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Longitudinal studies of cloning and stem cell coverage by Brazilian prestige papers

Grant number: 09/08929-3
Support Opportunities:Regular Research Grants
Start date: September 01, 2009
End date: August 31, 2010
Field of knowledge:Applied Social Sciences - Communications
Principal Investigator:Carlos Alberto Vogt
Grantee:Carlos Alberto Vogt
Host Institution: Reitoria. Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Cloning has been a controversial matter since February 1997, when the birth of Dolly the sheep was announced. In 1998, the term "therapeutic cloning" and embryonic stem cells were introduced in Brazilian coverage as potential beneficial applications of nuclear transfer. Later in the same year, two research teams announced to have successfully cultivated embryonic stem cells and this issue attracted growing media and public attention. Throughout the world, media attention over cloning has peaked in 2001, when US president Bush first addressed the issue, and then in 2004, when Woo-Suk Hwang said to have produced stem cells by therapeutic cloning. In Brazil, stem cells became the most prominent biotechnology issue on newspaper pages in 2004, along the debate of a new version of biosafety law, and 2005, after the law's approval by Congress and following revelation of Korean fraud. Apparently coverage has changed across time. A preliminary analysis of cloning and stem cell coverage has raised a few interesting and not yet explored research questions: 1) Which is the balance among risks and benefits of cloning? 2) Which kind of distinctions - such as "therapeutic" x "reproductive" cloning, "embryonic" x "adult" stem cells- were used in coverage to define which applications of cloning are morally acceptable or legitimate? 3) Have stem cells been treated as natural objects, instead of artifacts, on newspaper coverage? To shed light on those questions will require a longitudinal analysis. So this project is meant to study, using tools of content and discourse analysis, Brazilian prestige papers coverage of cloning and stem cells from 1997 until 2005. (AU)

Articles published in Agência FAPESP Newsletter about the research grant:
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