The times of cloning. Historical and cultural aspects of a biotechnological research field.

Announcement

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin is inviting scholars from various fields to discuss historical, cultural, social and philosophical issues of cloning and stem cell research. This workshop is intended to further an interdisciplinary and international discussion on recent developments in life sciences and biomedicine. Hardly any other research field has evoked such controversies during the last years. In contrast to the vivid ethical debates, there are so far only a few contributions to the history of cloning and stem cell research. Thus, we will pay particular attention to elucidating historical aspects. Not only does the concept of the “clone” itself have a very multiplicitous yet unexplored history since the beginning of the 20th century, but the different trajectories of cloning research practices, their scientific contexts as well as politics, are just as poorly understood from a historical perspective. By analyzing cloning and stem cell research against the background of 20th-century life sciences, the overall aim of the workshop is to arrive at a better understanding of today´s research practices and concepts as well as the debates and politics related to them.

To create a structure for our discussion, the workshop will be articulated in three sections, which aim at bringing into focus different analytical aspects of the trajectory of cloning as a field of inquiry: 1) objects and practices, 2) concepts and discourses, 3) visions. Naturally, there will be overlapping themes which run across the three sections. These three sections will not suggest a simple narrative of development (from the objects and practices to the concepts and discourses to the visions); instead, we want to probe a co-productionist model for the shaping of the field of cloning as we currently experience it. Thus, our working hypothesis is that the objects and practices of cloning developed closely embedded within a framework of concepts and discourses that provided key resources, both intellectual and material. In a similar fashion, an analysis of the visions of cloning in the third session is expected to reveal a rich tapestry of images and meanings, often deep seated in the history of human cultures, that accompany the practical emergence of cloning.

(1) Objects and Practices
The aim of this session is to understand, in a historical framework, what is cloned, in which way and where, and to what end. What is the history behind today´s research systems, their objects and their tools? Whereas the history of cell nuclei transfer has been well known for 4 decades, hardly anything is known about the origin and use of these techniques during the first half of the 20th century. With respect to stem cell research, the historical analysis is only beginning. Of course, stem cell research is a very recent phenomenon, but there is a multilayered history behind it, which is hardly elucidated so far. Here we want to follow different trajectories, such as the history of in vitro techniques of cell lineages as well as the history of techniques in embryo research. The choice of the experimental organism, for one thing, already situates the different phases of cloning research within specific contexts that are as much scientific-technological as they are social and economic. A special focus will be on the role of model objects and model systems: For example, what is the difference between Gurdon’s frogs, Wilmut’s sheep and Jaenisch’s mice? What do these different organisms, and the experimental systems in which they participate, tell us about the field of cloning, its assumptions and its goals? We wish to follow the making of the clones, but also the distribution of their derivatives (cells, extracts, patents, etc.) through the mesh of scientific practices whose burgeoning diversification makes them tools for as well as ends of human curiosity.

(2) Concepts and Discourses
This session builds on the material laid out above and asks how cloning can be made sense of. By necessity, this broadens the territory of our analysis, since cloning is conceptualized not only in university labs and biotech companies, but indeed in court rooms, political bodies, the media etc. In trying to order the ‘new cloned things’, what conceptual and discursive resources are being deployed? In the search for similarities and differences that accompanies the plowing of a new scientific field, how are clones being assimilated and which of their features are being singled out? How has the language of cloning changed alongside shifts in experimental practices? How is cloning being used to recast, or reinforce, explanatory schemes in related areas of biological and social thought (for example the notions of genetic program, developmental trajectory, epigenetic inheritance and genetic determinism)? And finally, how has the public discourse on cloning and embryo research changed over the last decades?

(3) Visions
The final session explores the visions of cloning, drawing from a vast imaginary that goes from ancient myths to modern fiction. How can we understand the science of cloning against a broader background of culturally related concepts such as reproduction, replication, identity and copying? How is the today´s science of cloning represented in novels and theater plays, and what is their function for the discourse on cloning? But importantly, to discuss visions of cloning also includes the visions put forth by scientists, philosophers and policy makers who aim at crafting a regulatory framework for the emergence of cloning in our society.

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