Making Room for Stem Cells: Dissociation and Establishing New Research Objects

Embryonic stem (ES) cells represent the latest front in political battles over the "culture of life." President Bush and his supporters among religious conservative groups claim that ES cell research constitutes murder of developing life, while others--scientists, patient advocates, and politicians across the spectrum--view ES cells as potential cures for many diseases (Bush, 2001, 2005; Daley, 2004; Wade, 2003). The issue of ES cell research arose during the presidential debates and in state referenda during the 2004 election (Kasindorf, 2004; Mansnerus, 2005), and it took center stage again in May, 2005, when the House of Representatives voted to increase federal funding of ES cell research (Stolberg, 2005). The Senate passed this bill in the summer of 2006 (Hulse, 2006), and President Bush (2006) vetoed it the following day because, he said, it would "violate human dignity" ([paragraph] 2). While appeals to medical benefits and the "culture of life" have become the stock topoi of the contemporary debate, they were not available more than 20 years ago, when ES cells in mice first were isolated; nor were they as powerful 8 years ago, when human ES cells first were isolated. The original attraction of ES cells was that they could illuminate the process of mammalian development from fertilized eggs. Yet, a different model for studying this process--embryonic carcinoma cells--already existed, and a third possibility--embryonic germ cells--was discovered about the same time as ES cells. Each cell type has the capacity to produce some, if not all, of the cells in a body's organs, enabling scientists to study the processes by which mammals develop. For this reason, all three cell types initially were called stem cells or stem-like cells (Gardner & Beddington, 1988; Smith, 2001). Researchers working with ES cells needed to establish the unique value of their object of study. In order for people--scientists and nonscientists--to accept new objects and ideas produced by science, old concepts must be reorganized. This reorganization occurs through the use of real definitions. The practice of dissociation represents a paradigmatic linguistic means of creating real definitions. Dissociation takes a unitary concept and breaks it into two components, which receive positive and negative valences through the use of philosophical pairs of opposed value terms. This breakage creates space for new ideas and objects while addressing conflicts and contradictions that arise in one's worldview. Current scholarship offers two views of dissociation. One treats dissociation as an intentional argumentative strategy, especially in politics (Zarefsky, 1980; Zarefsky, Miller-Tutzauer, & Tutzauer, 1984). The other treats dissociation as central to the creation of real definitions that determine what counts as reality in a language community (Goodwin, 1991; McGee, 1999; Schiappa, 1993, 2003). In this latter view, dissociation is implicit and unconscious as often as it is a deliberate, conscious choice (Schiappa, 1985). This essay seeks to integrate these two views by positing a continuum that extends from unassuming acts of real definition to intentional, strategic uses of dissociation. Implicit, unconscious acts of real definition in arenas like the technical sphere of stem cell research generate the grounds for strategic dissociations in political and policy debates. Dissociation played a vital role in defining stem cell. Researchers who began working with ES cells 20 years ago needed to establish their value as a model of development: They needed to clear other models out of the scientific and rhetorical space known as model for development in order to make room for ES cells as the model of development. For ES cells to become this model, multiple dissociations needed to crystallize around these new research objects, shaping people's real definitions, their determinations of "appearance" and "reality." Establishment of ES cells as the path to understanding development opened up the possibility that these cells might be used to repair developmental and degenerative disorders, such as Parkinson's disease and Type I diabetes. …