A very large grey area exists between translational stem cell research and applications that comply with the ideals of randomised control trials and good laboratory and clinical practice and what is often referred to as snake-oil trade. We identify a discrepancy between international research and ethics regulation and the ways in which regulatory instruments in the stem cell field are developed in practice. We examine this discrepancy using the notion of 'national home-keeping', referring to the way governments articulate international standards and regulation with conflicting demands on local players at home. Identifying particular dimensions of regulatory tools - authority, permissions, space and acceleration - as crucial to national home-keeping in Asia, Europe and the USA, we show how local regulation works to enable development of the field, notwithstanding international (i.e. principally 'western') regulation. Triangulating regulation with empirical data and archival research between 2012 and 2015 has helped us to shed light on how countries and organisations adapt and resist internationally dominant regulation through the manipulation of regulatory tools (contingent upon country size, the state's ability to accumulate resources, healthcare demands, established traditions of scientific governance, and economic and scientific ambitions).

Over the last three to four years, an increasing number of private and public sector tertiary level hospitals and research centres in India have been using stem cell therapy, especially adult stem cell therapy, in the guise of experimental therapy for a variety of medical conditions. The promotion and growth of this experimental field across local and national borders traverses regulatory, ethical, social and financial boundaries. In this complex context, the article examines how healthcare centres in India negotiate bio-medical and health care circumstances in promoting a therapy that raises questionable medical, technical and ethical issues. The process of promoting experimental stem cell therapy is explained here by employing the concept of bionetworking and illustrated by two case studies of hospital groups. The case studies show how through bionetworking a centre creates and maintains novel networks of mutual exchanges with other collaborative bodies situated in local, national and global relations of inequality. Drawing on a three-month period of fieldwork and interviews in various locations in India, this article shows that: (1) Questionable stem cell therapy is promoted through bionetworks that resonate across local, national and global constellations; (2) Regulatory gaps facilitate the growth of such therapeutic practices; (3) The experimental stem cell therapies augment the healthcare divide in Indian society; (4) The weakening Indian state facilitates commercialisation of health, indirectly supporting the 'bionetworking' practices of therapy providers.

This article concerns new developments in autologous adult stem cell research in Japan and India through the notions of biohierarchy and bionetworking. It conceptualizes how human subject research in one country may be turned into experimental stem cell therapies in another through bionetworks. We analyse the processes that enable researchers in Japan to discard a therapy as being of reputational risk, while researchers in India employ it so that it becomes reputation enhancing. At the same time, scientists from both countries collaborate in and potentially benefit from the same bionetwork. Explaining how the recruitment of patients and scientists is organized through bionetworking, this article analyses how experimental research in India thrives using Japanese technologies. The concept of biohierarchy illustrates how inequalities in health and standards of living in India and in Japan underpin the methods by which researchers, medical professionals, managers and patients collaborate in bionetworks. The concept of 'boundary object' here captures the ways in which the meaning of experimental therapy is defined by subjective categories projected onto it by patients and scientists alike. The article is based on fieldwork conducted by both authors during 3 months between September and December 2008 at various locations in India and Japan. Data for this article were collected from a wide range of interviews with stem cell researchers, medical doctors, coordinators, managers and patients, primary and secondary sources gathered at these centres, and through web and archival research.

No abstract

Developing countries have sought to profit from theSecondly, we discuss government policies on the institutional aspects of hESR that have made China relatively attractive to foreign investors compared to India. In the concluding part, we discuss various dimensions of bioethics with regards to hESR, and how governing bodies mobilise cultural resources as economic capital.