Introduction: Biotechnology in East Asian Societies: Controversies and Governance

Introduction: Biotechnology in East Asian Societies: Controversies and Governance Wenmay Rei & Terence Hua Tai Received: 28 April 2010 /Accepted: 28 April 2010 /Published online: 11 June 2010 # National Science Council, Taiwan 2010 Since the turn of the millennium, biotechnology has been undergoing a paradigm shift. While conventional medicine seeks to kill germs, relieve patients of symptoms, or remove failed organs, genomic medicine is seeking to identify health risks inherent in each individual’s genetic make-up and intervene directly at that level. Likewise, while traditional organ transplantation endeavors to surpass organ failures under the scarcity of available organs that match, stem cell sciences are beginning to produce matching human tissues and use them to reverse the process of organ failures. Although the prospect of medical progress seems to promise an encouraging future of healthcare, these paradigmatic shifts have also raised ethical, legal and social concerns. Because the research and application of genomic medicine requires collecting and analyzing sensitive genetic information that implicate health risks not only of individuals, but also of their family members or the ethnic group they belong to, profound ethical, legal, and social issues arise which require re-examination of research ethics as well as protection against privacy violation and social discrimination. Likewise, because the development of stem cell sciences often utilizes human embryos that enjoy special protection in many cultures, the very permissibility of embryonic stem cell research has raised fierce policy debates in Europe, the USA, and many other countries. Despite these ethical, legal, and social concerns, East Asian governments have been more open toward funding and providing favorable policy environment for the development of biotechnology. Except for South Korea, East Asian countries have no deep-rooted tradition in Christianity which has led many countries in the world to be torn between adhering to fundamental religious values and allowing human East Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal (2010) 4:1–6 DOI 10.1007/s12280-010-9128-z W. Rei (*) National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan e-mail: wmrei@ym.edu.tw T. H. Tai National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan e-mail: ttai.cku@gmail.com embryonic stem cell research to proceed in a way that threatens such values. Hence, governments in these East Asian countries face less controversy when they deal with human embryonic research that is critical for the development of stem cell science. Moreover, many of these initiatives are backed by governmental funding. Compared to Europe or the USA that has a large pharmaceutical industry capable of funding its own research and development, biotechnology in East Asian countries, except perhaps for Japan, relies more heavily on governmental funding and promotion for its research and development (Chaturvedi and Rao 2004). For instance, among all the human embryonic stem cell research centers in countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan that participate in the Stem Cell Network of the Asia-Pacific Region (SNAP), a network of major stem cell research centers in the region, all but some private universities in Japan are nationally funded universities or research centers (Elstner et al. 2009).1 Under this backdrop, at least Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore are already in the process of establishing population-based biobanks to facilitate research in genomic medicine. To facilitate and guide the development of biotechnology, at least the governments of Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have also passed different forms of statutes or guidelines to regulate embryonic stem cell sciences. As a result, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan all allow therapeutic cloning which is banned in most European countries.2 With the dependency of biotechnology for its development on public funding and more lenient regulations, particularly those regarding embryonic stem cell research, East Asian societies face the challenge of how to govern biotechnology to legitimize their policy. It is essential for them to meet this challenge not only because democratic governments must be accountable to the public, but also because as members of the international community, these countries still must comply with certain international bioethical standards. The United Nation’s Declaration on Human Cloning in 2005 highlights this point. It imposes on each member state a duty to “prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch...