Regenerative Medicine and the Bioethics of Globalization, Justice and Hegemony

This volume examines regenerative medicine (RM) through a global bioethics lens that foregrounds the structural asymmetries, epistemic exclusions, and governance disparities shaping its development and uptake. RM refers to a range of innovative therapies, clinical interventions, and research activities aimed at repairing or replacing damaged or diseased human cells, tissues, and organs, with an emphasis on conditions currently considered incurable.

While RM is often discussed using examples, standards, and governance models from high-income countries (the so-called “Global North”), much less is documented about its realities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly in the “Global South.” These contexts are frequently overlooked in ways that understate their contributions, impose ill-fitting external frameworks, or perpetuate assumptions of absence or inactivity. Such omissions contribute to epistemic injustice, in which certain perspectives, priorities, and knowledge systems are marginalized in global health innovation.

Responding to this imbalance, the present work assembles interdisciplinary contributions from scholars and practitioners deeply engaged with RM in LMICs. It adopts a collaborative bioethics approach that does not treat ethics as an afterthought to technological progress, but as integral to how innovation is imagined, governed, and shared. The collection employs a “reconnaissance mode of inquiry” to reveal underexplored practices, governance dynamics, and normative perspectives, allowing for locally grounded accounts that resist the constraints of dominant narratives.

The chapters in the volume are organized in two parts:

• Foundational Critiques — Analytical treatments of epistemic injustice, global asymmetries, and ethical pluralism in RM.
• National Case Studies — Country-specific explorations of RM governance, practice, and ethics in diverse settings across Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe.

By illuminating both the commonalities and divergences that emerge from these contexts, this book offers a richer, more inclusive account of RM and its ethical governance. It challenges the hegemony of Global North perspectives and points toward bioethical frameworks that are pluralistic, context-sensitive, and globally responsive.