The Political Economy of Umbilical Cord Blood Biobanking

In dealing with the clinical use of hematopoietic stem cells contained in UmbilicalCord Blood (UCB) for hemopoiesis reconstitution, numerous scientific articles recallthat prior to acknowledgment of the potential of UCB for transplants, this tissue wasregarded as a discarded human residuum. The transformation from waste to a valu-able life-saving tissue is thus taken for granted in the biomedical literature. Firstly,in this paper, I critically investigate the socio-technical process by which this trans-formation occurred, drawing on the notion of bio-objectification (Webster 2012). Ianalyze how the transformation of UCB from a waste to a valuable tissue occurredthrough a two-way interaction between basic biological research and clinical settings.Secondly, drawing on the notion of biobanks as forms of governing life, I explore howdiffering institutional arrangements in UCB biobanking produce differing routes inUCB bio-objectifications, and different economic regimes of UCB exploitation—both of which are connected to differing ways of articulating the relationshipbetween biomedicine and society. Finally, in order to rethink notions such as bio-economy and biocapital, I discuss how the co-construction of medical technologies,therapeutic applications, subjectivities, and social rationalities varies according tothe institutional arrangements in which UCB bio-objectification takes place.