to further assist the Committee in determining what limits should be set on embryo research
Summary
All but one of the sixteen members of the Warnock Committee attended their twelfth monthly meeting in Hannibal House, the iconic London headquarters of the former DHSS based in Elephant and Castle. The transformative, parenthetical sentence introduces a new distinction within the opening section of Paper 57 entitled “The Meaning of ‘Embryo’ in this Context”: “(Strictly speaking fertilization results in a zygote which goes through morula and blastocyst stages, before the embryo proper can be identified as a discrete group of cells, but in considering the research issues this pre-embryonic period is very important as it is at this stage that in vitro development takes place).”[59]. At the very end is brief reference, in item 19, made to Paper 57, confirming that it would not be discussed until November
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