Abstract
This article focuses on Canadian stem cell researchers working on therapeutic appli- cations of autologous stem cells for heart disease. Building on the concept of ‘multiverse’ – coined by William James and then further developed by Ernst Bloch – we are interested in the simultaneity of the certain and uncertain, sometimes contradictory arguments articulated by these scientists. In the first part of the article we illustrate some of the factors that provide certainty for researchers and clinicians. The second part analyzes the ways in which uncertain elements become integrated into a discourse of certainty. What we would like to show, using the concept of multiverse, is that a rela- tively new bio-technology such as stem cell treatments generally relies on both certain and uncertain reasoning. However, uncertainty has to give way to a platform of partial certainty, if crucial action is to be taken on issues as diverse as treatments and grant applications. The principle mechanisms we found that can make this kind of transformation possible target future developments (what we call ‘if only arguments’), including past encouraging results in need of further research.
Highlights
Stem cell treatments, in many cases, are ‘technologies of hope’ for patients suffering from a severely disabling, sometimes mortal, health condition.1 While in a relatively short period of time the field of regenerative medicine has made major progress – even to the extent of changing the understanding of core ideas within biology – the application of these findings often remains problematic
The intervention we focus on in this article – autologous stem cell treatment for cardiac diseases2 – is considered by scientists to be one of the safest procedures within the field: only a few scholars have voiced concerns over its risks
The 2012 Nobel Prize in medicine, awarded to John Gurden and Shinya Yamanaka for their pioneering work leading to induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS) – adult cells that are reprogrammed into a pluripotent state – illustrates the importance of this kind of research, as it avoids the aforementioned ethical questions
Summary
You have to have a good cell to repair the heart. Stem cell treatments, in many cases, are ‘technologies of hope’ for patients suffering from a severely disabling, sometimes mortal, health condition In line with an approach that one of the current authors has elsewhere referred to as an “anthropology of uncertainty” (Leibing, 2009a) – the analysis of the complex and often partial process of turning uncertainty into a certainty, and thereby legitimizing action within a given context – we want to focus here on how researchers in Canada talk about the apparently uncontroversial clinical trials using stem cells for severe heart disease The stem cell researchers we interviewed ‘travelled’, apparently without issue, among different discursive levels and epistemological claims while speaking with us
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