"Since the end of the Second World War, and taking here only the example of health, a
range of powerful agencies within states and a range of transnational bodies have taken
on a new importance. So have a host of bioethics commissions, regulatory agencies and
professional organizations: a whole ‘bioethical complex’, in which the power of medical
agents to ‘let die’ at the end of life, the start of life or in reproduction, are simultaneously
enhanced by medical technology and regulated by other authorities as never before. Further,
we have seen the rise of new kinds of patients’ groups and individuals, who increasingly
define their citizenship in terms of their rights (and obligations) to life, health and cure.
And, of course, new circuits of bioeconomics have taken shape, a large scale capitalization
of bioscience and mobilization of its elements into new exchange relations: the new molecular
knowledges of life and health are being mapped out, developed and exploited by a range
of commercial enterprises, sometimes in alliance with States, sometimes autonomous from
them, establishing constitutive links between life, truth and value. This is a far from homogeneous
field of agents, tactics, strategies and objectives."
- Rabinow P., Rose N. "Biopower Today".