Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
is framed as something to be 'cured' in media debates about hESC
research, with the curing of disability further being shaped as a social
goal for the good of the nation (Goggin and Newell, 2004). The
problem with such a framing of disability, these researchers argue, is
that it does not adequately reflect the goals and values of people who
live with disabilities, and assumes that all people living with
disabilities have the same attitudes (Goggin and Newell, 2004).
Regulatory development typically reflects a very limited idea of
whose opinions count in building policy around hESC too.
Stakeholders consulted by government often come from a limited
pool of 'experts' who are drawn from particular sectors of the
community. In the Australian hESC policy debates, for example,
stakeholder consultations typically reflected the views of small
groups of individuals that claimed to have particular legitimacy to
the exclusion of others (Lysaght et al., 2011). In the Japanese debates
over hESC research by contrast, minority voices from patient activist
groups and members of anti-eugenics groups had more impact than
a broadly conceived notion of community (Sleeboom-Faulkner,
2008). It has been further argued that calls for public participation
in policy development are largely circumscribed by the kinds of
views that are deemed as being required for consideration (Dodds
and Ankeny, 2006). That is, when debate focuses only on political,
social or ethical issues, this already sets the stage for who counts as
'the public' in public participation (Dodds and Ankeny, 2006).
These limitations in media representations and policy discussions
about hESC research raise a number of questions about exactly how
community attitudes might be identified. Community attitudes to
stem cell research are often shaped by a number of factors, including
religious beliefs, political ideology and general support for scientific
knowledge as much as scientific literacy about the topic (Ho et al.,
2008). This has been shown in an analysis which argues that in
communities with high levels of trust in science, there is a
correspondingly high level of support for controversial forms of
research (Chalmers and Nicol, 2004). However, further analysis also
shows that support for hESC depends on the funding source, with
support for privately funded commercial research argued to be much
lower than for publicly funded research (Critchley and Nicol, 2011).
