Publics of Bioscience

摘要

The twenty-first century has been hailed as 'the century of biology' (Venter and Cohen, 2004). Whatever we might make of this appraisal, the biosciences have become matters of considerable public concern. The stage was set in the latter decades of the twentieth century. During and since these decades, the biosciences have engendered high levels of both expectation and fear, repeatedly emerging at the epicentres of prediction, speculation and controversies. For example, since the late 1970s, public attention has recurrently focused on reproductive bioscience, stimulated by the steady-stream of news stories about innovations in that field: from the birth of Louise Brown as the first 'IVF baby' (1978), to the cloning of Dolly the Sheep (1996), forward to recent reports that the cloning of human embryos has become technically feasible (2013). Indeed, the very term 'New' Reproductive Technologies has fallen into disuse after four decades of announcements and public debates engendered by innovations in reproductive bioscience.