Paper short abstract:

This empirical paper explores the bio-objectification of human fetal cells in translational regenerative medicine. Drawing on interviews, document analysis and focus groups with PD-patients two modes of ordering are identified that stabilize the emergent bio-objects between drugs and transplants.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the bio-objectification of human cells for therapy within innovation regimes of emerging fields of biomedicine. Recently cells derived from aborted fetuses have regained scientific interest and are currently used as transplants in advanced therapies for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease (PD). This empirical paper follows these bio-objects by focusing on its emergence and the pratices that seek to govern them in contemporary Germany.

Scholarship dealing with bio-objects underlined its heuristic value in order to understand the fundamental transformation of what "life" means and where its boundaries lie (Vermeulen, Tamminnen & Webster 2012). Research in this field has focused on bio-objectification processes - understood as relational processes between the bio-object's material and socially ordered form and the crucial role regulation and standardization play in the emergence and stabilization of such bio-objects (Metzler 2012).

This paper starts from the ambiguous ontological status the cells inhabit in the first place. Drawing on qualitative data generated through interviews, document analysis and focus groups with PD-patients and their relatives in the context of one EU-FP7 project two divergent modes of ordering are identified. First, cells for therapy are governed as drugs in terms of regulating and standardizing clinical trials. Simultaneously PD-patients as potential trial participants understand these cells as organ transplants. The paper will show, how these divergent materializations are played out in regards to the governance of biomedical research and how matters of concerns are subsequently produced in both modes of ordering in multiple and different ways.