Disciplining Bioethics: The Debate Over Human Embryo Research

Abstract

J. Benjamin Hurlbut’s book Experiments in Democracy: Human Embryo Research and the Politics of Bioethics is an historiographical analysis of the American debate over embryo research. It covers more than four decades of this debate and uses key actors, bodies, and events as empirical evidence for its analysis. At a first glance, it might seem like a book that tells a story, but Experiments in Democracy is much more than that. Hurlbut uses the chapters of this narrative as case studies through which to examine practices of deliberative democracy and the role played by scientists and ethicists in the deliberative processes concerning embryo research and the governance thereof.