Paper short abstract:

This paper relates to current bioethics’ governance in France. It aims to highlight different modes of engagements implied by this form of regulation of biomedicine, in which participatory apparatus contribute to a centralized administration of moral judgments regarding health and care innovations.

Paper long abstract:

Bioethics' current French arena invites to analyze the socio-political dynamics coming along biomedical practices and technologies - from genetic information or embryonic cells research to organ donation or end-of-life decisions… Through its institutionalization process, bioethics moved from administrating conflicts of values in the social interweaving of biomedicine to deciding ontologies, relations to life, bodies or filiation. At the occasion of this track, the focus of this presentation will be on how participations of individual citizens are narrated and implemented around the moral involvements associated with contemporary biomedicine. Based on a range of ethnographic observations, qualitative interviews and literature reviews, this work is part of a research regarding bioethics' governance. Institutionalized public debates and citizens' consultations regarding ethics are flourishing in the movement of participatory imperatives in science and technology political decisions. In this regard, three distinct recent French experiences will be illustrative entry points, particularly towards territorialized organizations and their implications for civil bioethical innovation. From these, the interest will be on how professionalization and prescription outlining the bioethics' field incorporate participative measures. Notably, governmental agencies' agents, healthcare and research committees' members, hospital professionals and academics are dominant players leading the legitimizations of knowledge and distributions of abilities among individuals. Thus trying to identify the path for Health Democracy when the emphasis is on biotechnological determinants, we may question the citizenships built towards bioethical individual and collective evaluation and positioning, and the emancipation, freedom or autonomy this regulatory science allows and/or supports.