Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley 232 Kroeber Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Soc Stud Sci. 2011 Apr;41(2):227-50. doi: 10.1177/0306312710386637.
New forms of life produced by biomedical research, such as human embryonic stem cells (hESC), have been the object of public debate beyond the scientific fields involved. This article brings to light the case of Brazil, where recently passed federal legislation has authorized research with in vitro human embryos. It focuses on the legislative debate in the Brazilian National Congress between 2003 and 2005 on the Biosafety Bill of Law, which cleared for hESC research a certain share of supernumerary and unviable human embryos frozen in the country's assisted reproduction clinics. The passing of this Bill triggered other public reactions, chiefly a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality in Brazil's Federal Supreme Court. This study adopts an anthropological perspective for describing and analyzing the chief arguments in both debates, in terms of how the notion of 'life' was deployed and negotiated by contending parties. If, on the one hand, the definition of life appeared firmly attached to a conception of both the in vitro embryo and the fetus as a human person, on the other a movement towards breaking down life along utilitarian lines was found when the potential beneficiaries of stem cell therapy came into the equation. In all cases, however, notions of life were negotiated from a hybrid continuum of (biological) facts and (religious, moral and juridical) values, and resonated in different ways with the idea of the individual as privileged mode of constructing personhood in the context of modern nation states.
新形式的生命由生物医学研究产生，如人类胚胎干细胞（hESC），已经超越了所涉及的科学领域，成为了公众辩论的对象。本文以巴西为例，揭示了这一情况。巴西最近通过的联邦立法授权进行体外人类胚胎研究。本文重点关注了 2003 年至 2005 年巴西国会关于生物安全法案的立法辩论，该法案为 hESC 研究扫清了道路，允许使用该国辅助生殖诊所中冷冻的多余和无法存活的人类胚胎。该法案的通过引发了其他公众反应，主要是巴西联邦最高法院提起的一项违宪直接诉讼。本研究采用人类学的观点来描述和分析这两个辩论中的主要论点，即“生命”的概念是如何被争论双方利用和协商的。一方面，如果定义生命与体外胚胎和胎儿作为人类个体的概念紧密相关，另一方面，当干细胞治疗的潜在受益者进入方程式时，就会发现沿着功利主义路线打破生命的趋势。然而，在所有情况下，生命的概念都是从（生物）事实和（宗教、道德和法律）价值的混合连续体中协商的，并以不同的方式与个体作为现代民族国家构建人格的特权模式的观念产生共鸣。
