"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".