Medical innovation and national experimental pluralism: Insights from clinical stem cell research and applications in China

Abstract

The article focuses on the integration process of clinical stem cell research in China in the international arena of high-profile science. This development is analyzed against the background of a well-established landscape of informal and frequently for-profit forms of clinical experimentation with stem cells. In doing so, I trace the institutionalization of experimental clinical stem cell research and applications in China, its stepwise problematization and metamorphosis into an object of regulatory concern and intervention. It will become clear that the transition toward adoption of an internationally recognized standard system in the clinical stem cell field is a complex and highly contested process. The long-standing absence of a coherent state-centered regulatory approach for clinical stem cell research and applications in China has not only given rise to the realization of new economic opportunities, but also to a multi-stranded innovation culture, which is characterized by knowledge exchanges and collaborations between highly diverging socio-technical and epistemic communities. I will make sense of these processes through the concept of ‘national experimental pluralism’.