Abstract
If Singapore has rapidly become known internationally for its work in recruiting large numbers of elite foreign scientists—or ‘foreign talent’ (FT) in Singapore’s terms—there remains much to learn about the state’s current biotech programme through prior work conducted at National University Hospital (NUH), recognising that recent ambitions derive in part from a much more modest set of origins. Specifically, Dr Ariff Bongso’s career mirrors this same series of incremental transitions, as he would move from working with in vitro fertilisation (IVF) per se to working with HESC (human embryonic stem cells) in the early to mid-1990s (1987–1994), at which point he came close to experiencing success in isolating HESC, a result which he qualified carefully with the language of ‘stem-cell like’ objects. This article considers the implications of reframing recent Singapore’s biotech efforts by re-examining the state family-planning initiatives of the mid-1960s. In fact, many of the biological materials Bongso worked with in his research derived from the hospital’s IVF programme, providing a material link between distinct research agendas possessing very different trajectories. Many of the same policy issues now being debated at Biopolis and in Singapore policy circles—how to mobilise productive international collaborative networks of researchers, as well as appropriate treatment and storage policies for a diverse range of human tissues—date to this earlier period (1966–1987) when precedents were first being established, suggesting that current policy can and should continue to be informed by the decisions of the past.
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