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The bioeconomies of stem cell research
Published in Christine Hauskeller, Arne Manzeschke, Anja Pichl, The Matrix of Stem Cell Research, 2019
As the above quoted excerpt of the UK Stem Cell Initiative Report & Recommendations clearly shows, stem cell research is part of a global knowledge-based economy, usually named bioeconomy. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), bioeconomy refers to ‘the aggregate set of economic operations … that use the latent value incumbent in biological products and processes to capture new growth and welfare benefits for citizens and nations’ (OECD, 2006, 1). These ‘new growth and welfare benefits’ would be achieved through the generation of product markets (ibid.). In other words, bioeconomy is identified as a knowledge-based economy rotating around the commercial application of the life sciences, biomedicine, and biotechnologies.
Global impact of trace non-essential heavy metal contaminants in industrial cannabis bioeconomy
Published in Toxin Reviews, 2022
Louis Bengyella, Mohammed Kuddus, Piyali Mukherjee, Dobgima J. Fonmboh, John E. Kaminski
When cannabis was grown in emulated Chernobyl conditions with radiocesium (Cs-137), radioactivity was detected in all plant tissues as well as retting water, fiber, seed oil, and biofuel which could potentially end up in the hands of consumers (Vandenhove and Van Hees 2005). Akin to the above study, maximum absorption, and distribution of strontium (Sr-90) was 45%, 45%, and 15% in the roots, stem, and leaves, respectively (Hoseini et al. 2012). The extensive rhizosphere of cannabis owing to its long root system (∼2.4 m below the ground level), naturally resistant to invasive pests in the wild, and the reduced usage of pesticides for cultivation gives cannabis species an extra edge over other plants used for phytoremediation. With this high propensity to bioaccumulate radioactive material from the soil, it is obvious that cannabis used in phytoremediation (or cannabis that is erroneously grown on radioactively contaminated soil) cannot find its place as construction material, animal feed, human food, supplements nor textile. Thus, impeding the cannabis bioeconomy. Nonetheless, repurposing radioactive cannabis biomass for electricity and ethanol production could be a possibility to salvage grower’s investment, even though poor oxidation stability in biodiesel production has been reported (Li et al. 2010).
Moral frameworks of commercial surrogacy within the US, India and Russia
Published in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 2021
Marcin Smietana, Sharmila Rudrappa, Christina Weis
Also in line with these findings are our three studies from the western US state of California, the southern Indian state of Karnataka, and the western Russian metropolis of St Petersburg. We therefore argue that the moral frameworks used by our interviewees to interpret their involvement in surrogacy are “repro-regional”: they partly overlap with national jurisdictions and politics, partly exceed them, and partly refer only to the cultural or political region and bio-economy they are each set in. We suggest that these repro-regional moral frameworks overlap with cultural norms and histories that are dominant in the region, as cultural idioms that are invoked as interpretation schema and means of legitimisation. They can form a basis for social contracts around issues such as surrogacy, as suggested for example by Heather Jacobson10 in her analysis of the form of surrogacy that is socially acceptable in most of the US. We recognise that our understanding of “repro-regional moral frameworks” is still a broad category, yet we hope that alongside our comparative study, other future studies can show how repro-regional moral frameworks in specific locations can overlap with social hierarchies such as class, race, or other.
Patenting Foundational Technologies: Lessons From CRISPR and Other Core Biotechnologies
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2018
Oliver Feeney, Julian Cockbain, Michael Morrison, Lisa Diependaele, Kristof Van Assche, Sigrid Sterckx
Application of biotechnology in health care, agriculture, and manufacturing is increasingly seen as a key driver of global productivity and economic growth (European Commission 2012; OECD 2009). Biotechnology already accounts for a number of leading pharmaceutical (Philippidis 2017) and food (USDA 2017) products, and the focus of policy and resource allocation on the “bio-economy” is only set to increase. Much of the explosion in the use of biotechnology in food and medicines has been facilitated by a small number of groundbreaking, “foundational” developments, such as the ability to grow living cells and tissues outside the body, to establish the sequence of genetic material, to produce recombinant DNA (rDNA), and to multiply DNA sequences using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). (While rDNA is sometimes used to refer to DNA coding for ribosomal RNA, it is used here to refer only to recombinant DNA.)