This article attempts to show a way in which social science research can contribute in a meaningful and equitable way to philosophical bioethics. It builds on the social science critique of bioethics present in the work of authors such as Renee Fox, Barry Hoffmaster and Charles Bosk, proposing the characteristics of a critical bioethics that would take social science seriously. The social science critique claims that traditional philosophical bioethics gives a dominant role to idealised, rational thought, and tends to exclude social and cultural factors, relegating them to the status of irrelevancies. Another problem is they way in which bioethics assumes social reality divides down the same lines/categories as philosophical theories. Critical bioethics requires bioethicists to root their enquiries in empirical research, to challenge theories using evidence, to be reflexive and to be sceptical about the claims of other bioethicists, scientists and clinicians. The aim is to produce a rigorous normative analysis of lived moral experience.

In this paper I explore the way in which scientists attempt to construct schizophrenia as a genetic disease using various discursive strategies. These strategies involve: referring back to earlier twin and adoption studies on schizophrenia inheritance; constructing genetic models to allow some rôle for single gene versions of the condition; a cautious and responsible limit on the strength of current research; and the construction of a range of bordering conditions which contribute to the genetic risk of schizophrenia. These various rhetorics produce a 'narrative' about schizophrenia which subtly prioritizes genetic explanations, while appearing to allow a rôle for non-genetic factors; I term this the 'narrative of enlightened geneticization'. This research has implications for scientific controversies, specifically the way in which critics attack schizophrenia genetics, since many of their points are already incorporated into the narrative. It also contributes to the ongoing debate over the rôle of social science research in the study of geneticization.

Drawing on scholarship around academic freedom and new public management, this article explores the way in which research ethics committees in UK universities (URECs) can come to exhibit behaviour – common in their US equivalents – that prioritises the reputational protection of their host institution over and above academic freedom and the protection of research subjects. Drawing on two case studies the article shows both how URECs can serve to restrict research that may be ‘embarrassing’ for a university and how, in high profile cases, university management come to use such committees as mechanisms for internal discipline.

This paper presents an empirical examination of geneticization, the process where genetic explanations gain ascendancy in medical and social discourse. By focusing on Cystic Fibrosis (CF), this study shows how genetic explanations play a role in the reclassification of Cystic Fibrosis. One result of this geneticization is a nosological expansion, where the boundaries of the disease expand to include a certain form of male infertility. In addition this paper highlights the uncertainty in the CF classification system that results from the use of genetic explanations.