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March 2, 2004
Government Bioethics: Hold the Bio, Hold the Ethics
America is losing its credibility
and its technological edge as the current administration continues
to favor politics over science.
By Scott Anderson
Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a noted
researcher from the University of California, San Francisco, is
a little steamed. And you should be too, if you like your science
served straight up, without political bias.
Who hasn't wanted to alter the
laws of physics to say, decrease gravity for a game of tennis, or
to reduce friction when dealing with a tangled fishing line? Most
of us grudgingly learn to live within nature's confines, but then
most of us aren't politicians. Making science subject to your own
whims might seem a stretch, but politicians have never been known
for an excess of humility. Science deals with nature by employing
relentless objectivity. Liars are always outed, sometimes within
days. Politics, on the other hand, is famously flexible with the
truth. Which group do you want to put in charge of your research?
This is hardly the first time politicians
have attempted to "fix" nature. The illustrative (and somewhat apocryphal)
story is that at the end of the 1800s, Indiana attempted to round
off pi to three. They were ridiculed, and rightfully so: a circle
won't close if pi is rounded off. Manhole covers would fall in,
umbrellas would let in the rain and pizzas would be served up with
a slice missing. The final straw probably came when the legislators
realized their share of the tax pie might be smaller. Pi was quickly
allowed to become an irrational number again.
After the Scopes trials of the
1920s, it seemed that the government had sensibly decided to recuse
itself when it came to adjudicating the laws of nature. But the
21st century has seen relapses, with both Kansas and Georgia refusing
to teach or accept evolution. However, evolution - like gravity
and pi - simply can't be repealed. These are not laws of man, but
of nature.
And that brings us back to Dr.
Blackburn. Last week she and the esteemed Dr. William May (a thoughtful
bioethicist from Southern Methodist University) were terminated
as members of the President's Council on Bioethics, headed by Dr.
Leon Kass. After picking replacements, Kass was quoted as saying
"Our new members are all people of distinction, ethical seriousness
and intellectual independence." If that was a slap at Dr. Blackburn,
he is mistaken in his target; her resume reveals an extraordinary
research career. Her knowledge and skills are directly relevant
to the hottest topics in bioethics today. She was the only cell
biologist on the committee, and thus brought an invaluable point
of view to such subjects as stem-cell research.
Drs. Blackburn and May, however,
sometimes found themselves at odds with Dr. Kass. Kass is famous
for positing that longevity diminishes our humanity, and that we
are probably living too long already. This argument usually plays
best to a young and healthy audience. People who are old or sick,
on the other hand, often disagree with his philosophy. Drs. Blackburn
and May, as representatives of these other citizens, have often
spoken up for an alternative point of view, namely that diseases
should be cured, and that suffering - despite all the spine-stiffening
it may engender - should be alleviated.
In order to preserve harmony and
unity on the council, these voices of dissension were let go. Their
replacements include a professor of political science and a well-known
abortion opponent.
This decision is all the more extraordinary
for coming directly on the heels of a devastatingly critical letter
from the Union of Concerned Scientists, including twenty Nobel laureates,
begging President Bush to quit distorting the science behind its
environmental, health and research policies. But scientists are
not held in particularly high regard by this administration. Gauging
(perhaps correctly) that the public is not too enamored of science
in the first place, the current administration is openly pandering
to the religious right, insisting that no federal funds will go
to creating new lines of stem cells and encouraging Senator Brownback
in his attempts to make stem-cell research illegal, punishable by
a ten million dollar fine and ten years in jail.
Grad students are listening, and
many are deciding not to pursue these exciting new fields of biology,
which might land them in jail. They are either switching majors
or switching to countries that are not opposed to cutting-edge research.
On the other hand, students in other countries are sniffing the
opportunities being spurned by America and are rushing into the
vacuum. This has the de facto effect of handing off scientific leadership
to foreign countries, which are happy to reap the rewards. Worst
of all, it grants veto power over the remnants of American research
to the most fundamentalist religions in the country.
For two centuries, the world has
looked on in envy as American ingenuity leveraged one discovery
off another in a cascade of inventions. Our freedom to pursue science
has lead to the greatest expansion of health and longevity in the
history of mankind. But in today's America - the one that President
Bush has so cynically tapped into - science is no longer honored,
but instead is relentlessly accused of steering the world down slippery
slopes with Frankenstein aspirations. In a sense, scientists really
do play god, helping people to live longer and better than ever.
That, in fact, is what they think their job is all about.
Dr. Blackburn is sensing a rising
tide of anger, from the east coast to the west, as scientists start
to realize how far back this administration has set science. America
once set the standard for innovative research and gloried in the
health of its citizens. Today we watch other countries regularly
trump our researchers while the head of the government's bioethics
committee worries that we are living too long.
The President's Council on Bioethics
is an advisory panel whose recommendations are heeded by lawmakers
and whose progress is tracked by opinion makers. The danger is that,
with the loss of the biologists and the thoughtful skeptics on the
committee, research will no longer be driven by science, but rather
by politics. And that would be a shame, because no matter how much
they try, even the most glib politician can't repeal the laws of
nature.
Copyright © 2000-2004 by Scott Anderson
For reprint rights, email the author:
Scott_Anderson@ScienceForPeople.com
Here are some other suggested readings on bioethics:
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