Governing the moral strongeconomystrong animal engineering, ethics and.pdf

Governing the moral economy: animal engineering, ethics and the liberal government of science Alison Harvey Centre for Biomedicine and Society Brian Salter Department of Political Economy This paper forms part of the work of the Wellcome LABTEC Centre at King’s College London King’s College London Strand London WC2R 2LS 1 Abstract The preferred Western model for science governance has come to involve attending to the perspectives of the public. In practice, however, this model has been criticised for failing to promote democracy along participatory lines. We argue that contemporary approaches to science policy making demonstrate less the failure of democracy and more the success of liberal modes of government in adapting to meet new governance challenges. Using a case study of UK policy debates on scientific work mixing human and animal biological material, we show first how a ‘moral economy’ is brought into being as a regulatory domain and second how this domain is governed to align cultural with scientific values. Through these practices, the enhancement of individual and collective prosperity through technological advance is ensured. Keywords: Science governance, bioethics, liberalism, moral economy, human/animal mixing 2 Science is too important to be left only to scientists. Their knowledge, an