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We all lose when we leave right and wrong to a clique of ethics experts.
It was no less a scientific superstar than James Watson himself — cofounder of the US's Human Genome Project and Nobel discoverer of DNA — who imbued the amorphous field of bioethics with the political and moral suasion it commands today. He did so in the time-honored way: by throwing money at it. In 1989, Watson stunned the scientific community when he committed 3 percent of the genome project's $3 billion budget to ethics research.
Why? "To preempt the critics," as he later put it.
It worked, and now bioethicists are sprouting up like mushrooms in the postgenome world. They advise Congress, regulatory agencies, biotech startups, and big pharma on issues of brutal perplexity: Human cloning. Stem cell research. Whether the sequence for anthrax should be published on the Internet. Privacy of DNA databases. Gene patents. The circumstances of informed consent. Nanomachines that munch the plaque off our artery walls. And so on.
It is widely assumed by both detractors and supporters of genetically modified anything that bioethicists are biased in the same way expert witnesses are. Most biotech companies keep an ethicist on retainer, if not on staff. But leave aside for a moment the inherent conflicts. Why cede a moral monopoly to any group of people? The whole concept of bioethics — as a distinct and separate practice — is bankrupt.
Bioethicists are, by definition, well-intentioned. But what mortal could fairly balance the concerns of so many stakeholders — from research scientists who fear for their academic freedom to native cultures concerned about losing biological diversity to genetically modified crops? More to the point: Why should they be expected to shoulder such responsibility? Anyone who has served on a jury knows that most sentient beings, given good information, are capable of reaching a fair moral consensus. So let's find a consensual way to navigate the world that allows progress but mitigates risk.
WHAT MORTAL CAN BALANCE EVERYONE'S CONCERNS?
The most appropriate metaphor for this approach is the open house, as suggested by Michael Fortun, a researcher at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. This open house isn't exactly a party, given that some of the invitees may be more inclined to insult than toast one another. But the moral challenge is to keep the door open and invite as many people as possible - from biologists, politicians, and biotech execs to citizens, artists, and farmers - with everyone engaged in the conversation, listening, questioning, responding.
"Real ethics is about remaining open to the Other," says Fortun, "which also means remaining open to the future, which means remaining open to what you don't know."
This is messy stuff, just like real life. It means putting science in its place as merely another participant in the discussion, instead of perpetuating its role as the arbiter of progress. It means actually listening to people who may not believe that subjecting the planet to Market Forces-ber Alles is an optimal approach, and to others who may not concur that Mother (Nature) Always Knows Best. It most certainly means increasing our tolerance for ambiguity, a state of mind very few people willingly embrace.
REAL ETHICS MEANS BEING OPEN TO THE UNKNOWN
The alternative is to continue to concentrate an enormous amount of power into the hands of "experts." No matter how well-intentioned, it's absurd to assume that a few select minds can posit the full array of scenarios better than a broad coalition. What's the worst that can happen? Market collapses triggered by a spooked public catalyzed by some unforeseen consequence, global activism that halts positive technological progress, compensation claims on a massive scale when acts of God are redefined as acts of corporate malfeasance, and the like. The worst, of course, is an irreversible biological event of catastrophic proportions. None of these scenarios are out of the question.
The open-house approach to dealing with complex scientific risk has worked in other countries, around issues like nuclear waste disposal and mad cow disease. In Denmark, Sweden, and the UK, for example, groups of stakeholders have been carefully selected and convened to debate these kinds of issues. Sometimes these forums are even sponsored by their governments.
Even more remarkably, those governments sometimes are required to respond in accordance with their citizens' recommendations. In the US, we call the approach democracy.
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