Advances in biotechnology in the 1980s provided a technical basis to turn human body parts into commodities, and they actually get exchanged in the capitalist market. Although most developed countries have banned trading of human organs for the purpose of organ transplantation, there are still countries where they are bought and/or sold lawfully. Bio-power exercised by economic actors can be understood to have its historical origin in disciplinary power of forced labor, which was observed when world empires grew and formed the modern world systems turning other countries into their peripheries. It then took the form of the right ‘to make live or let die’ in the context of slavery of black Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries, and remains persistent to this day allowing commodification of human body parts as suggested above. This bio-power operating in the capitalist system, or bio-capitalism, seems most prevalent in countries where Wallerstein’s World-systems theory suggests to be semi-peripheral, rather than peripheral, and has made such countries primary suppliers of human organs in the world. To consider how to counteract it would likely require careful examination of why this is the case.

　Life science have not only brought various benefits but also capitalized our “life” in the current knowledge society. This capitalization of “life” has been developed according to the rapid progress of current biotechnology and pro-patent policy in USA around 1970s to 1980s. In the current researches of science & technology studies (STS), those mechanism and politics of capitalization of “life” has been discussed with a concept so-called “bio-capital”. Particularly, narratives and politics concerning “biocapital” attracted researchers’ interests.

　Under this situation, this paper tries to overview previous studies related to “bio-capital” after mid 2000s in the STS field. Through this reviewing, I will examine the future discussion points and further directions.

　More and more countries and administrative districts are legalizing active euthanasia and/or physicianassisted suicide as a realization of “the right to die”, an ultimate form of patient’s autonomy. Concerns of a so called “slippery slope” are becoming very real in various ways. On the other hand, disputes and lawsuits over doctors’ unilateral decisions to withhold/withdraw “futile treatment” are increasing. In those cases, some doctors maintain it is the matter of their autonomy and integrity as medical profession. Though the two are opposite arguments from the view point of who decides, they have parallelly deployed, interacted, and as a result, functioned as two promoting wheels of the dynamic to push lives deemed “unworthy to live or treat” to decisions toward death. In Japan, where patient’s autonomy has yet to be fully digested or materialized, the “right to die” argument could end up promoting refusals of “futile treatment” under the disguise of patient’s autonomy and camouflage selection and disposition of lives deemed “unworthy to live or treat”.

　In the field of health economics, it is rudimentary common sense that aging is not a significant cause of rising health care costs. However, opinions that rising health care costs are due to an increase in the elderly population helps to strengthen the blaming of elderly persons. Is this a form of ageism?

　The purpose of this paper is to show the aspects of society influenced by ageism (a type of “biologism”) using Foucault’s idea of “biopolitique (biopolitics).”

　The function of “bio-pouvoir (bio-power)” is to separate human groups, integrally based on biological indicators such as race. If ageism, which divides elderly and young people, is also an exercise of biopouvoir, Foucault’s theory may be applicable to modern Japanese society. A society penetrated by biopolitique is unstable and, at worst, can be self-defeating.

　Surrogacy was originally invented in the United States as a commercial agreement in 1976. After suffering vocal, negative public opinions, the contract was positioned as less commercial, and instead, as being more altruistic. This business marketing term was diminished by the influences of Baby M case; though, it percolated in the 1990’s with the use of in vitro fertilization. Since the 2000’s, with diffusion of reproductive outsourcing, surrogacy has grown into a worldwide, mainstream market.

　Surrogacy has been criticized as baby selling and making women into baby factories. The latter is circumvented by a rhetoric to regard women’s pregnancy and labor as a service. However, the actual contracts show surrogacy commodifies women’s entire vital function, instead of using only a part of her body.

　The above logic to support surrogacy is constructed in a societal circumstance where“ biocapital”functions with articulations of culture by life scientific knowledges. Under this cultural structure, the surrogacy business market has been expanding in today’s society by evoking the “potential” of people’s reproduction.

　In this paper, the current situation around regulations on surrogacy in Japan and in France are reviewed. Both countries don’t allow this practice; however, their circumstances are dissimilar. They refuse differently a domestic surrogacy, as well as recognize differently an internal filiation for children born by the surrogate mothering in foreign countries where it is legal. In Japan, it seems that the prohibition by guidelines of Obstetrician and Gynecologist society achieves results to keep conflicts to small number. In France, the surrogacy is banned by the Bioethics law, as well as the filiation of children born by the surrogacy in foreign countries has not been recognized; however, number of conflicts increases and the French Supreme Court had to change this policy and to recognize a fatherchild relationship after judgements of European Court of Human rights in 2014. From a perspective which considers that the surrogacy is an act to use the motherhood as a biomedical resource, this paper examines discussions on the regulations of both countries, and tries to describe how and by which reason they have prohibited the surrogacy, if the way to put a ban on it is changing, and if their prohibition is effective.

　In many countries, the legal regulation of research use of human fetal tissue is not stricter than the legal regulation of human embryo research. Especially in Japan, there is no legal rule regarding the use of human fetal tissue, therefore, dead fetuses and aborted fetuses are in various situations not protected from exploitation. Furthermore in Japan, in spite of abortion has been practiced relatively freely, obstetricians tend to avoid discussions on current situations of abortion and treatment of aborted fetuses. Internationally, researchers tend to use human ES cells or human iPS cells as an alternative to fetal tissue. On the other hand, research using human fetal tissue - especially aborted human fetal tissue - is legal in Europe and the US. Rather, aborted human fetus tissue is required has become indispensable in basic research and pharmaceutical development. In this paper, based on the current situations in Japan, we focus on various existences that are out of regulation of the use and protection of human fetal tissue. Furthermore, this paper attempts to draw such existences from the relationship between “governmentality” and “ biocapital,” and considers the intervention on women’s reproduction today. It is the relationship between biotechnology and capitalism in the center of today’s biopower. In that framework, pregnant women play the role of “ subjects who is recognizing”.

　Research by scientists and medical professionals imparted words such as “numerical abnormality,”“deficient,”“ micro-mutation” to the number and the condition of chromosomes in the cell. And then, these words become apart from biological nomenclature and act as if these are the actual material which causes social differences. That is to say, the body of a person whose genetic substance diagnosed as the cause of disability is considered as if it is a platform to build specific genetic information on expression of value such as ability or appearance. This paper examined with the study of the interview conducted for people with disabilities how people with genetic disease use genetic information from the perspectives of personalization and depersonalization. As a result, it was clear that genetic information personalized to individuals symbolized that it was accompanied by a concept of time, while the genetic information used for depersonalization was not.

　The current regulative policy on genetic testing in Japan is vague and unclear. Two ministries govern genetic testing. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor has jurisdiction over the promotion and regulation of genomic medicine, including diagnostic or predictive genetic testing and tumor profiling tests. The universal health coverage has covered only 74 items because the Cabinet did not endorse the policy promoting genomic medicine until 2014. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has jurisdiction over consumer genetic testing (including direct-to-consumer testing and testing sold at private clinics), the quality of which has not been regulated but is self-governed by a voluntary industry group. However, it is difficult for Japanese consumers to distinguish the two forms of genetic testing. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has jurisdiction over all genetic testing and applied a riskbased approach to judge whether genetic testing products need pre-market approval. According to the FDA policy, most of the consumer genetic testing products sold in Japan are prohibited to sell, but some predictive genetic tests are approved to for sale directly to consumers. Japan’s regulative demarcation should be reviewed and show basic principles for consumers to understand the risks of genetic testing.

　This article explores the prospective social impact of a law that enacts in 2018. The law lets Japan implement a system that allows researchers to use a huge set of anonymised personal health records (PHR) for research, big data analysis in particular. PHR had basically used for clinical practice by the end of the last century but the emergence of electronic health records (EHR) changes its story. EHR enables researches to use accumulated PHR for various research including big-data analysis. Behind this backdrop, the aforementioned law was established. This paper thus discusses how not only the nature of PHR but also the relation amongst medical practitioners, patients, health researchers, and IT specialists who handle collected EHR would be transformed in tandem with such secondary usage of EPR. To do so, the author draws on the theory of (gift) exchanges from sociology and economics as it facilitates illuminating the change in the value of PHR through its exchange process including the process of its sale. This study is hence intended to offer a case study of the ongoing quasi-commodification and quasirecycling of PHR in Japan.

　Human bodies become necessary materials for innovation in the era of promoting medicine and life science research. How should we balance the research activities to bring out the generalizable knowledge and social manner to respect the variety of wills of individuals as research participants? In this article, the author focuses on activities using biological samples derived from human bodies (human biological materials) and human biobanks, which are being launched and developed under the national policies as a basis for such research activities and maps the current discussion on the understanding of “consent” in the context of research.

　Although advances in life and medical sciences have turned human body into valuable biological resources in various ways, it has often been tabooed to refer explicitly to their economic values. In contrast, development of regenerative medicine has been linked from its early days to the emergence of a new medical industry and to its economic potential. In this paper, I examine stem cell banks as a kind of a social device that legitimizes human stem cells to be deployed in commercial activities of medical industry. While Waldby’s concept of biovalue indicates a distinction between biological and economic values, social studies of the UK Stem Cell Bank and private cord-blood stem cell banks suggest that they may be connected and that stem cell banks actually serve as a social device that facilitates this connection. By applying this argument, I evaluate how well two human induced pluripotent stem cell banks set up in Japan, one for regenerative medicine and the other for studies of disease mechanism and drug discovery, are designed as such a device. I then conclude suggesting the importance for social sciences to pay close attention to a range of social devices that underpin our making of biological resources.

　In this study, the affirmations of three notable life scientists are analyzed from the perspective of scientists’ social responsibility.

　First, I deal with Fujio Egami’s arguments. The main feature of his affirmations is the belief that life sciences are intrinsically interdisciplinary and include humanities and social sciences. He made the case that life sciences require citizen participation based on the discussions of researchers.

　Second, I explore Keiko Nakamura’s ideas. She thought that life sciences involve scientific communication at the stage of basic science. Since the 1990s, she has shifted the focus of her research toward biohistory. In biohistory, the internal responsibility and external responsibility of scientists are considered natural.

　 Third, I examine Itaru Watanabe’s arguments. He presented the idea that a primary characteristic of life sciences was the possibility of life manipulation. His argument emphasized the importance of the participation of minorities who are influenced by the life science developments.

　Considering the opinions of these three scientists, the development of a risk communication system at the stage of basic sciences is the current focus of scientists' social responsibility efforts.