From Mad Scientist to Bad Scientist: Richard Seed as Biogovernmental Event

Abstract

In 1998, Chicago physicist Richard Seed's announcement that he would clone a human being set off an international media furor that revealed important insights into our understandings of biotechnology, scientists, and governmental regulation of genetic research. This study examines English-language media coverage of Seed over a 5-year period, tracing how his initial framing as a "mad scientist" was quickly contained and managed by the scientific community through his reframing as a "bad scientist." Amid media calls for a response from government regulators, it became apparent that the state has failed to adequately prepare itself and the public for the eventuality of human cloning, a failure of biogovernance. This article discusses how three tensions in current biogovernmental practice were made visible once Seed was read as a biogovernmental event.

The Presentation of Dolly the Sheep and Human Cloning in the Mass Media

“…• January 1998. The American physician Richard Seed made a controversial statement about his intention to clone a human being [2].…”

“…Neither was there any debate about (non-genetic) environmental influences on the development of the clone [23], nor -and this happens to be one of the most controversial points -on the differentiation state of the mammary cell used by Wilmut [24]. 2 The cloning of Dolly was not only unusual because of the extraordinary amount of media coverage that it received, but also because the controversy -unlike other cases such as that of cold fusion [25,26] -was not about scientific facts (although there were news stories that varied with regard to their representation of these facts), their interpretation, or even their implications for per se policies. The controversy was about how these facts affected ethical issues [27,28].…”

Care and the self: biotechnology, reproduction, and the good life

“…Increasingly, individuals are expected, not to discipline themselves, but to manage themselves and the risks that they pose to the wider social good, through accessing and mobilizing the resources and expertise at their disposal in the genetic marketplace. [20]…”

“…And yet we strive all the more, wedded to our epistemological worldview, where our own genetic matter is produced "as a field of management and includes practices such as mapping, testing, coding, banking, simulating, and representing" [20]. Despite this surveillance and perpetual self-management, the rhetoric of autonomy and freedom carries the day: it is our ideology, our mantra.…”

Data, Code, and Discourses of Difference in Genomics

“…Medical biotechnology, encompassing genetics, genomics, and health, is an emerging area of study within the field of communication (Slack, 2005). Scholars have considered issues that span the areas of organizations (Tang, 2007), technoscience (Hashimoto, 2005; Thacker, 2004), heredity (Condit, 1999), national policies (Sullivan, 2005), news portrayals of genetics and science (C. Condit, Ofulu, & Sheedy, 1998; Condit, 2004; Gerlach & Hamilton, 2005; Nelkin, 1987), representation in the media (Condit, 2004; Nelkin & Lindee, 1995; Silva, 2005), and race and genetics (C. M. Condit, Harris, & Parrott, 2002; Thacker, 2005). As many of these authors point out, discourse and the meaning and salience of gene thinking in society are important sites of struggle over the terms of biological notions of race and the process of racialization.…”