A fragile concept and its consequences – human and other species dignity in the work of Swiss bioethics institutions

During the 80s and '90s, the Swiss Confederation had to deal with several popular initiatives aimed at regulating biotechnologies and medical research on genetic materials. This period can be summed up as the reinterpretation of living beings as potentially vulnerable to scientific and technical advancements, against which they should be protected. With the 1998 inclusion of the notion of the dignity of the creature regarding biotechnologies in the Swiss constitution, regulatory intents gained what looks like a strong base to protect all living beings from the dangers of medical research and the use of genetic modifications or reproductive technologies. Yet, while the constitutional notion would protect vulnerable living beings against the potential abuses of genetic research and developments, the inquiries conducted by two bioethical instances of interest (the Swiss Ethical Committee on Non-human Biotechnologies (ECNH) and the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS)) into what the notion would mean for non-humans such as animals and plants draw from, and thus reproduce and recreate, classical philosophical and theological models of a species’ hierarchy dominated by human beings. Where other, more horizontal definitions of living beings and their shared vulnerabilities have been offered to provide a stronger response to several contemporary issues (Braidotti 2013; Haraway 2008; Laugier 2016), the ECNH and SAMS debates and arguments let us grasp a rather conservative conversation.
This contribution draws from archival material and committee minutes to retrace how these two bioethical instances (re)produced (non-human) fragilities, for example by enforcing traditional hierarchies and boundaries amongst species, or by including or excluding certain entities (such as the cells) from their debates and regulatory recommendations aimed at the dignity of the creature. We also consider how bioethical inquiries in institutional contexts can be seen as fragile endeavors that must conceal the work they do to delineate a way to proceed and produce acceptable claims (Douglas-Jones 2015, 2022) and to reduce complex social issues to an ethics vocabulary that seems to perpetuate itself (Tornay 2021) - a work that is much more visible in minutes and preparatory texts than in official
guidelines and recommendations (Gouilhers and Riom 2019; Stark 2011). Finally, we will discuss how these explorations can contribute to STS perspectives on vulnerabilities.

References
Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Wiley.
Douglas-Jones, Rachel. 2015. “A ‘good’ Ethical Review: Audit and Professionalism in
Research Ethics.” Social Anthropology 23(1):53–67. doi: 10.1111/1469-8676.12099.
Douglas-Jones, Rachel. 2022. “Committee Work: Stem Cell Governance in the United States:
Control.” The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology 647–70. doi:
10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_33/COVER.
Gouilhers, Solène, and Loïc Riom. 2019. “Ethics in the Making. For a Pragmatic Approach to
Research Ethics Commissions.” Revue d’Anthropologie Des Connaissances 13(2):503–
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