Global technologies: local responses

Recent developments in reproductive and gene technologies challenge our fundamental beliefs about relationships, self and family. But, argues anthropologist Dr Bob Simpson of the University of Durham, "this Pandora's box is not just for Western doctors to ponder". New technologies have spread swiftly across the world, yet we know surprisingly little about how other cultures respond to their arrival.

Western researchers tend to approach these technologies using essentially Judeo- Christian models of kinship and identity. But what happens when they are planted in entirely different cultural traditions? Do 'off-the-peg' ethics come with the package? Or does each tradition evolve its own response?

To answer these questions, in 2000 Simpson conducted a pilot study with medical professionals in Sri Lanka - a country he knew well from his early research days. Now, with a Wellcome Biomedical Ethics Research Leave Fellowship, he has been able to expand the study and has spent time with those who mediate the inception of these technologies and their acceptance or rejection - such as medical professionals, legal specialists and representatives of religious communities. His interest is thus not so much in the technologies per se, but how the professional community goes about creating culturally appropriate framing and regulation.

Sri Lanka provides an ideal setting for this kind of research. It has a sophisticated medical system, with highly trained professionals and a well-established public health system. It also has an expanding private healthcare sector offering services such as IVF, AID (artificial insemination by donor sperm), paternity testing, genetic diagnosis and counselling.

Reproductive technologies are being enthusiastically taken up in Sri Lanka – but some worry that the embrace is a little too enthusiastic. Infertility services, for example, are in big demand in a society that places enormous expectations on couples to produce children and failure results in much stigma. Change is happening fast and much of it is beyond the reach of current regulatory frameworks, a situation which not that long ago prompted the creation of bodies such as the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority and other bodies in the UK.

Most Sri Lankans are Buddhist, and a key part of Dr Simpson's study examines the relationship between attitudes towards the new technologies, and specifically Buddhist beliefs and values. "Buddhism is a remarkable religion, in that it is very rational and empirical. Whereas Judeo-Christian religion is seen as being in conflict with Western science, Buddhism is generally seen as being based on the same analytical principles and particularly where the alleviation of human suffering is concerned."

An interesting illustration of the differences can be seen in debates about assisted reproduction. In the West, there is much talk of 'playing God' in creating life outside the body, because the implicit model is that 'ensoulment' occurs when sperm meets egg.

The Buddhist perspective is very different. "What happens at embryogenesis reveals fundamental differences, because of Buddhist ideas of rebirth. For Buddhists, the coming together of egg and sperm is a mechanical process; the arrival of vinnana (energy or consciousness) is a separate event." Cast in the idiom of rebirth, debates about IVF, stem-cell research and cloning thus began to take on a different twist.

In tackling issues around egg and sperm donation, Dr Simpson also found that in Sri Lanka, professionals called on local models not available to Western debate, particularly Sinhalese beliefs about kinship. Traditionally, there have been very flexible notions of kinship in Sri Lanka.

"Transferring children between families was an accepted and relatively simple affair," says Dr Simpson. "Adopting the children of your brother or sister, for example, was not uncommon in cases of infertility." Invoking such traditions as possible models for egg, sperm and embryo donation gives these novel transactions a local inflection.

One notable similarity, concludes Dr Simpson, is that the ethical, legal and social issues are just as complex and contested in Sri Lanka as they are in the West. "There is a tendency in Western bioethics to assume cultural homogeneity in the developing world," he suggests, "but this does not exist. These issues are as equally contested, politicized and contingent in Asia as in the West. In Sri Lanka, local responses are a complex amalgam of indigenous and Western thinking, further shot through with religious and ethnic perspectives."

See also

• Biomedical Ethics Programme

External links

• Dr Bob Simpson: Research interests
• Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority