Les usages médicaux des cellules souches humaines à l'épreuve de la réglementation – THERACELS

The scientific aim of this research consists in isolating and in describing the collective set of actions which promulgate rules and standards applicable to informal/emergent biomedical practices using human stem cells. These set of actions lean on the functioning of the health agencies. By following the recent history of the public devices, the agency - new statutory structure applied to the sanitary police - gives place to innovative links between the scientific assessment and the statutory construction. This is visible mainly within the authorization processes of activities related to the products of health based on the human body [Gluckman, 2000]. We shall pay a particular attention on the human stem cells which are the object of multiple controversies, both from the point of view of the supervision of these practices and on that of the expected scientific perspectives. These objects thus compose the present study on the new forms of engineerings of the power [Sfez, 1995; Ihl, 2006] and the concrete devices which are specific to them [Buton, 2003; Lascoumes and Galès, 2005; Lascoumes; Tournay, 2007a, 2007b and 2007d]. With a context of variety of the practices of laboratory in emergence, the project proposed here intends to accentuate the concrete arrangements insuring the scientific execution of the research programs in the respect for the current legislative frame with a particular attention tuned to the constitution of banks of storage and to the traceability of the elements of the human body. The urgency of this work is justified all the more in France as embryos and embryonic cells can be used for scientific researches by dispensation and for five years, within the framework of the revised bioethics law of August 6th, 2004.