Amy L. Fletcher

Clearing the air: the contribution of frame analysis to understanding climate policy in the United States

Frame analysis illuminates the politics of climate change and generates ideas about discursive strategies that can assist national governments to take effective action on climate change. The nature of frame analysis and its links to discourse theory and social constructivist epistemology are discussed, and this framework used to show how climate change politics in the USA under the second Bush Presidency (2001–2008) have been viewed through at least three contrasting frames: scientific scepticism; climate change as a security threat; and climate change as an economic opportunity. The last of these frames, which uses the Apollo metaphor to liken the task of controlling climate change to the effort during the 1960s to put a man on the moon, is especially promising due to the wide appeal of its positive framing of climate policy in terms of technological achievement, industrial transformation and economic opportunity.

Field of genes: the politics of science and identity in the Estonian genome project

This case study of the Estonian Genome Project (EGP) analyses the Estonian policy decision to construct a national human gene bank. Drawing upon qualitative data from newspaper articles and public policy documents, it focuses on how proponents use discourse to link the EGP to the broader political goal of securing Estonias position within the Western/European scientific and cultural space. This dominant narrative is then situated within the analytical notion of the “brand state”, which raises potentially negative political consequences for this type of market‐driven genomic research. Considered against the increasing number of countries engaging in gene bank and/or gene database projects, this analysis of Estonia elucidates issues that cross national boundaries, while also illuminating factors specific to this small, post‐Soviet state as it enters the global biocybernetic economy.

Genuine fakes: Cloning extinct species as science and spectacle

Abstract This case study of the Australian Museums Thylacine Cloning Project analyzes a frame dispute that emerged during public communication of a scientific project, which lasted from 1999 to 2005, and was premised on the idea of resurrecting an extinct species. In choosing the Tasmanian tiger—an iconic Australian marsupial officially declared extinct in 1986—the promoters of the cloning project ensured extensive media coverage. However, the popular and scientific attention generated by the idea of bringing back an extinct species challenged the Museums efforts to frame the project in terms of scientific progress. The project repeatedly shifted from science to spectacle, as multiple stakeholders used the mass media to negotiate the scientific feasibility of trying to reverse extinction through the application of advanced biotechnology. The case study findings are relevant both to the emerging social issues surrounding the use of paleogenomics in wildlife conservation, and to the theoretical development of frame analysis as applied to scientific controversies.

Reinventing the pig: the negotiation of risks and rights in the USA xenotransplantation debate

Xenotransplantation (XTP) involves the transplantation of cells, tissues and organs from non-human mammals (usually pigs) to humans. Because XTP could produce considerable public health gains, advocates want to proceed to human clinical trials as soon as possible. However, XTP also raises complex regulatory issues, since virtually all scientists agree that there is a risk of pig endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) crossing the species barrier and infecting patients, their contacts and potentially the community. This tension between individual benefit and potential public risk mandates that the public should be consulted on this issue. This paper analyses the XTP debate in the USA in order to evaluate the implications of the shift from expert-driven health policy to more participatory governance of health and risk.

France enters the information age: A political history of minitel

National communication systems--while they serve a universal human need--do not follow a universal logic of development. Instead, networks emerge from the interaction of ideas, culture, and politics within specific national contexts. This article develops a culturally and politically grounded analysis of technology via an exploration of the videotex saga in France; the only large advanced industrialized state where videotex succeeded. Particular attention is given to the way in which the French government designed videotex as a public strategy not only to modernize the telecommunications network, but also to bolster French economic and national security in relation to the United States. The article concludes that French videotex provides strong support for the thesis that communications technologies resolve and reflect unique cultural and political dilemmas, in addition to fulfilling their more technocratic function as scientific/engineering projects.

Mendel's Ark

As the global extinction crisis accelerates, conservationists and policy makers increasingly draw upon advanced biotechnologies such as reproductive cloning, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and DNA barcoding in the urgent effort to save species. This book considers the ethical, cultural and social implications of using these technoscientific tools for wildlife conservation. Drawing upon sources ranging from science to mass media to literature, I focus on the stories we tell about extinction and the meanings we ascribe to nature and technology. These narratives, far from being ephemeral to either politics or conservation, embody our fears and dreams about the future of nature and our place within it. Our increasing reliance on biotechnological tools is a matter of practical consequence, but also a platform for constructing a futuristic wilderness repopulated with such wonders as Tasmanian tigers, mammoths and moas. Biotechnology thus shapes the wildernesses we can envision and affects which species are likely to survive and even those which might one day be revived. This chapter begins with the story of the first known marine mammal to vanish in the twenty-first century, the Yangtze River dolphin, and then introduces the major themes and research questions of this book. The chapter concludes with a preliminary discussion of the emerging discourse of de-extinction. The idea is now hovering before me that man himself can act as creator even in living nature, forming it eventually according to his will. –Jacques Loeb, letter to Ernst Mach, 26 February 1890 (Pauly 1987) 1.1 Goodbye to the Baiji While politicians and scientists argued its fate, the Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer, also known as the baiji) disappeared sometime in the early twenty-first century. Scientists and conservationists had known for at least two decades that the baiji was critically endangered. The species had been declared one of the most endangered on the planet in 1986, when a population of approximately 400 river dolphins still survived. Approximately a decade later, in 1997, an official survey of the Yangtze River in China counted only thirteen dolphins. Acknowledging the pending catastrophe, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture finally approved an Action Plan for Cetaceans in the Yangtze River in 2001, though three years later the plan

Back to the future: reflecting on the legacies of Lynton K. Caldwell, Robert H. Blank, and Andrea Bonnicksen.

R eviewing the work of Lynton Caldwell, Robert Blank, and Andrea Bonnicksen is both a privilege and a challenge. These three scholars rank among the key figures in the development of biopolicy as a legitimate research and teaching subfield within political science. Each of them worked in academia, on significant bioethical advisory boards, and with policymaking entities, and also contributed to numerous externally funded research projects. Across long and prolific careers, Caldwell, Blank, and Bonnicksen engaged seriously with the political, social and ethical issues raised by significant advances in many bio-scientific domains. This essay analyzes several of their works across two broad themes: 1) the development of the subfields of biopolitics and biopolicy, and 2) the tension between science policy and democratic governance. While each of them wrote significant and well-received books, the focus here is on insights to be gleaned from an idiosyncratic selection of their scholarly articles across the time period, 1966 to 2007. To borrow Michel Foucault’s term, this brief and necessarily selective archaeology of the published journal record nevertheless demonstrates the significance, durability and prescience of the authors’ insights. (I expect that at least one, if not all three, of these authors might raise objections to the mention of Foucault, but the term ‘‘archaeology’’ in this instance is apt.)

Bio-Identities: Cloning the Recently Extinct

This chapter focuses on attempts to bring back recently extinct species with the use of advanced biotechnologies. The emerging discourse of de-extinction introduces significant opportunities and challenges for ecosystem management. In 1999, for example, the Australian Museum launched a research project premised as an attempt to determine whether or not the thylacine, an iconic Australian marsupial that disappeared in 1936, could be brought back via the use of advanced biotechnologies. Following quickly on the controversies sparked by Dolly the Sheep in 1997, the Thylacine Cloning Project (1999–2005) amplified concerns and hopes about animal cloning. Despite intense criticism of this early initiative, candidates proposed for de-extinction today include the passenger pigeon, Australia’s gastric-brooding frog and even the Woolly Mammoth. To bring back an extinct species and establish it in situ on a sustainable basis would radically reshape human control over nature, though the feasibility and desirability of doing so remain controversial. This chapter begins with a cultural history of the field of ancient DNA analysis, before turning to an in-depth evaluation of scientific and public reaction to the thylacine cloning project. It concludes with a discussion of the fleeting but remarkable resurrection of the Pyrenean ibex in 2003 and the implications of the de-extinction agenda.

Bio-Imaginaries: Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth

This chapter analyzes the social and cultural significance of recent efforts to sequence the genomes of long-extinct species, focusing on the debate about whether or not it will become possible to bring back the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). I argue that the idea of cloning a woolly mammoth is a socio-technical imaginary that embodies our fear of the present environmental crisis and our desire to create the future through biotechnological innovation. Ancient DNA analysis and the sequencing of ancient genomes continue to reveal information about deep time and to increase our knowledge of climate change, human migration and species evolution. Yet despite ongoing efforts by many practitioners to focus on these important but normal scientific developments, woolly mammoths keep popping up lately in odd places such as T.E.D. conferences, I-Max documentaries and newspaper articles. This chapter begins in the Smithsonian Museum’s Hall of Extinct Monsters, where the mysteries of deep time first became tangible to a mass audience. The following sections consider the progress of woolly mammoth genomic research since the 1980s and the way in which science and science fiction converge and collide in media representations of palaeogenomics. The book concludes with a brief introduction to synthetic biology, a recent technological development that, some proponents say, may provide the skeleton key that will finally unlock the doors to lost worlds.

Bio-Interventions: Cloning Endangered Species as Wildlife Conservation

This chapter analyses the debate about reproductive cloning of endangered species. Humans first domesticated chickens, cattle and sheep in order to produce reliable food sources. Efforts to improve livestock led to the science of animal husbandry and eventually to the large-scale factory farms characteristic of modern societies. The technologies that enable reproductive cloning of endangered species have their roots in the imperative to improve the productivity of farm animals, making their use for environmental reasons controversial within the broad field of conservation. Allies in the war against extinction often find themselves at odds over whether or not cloning should be incorporated into the conservation genetics tool-box. Opponents raise concerns both about the diversion of scarce resources from habitat preservation and the vexed question of which species should be chosen as candidates for such high-tech interventions. Advocates counter that any tool that can stave off the rapid disappearance of genetic diversity is essential to consider and ethically justified. In order to address these arguments, this chapter begins with an historical account of the simultaneous emergence of the animal welfare movement and modern biotechnology in the late 19th century. It then turns to a discussion of mid-20th century advances in biotechnology, particularly with respect to cloned and transgenic animals. The chapter concludes by analyzing advances in endangered species cloning since the birth in 2001 of Noah, a baby gaur and the first endangered species to be cloned via somatic-cell nuclear transfer. The conclusion of the chapter focuses on the social and ethical implications of preservation in a petri dish.