These two books each touch on the molecular biology revolution in Asia (Singapore and South Korea in Thompson's case; Singapore and Shenzhen, China, in Ong's). Charis Thompson provides an expert account of policy formulation in California and justifies her all-too-brief forays into Asia by reference to Sheila Jasanoff's comparative work, but she provides only superficial accounts of her Asian cases: in the Singapore case, for a guided tour of buildings and apparently speaking only to three researchers in 2005; and in the Korean case, focusing almost exclusively on the troubled case of Hwang Woo Suk in 2005 and again in 2008, when his bubble burst. In neither Asian case does she do the in-depth analysis of the civic epistemology or assumptions ofhow regulatory decisions are legitimately made that is the core of Jasanoff's analyses, falling back on general rubrics like "developmental state" and "internationalism" instead. Thompson's work on California, however, is systematic and worth thinking about for future work in Asia. It results from her participation, as she stresses throughout (designing curricula at Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley, serving on oversight committees, doing fundraising, cohosting a conference with underserved communities, and observing legislative and executive branch processes), as well as observation, in the ethical debates as they played out in the California and US contexts. She provides a valuable set of analyses for how to think about "sciences with ethics" and suggests that "stem cell research has the chance to become a vibrant scientific, medical, and biotechnology field that could also be among the best regulated areas of science" (223). That is, the debates over stem cell research over the Bush and
