Making sense of clinical translation: ethical regulatory and policy challenges for Europe and the US was a 2 day workshop at the Brocher Foundation, Switzerland, organised by STS and medical scholars Erik Aarden, Dustin Holloway, Luca Marelli and Alessandro Blasimme. As an invited discussant and chair of panel 3 – Expanding Access, Remaking Risk – I enjoyed thinking with the panelists about what the organisers describe as a ‘reconfiguration’ of risk and ethics at sites of clinical translation, where the demarcation between ‘patient’ and ‘research subject’ blurs. The panel and discussions with the participants prompted me to consider whether my own studies of the expansion of ethical review across the Asian region could be productively regarded as a form of translation. A detailed description of the aims of the workshop can be accessed on Brocher’s website here.