WGBH Journal; Atlantic Dateline: Limits Of Scientific Research

Why the way the. Man had been a bioethicist a watchdog committee in the experiment on syphilis and dusky. Someplace along the line that ethicist would have pointed out. You must at this point give new information. To all of your experimental subjects. I don't think that the scientists ought to be in isolation of the public. And I think the public should not be in isolation from the scientists. That man does not destroy himself by doing everything which he thinks he can do. It's another aspect of this question how dangerous research can

be or how dangerous can scientific thinking be. It's time for Atlantic Dateline a weekly public affairs series brought to you as a public service by this station. The views and opinions expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect those of the program underwriter or of the management of the station. And now our moderator Edward P. Morgan. Welcome to Atlantic Dateline. Most scientists were evicted from their ivory towers years ago so to speak for dirtying their hands with technology. And now even the inner circle of scientific researchers are losing their executive privileges as textbook distinctions between Pure and Applied Science which we memorized in high school crumble to the accompaniment of moans from classical scientists that when nothing is impossible then nothing is sacred. Perhaps so many current scientific advancements are so phenomenal as to seem more like science fiction both in trancing and scary. On the

one hand we welcome artificial hearts and good weather modification and alternative sources of energy. On the other we quail at the prospect of genetic engineering and neutron bombs that can destroy human lives while preserving property. Some of the questions science currently poses are not new. In one of the recent Smithsonian sponsored debates on scientific risk taking participants heard from Dr. Daniel Callahan director of the Institute for society ethics the life sciences at Hastings on the Hudson. He introduced his remarks with an appropriate quotation from George Bernard Shaw's 1931 play the Doctor's dilemma. No government exempt the pursuit of knowledge any more than the pursuit of like liberty and happiness from all social conditions. No man is allowed to put his mother into the stove because he desires to know how long an adult woman will survive at a temperature of 500 degrees Fahrenheit. No matter how important or

interesting that particular addition to the store of human knowledge may be a man would have short work made not only of his right to knowledge but of his right to live and all of these other rights at the same time. The right to knowledge is not the only right. And its exercise must be limited by respect for other rights and for its own exercised by others. When a man says to society now I torture my mother in pursuit of knowledge. Society replies No. If he pleads what not even if I have a chance of finding it how to cure cancer by doing it. Society still says not even then. Sure this is a shocking by 1930 standards is coming into fashion having outgrown the myth of the solitary scientist scholar. We are beginning to examine some of the assumptions that went along with that myth such as total freedom of scientific inquiry as an absolute. Dr. Callahan was enlightening on some of the realities of modern day research.

First I would mention the perhaps the least important. Is that a significant portion of scientific research is now supported by public funds. And this fact has an important implication from the public supports any enterprise whether a school system a network of highways or science the public demands the right to have a say in how its money is spent. Daniel Callahan continued with his explanation. It is no longer possible to be romantic about the benefits of scientific research or technological applications. Science can produce both good and evil. It is a two edged sword. That knowledge is borne in upon us by the development of nuclear weapons by the introduction into the environment of many hazards which are the result of technology and by the fact that we are now grappling with the problem of what to do about your verse oblique comatose patients kept alive by artificial means. All of these incidents all of these recent events it seems to me to force us into a

new wariness if not a fear. Certainly a wariness and also forces to a very basic question. How will the freedom we as a society grant to science affect our lives. Few scientists argue their complete autonomy. Some do vehemently defend the principles of freedom of research with arguments on scientific integrity and constitutional freedoms. A lot of the confusion especially to laymen stems from the mixed bag of interpretations by scientists themselves of what may be called the risk benefit ratio of a particular line of research and the recommendations and projections for the future. The controversy over recombinant DNA research meaning the combining of genetic material is a case in point at another of the Smithsonian's risk taking debates. Donald Brown embryo ologist at the Carnegie Institution in Baltimore Maryland and George Walter Noble laureate

biologist from Harvard were paired off in debate. Don Brown created what sounded like a no contest argument for recombinant DNA research constructing in exhaustive detail a scenario of improbabilities necessary to create even the possibility of a public hazard with the research. But it was Dr. George Wald who reminded the audience of the fallibility of the seemingly infallible experiment. He also raised questions about the long term implications of this research. Really what we're being asked to do when I'm speaking as a concerned biologist is to decide now whether we are prepared to turn over the products of three billion years of evolution on this planet to any group of persons to show what they can do with them. One is in fact taking hold of a technology that can cross the

species barriers that now exist in life on this planet and in the offing. But not very far in the offing is the prospect of these techniques this technology being applied to the control of the genetics and redesign of scientific uncertainty. So it seems can be atmospheric as well as molecular Stephen Schneider is a climatologist and deputy head of the Climate Project at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He assessed the assessments of the risks and benefits in scientific ventures a big confusion often occurs on the difference between the assessment of risk which is the province of expertise to determine what those numbers are and what they are going to mean and who suffers versus questions of the acceptability of risk where values need to

be brought to bear and personal view. In this line as I'm in some senses rather worried that as the complexity of our world grows as our environmental insults of this kind grow exponentially and they grow probably at a faster rate than our understanding of what we're doing they run into the problem of the governability of this kind of complexity. If the average person sits there and hears the experts arguing about whether or not to ban the aerosol spray can of whether nuclear power is safe or whether or not we should change industrial civilization because of CO2. How can you decide. And if you turn the decision over to a panel of experts. Ultimately what the panel of experts will do is make a decision on how to act based on their own perception of where they want to take risks. And that I think may be a more sinister threat to our own democracy than anything else. With all this talk about values and uncertainties science is starting to come across as rather a philosophical exercise at the gaming table. The layman wonders just what

ever happened to scientific exactitude. More than likely it's still there but since research is being brought out of the closet or rather the laboratory sometimes by the scientists themselves it's now exposed to public scrutiny evaluation and criticism and inevitably some type of controls. Daniel Callahan outlined what he sees as basic criteria for limitations. I think on the whole there are dangers to basic research in this country and it seems to me even more fundamentally the case that. If it is one thing to control the technology we ought to be wary of doing anything which could affect basic research itself by basic research I mean simply a fundamental search for knowledge for its own sake. The problem is that it is often very difficult to make a very sharp distinction between a basic research and applied research. And this seems to be increasingly difficult when basic research itself

not only uses the technological tools in order to carry out the research but also more fundamentally because basic research now involves at least in many cases involves not just thinking conceptualizing theorizing but action. In many if not most cases we are beginning to see that to understand nature we must in the very process alter and change nature. We understand genes by manipulating them bodies by experimenting on them and nature by altering it. And it seems to me that if. It is indeed the case that even basic research does involve intervention does involve action in the world not simply the promotion of ideas or thoughts. Then once one enters the arena of action in the world one has entered a moral arena where the usual rules of moral responsibility apply. Science has always boasted an internal morality its own code of knighthood and it hearing to the standards of science itself. But given the public demand for some

accountability scientific research can no longer claim total freedom since it cannot accept total responsibility for the effects of its work. Recently traditional systems of philosophical ethics have been dusted off and put to use as alternatives to an assortment of basically subjective though well intentioned value judgements by individual scientist. Dr Andrea helicopters is director of the Rosen Joseph P. Kennedy Institute for the study of human reproduction and bioethics. He clarified the relationship between ethics and scientific or medical research. Ethics is commonly understood complete a systematic and collectible reflection on what is right and wrong in the practice of medicine. And it's usually based on the religious and philosophical ethics. We asked Dr. Heller why there seems to be a renewed interest in the ethical components of scientific decision making. Their revival comes first of all from the fact that the medical technology is so much more

powerful than it was in the past. So did a series of problems like when does one allow someone to die. I've taken on a new dimension just simply because one could keep somebody going much longer. I think a second major interest comes as a sort of subsection after consumer movement in general. Truth in packaging truth in lending. You know for an informed information when you buy something including nowadays when you're buying medicine. So I think the combination of strong technology and a general movement towards more autonomy each of individuals there would seem to be some promise in the notion of handing over the ethical aspects of research in sensitive areas to a third party the Hopefully dispassionate professional ethicist rather than leaving it entirely to the doctors scientists politicians or community representatives involved in a given project. Dr. hamburgers did add one cautionary note about such an ethical woodsmen

so-called. I think you should not expect ethicists definitive. Here's what you should expect from them is a great clarification of what the questions are. Dr. Leroy Walters director of the Center for Bioethics of the Kennedy Institute is a professional ethicist and he is serving as a member of the NIH recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. Dr. Heller has described what is input as an ethicist would be Dr. Walters is in fact the only professional ethicist on the NIH advisory committee on recombinant DNA and it's his staff who do what I said in the beginning ethicists do. Which is to point out where the issues of justice are how risk benefit balancing is to be done and what principles exist in ethical systems regarding informed consent by fair use parties involved. And he would be the person overwhelmingly what he f assisted us in interdisciplinary groups like this. Is to formulate the

questions accurately. So that a public audit committee that ultimately has to decide has a clearly in mind what are the areas options are. And of Rock the justifications for the Fair Use options might be the importance of ethical considerations in scientific research. Might be best demonstrated by looking back to some of our ethical failures such as the syphilis experiments conducted at the Tuskegee Institute from the 1930s until are official termination in the 1970s. Dr. Heller good comments. I suspect very strongly that in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment if the protocol had been locked at. By FSS the project would initially have been approved. But what is of course interesting is that one of the ethical principles of discovery strongly being advocated today is that a person who enters into a research protocol. Should have the right. To come out of it at any time they wish to. And whether you want to come out

of it my Pande on whether new information exists. So that certainly if I had been say a bioethicist on a Watchdog Committee you had in the experiment syphilis and dusky someplace along the line that ethicist would have pointed out. You must at this point give new information. To all of your experimental subjects and let them decide once again what I want to continue or not. And in fact that would I think not have happened had it been a bioethicist on board. DNA research is shaping up as what could be a landmark case for perhaps the first time scientists themselves are brought to public attention. The potential risks of their research. The public has responded by demanding the right to be involved in certain research policy decisions and formalize controls which now exist as guidelines from. And I mean the National Institutes of Health may soon take the form of government regulation

recombinant DNA research seems to be a global lightning rod. Gustaf strain science attache of the French embassy here in Washington commented on the French response to this controversial subject. Recently a special commission was set up by the delegation for Science and Technology which he says an organisation which depends from the prime minister. And this commission I recovered in DNA is in charge of giving a scientific judgment on experiments dealing with recombinant DNA inference. And I should add that Gerry steed a geisha for research science and technology has also instituted another commission on recombinant DNA which looks more at the ethical issue of recombinant DNA. If you want to commissions one of the thinkers and one of the doers of people who think of the ethical consequences

and people would think of the practical consequence. On the other hand famous and she tuition is like the paster Institute in Paris has been involved in setting up guidelines for the French research community at the European level there has been a coordination of different governments and research institutions. From what I know at the moment the European community leaning towards the guidelines edited by the British scientific community although there is a lot of debate in the European molecular biology organisation. I am not sure that these issues have a reach. The public as much as they've reached the public in the United States of America is not always a shining example to the world but it is currently at least a proving ground for several sensitive issues including how to proceed with the supervision of basic research. Group gang rigor a

commentator for North German radio and Hamburg is compiling a journalistic report on the dangers of scientific research for later broadcast in Germany. He talked with us about German attitudes toward regulation of scientific research in several feet in Europe especially outside my home country in Germany some legislation is coming up partly influenced by what has been discussed in America. Outstanding example is the research on recombinant DNA. We accepted now guidelines which I modeled after the US which you have here you know the fields we haven't gone that far yet. We don't know the dangers I mean the general public some of the scientists might know and you will also be aware of it that scientists in Germany and Europe in general off the traditional thinking although there are many young people who have been abroad and that the old ways with the professor seeing everything and then everybody else following suit that these days have passed. So you know traditional societies to

some of these old videos carry over and there's a fight between the scientific community and the political world of the general public as to how far that freedom should go. How many rules and government observations and controls should be built in and wouldn't that hamper the freedom of research. So we're still in the middle of a strike of this. If you think of a situation like the German one here Rieger also reflected on what he experienced as the clash between Eastern and Western philosophies of science. I think there have to be a growing awareness that there are similar problems which have to be soft on both sides of the Atlantic or even in all industrial societies combined. So answer the question of how much of this can be adapted to the needs of third world countries. How much of the technology and knowledge can be transferred. And I have talked to a scientists in Persia in Indonesia in the Middle East and they said you in the West have a concept of science which

is very rational. It's jihad by the age of enlightenment. Man thinks he can do it. And if he has the right instrument he will do it. We think of a unity between what we can do and what we can contemplate and who want to balance this you know to not to lose what man really has in life he has also something as a parent from making technical things. You have had this discussion in some of your intellectual community when Zen Buddhism and other things were taken up and I think in the long run in the confrontation between the developing countries those for example who want to have atomic energy develop in such things and the West who has already reached the limits of gross and is saying not so far because we destroyed the environment. This is another issue which has to be discussed too. That man does not destroy himself by doing everything which he thinks he can do. That's another aspect of this question how

dangerous research can be or how dangerous can scientific thinking be. This is in perception of man that balance with himself is in this country being translated into questions about the appropriateness of certain lines of research. The actual banning of some areas of research has been debated at almost white heat intensity regulation of any sort. It is still a volatile issue. But the reality is that it is going to happen. The real question is how much regulation and by whom development of federal legislation and regulations for recombinant DNA research is already underway in the Senate Subcommittee on Health and scientific research. Opponents have predicted eventual federal control of all research more cautious critics argue that this establishes a dangerous precedent in making laws against an unknown risk. But existing National Institutes of Health guidelines on recombinant DNA cover only those projects

receiving h e w o funds and the proposed legislation will not be a mechanism for deciding which research should or should not proceed. It pertains only to the DNA research. Senator Edward Kennedy chairman of the committee outlined the purpose of these federal regulations. Certainly the purpose of any regulation is to. From my viewpoint is to encourage the continued reach in terms of scientific inquiry in the DNA area. There are those who distinguished scientists who believe that there may and I want to stress may be a potential hazards from the research in DNA. There are those that believe there will be great benefits as a result of research in the area of DNA. And what we want to try attempt to do is to develop a mechanism by which a research can go ahead in the area of DNA. And if the hazards

develop and become more severe. And more intense that the guidelines can be sufficiently flexible to protect us against hazards. And if some of these issues or problems are resolved that the guidelines can be relaxed so that there can be even further research in this important area citizen participation may be as American as apple pie. But it's unlikely to receive the enthusiastic endorsement of any professional community. When you suggest that laymen are going to participate in their area of expertise Senator Kennedy whose own constituency has been rather vocal on the DNA issue offered these comments. It's still unclear at the present time as to what the potential hazards are as what the potential benefits are. And clearly while there are potential hazards being located in a particular area members within that community ought to be able to have first of all information that such research is

taking place. And secondly if they have legitimate health or environmental concerns which are reasonable then the fashioning of a particular research effort or do I think be sensitive to some of those particular concerns. Now in the Cambridge Massachusetts community with the establishment of that relationship it worked out very well. Scientists were talking to lay persons lay persons to scientists. There was a real interchange of information ideas understanding confidence and as a result of that panel's working the recommendations that they made to a biohazard committee were very constructive very positive and the work is going to go ahead and that is the kind of interrelationship between the lay persons and the scientific community that ought to take place. The concept of scientific accountability and some sort of public advice and consent probably has considerable support among laymen. The paradox lies in the

fact that it's unlikely that the public could effectively intervene or even understand what's going on with most scientific research without extensive cooperation from the scientists themselves. It will seem that what is necessary is a sustained dialogue between science and the public to ensure that everyone's freedom is exercised responsibly. Senator Kennedy had these closing remarks. I'm a great believer in what science and science research can do. I've seen it from a personal point of view in terms of my own family where my son was affected by cancer and through research programs and new drugs I think played an important role in terms of his recovery and I both from a personal view as well as by conviction in terms of what science and research can meaning could do for our society in helping meeting health care needs as well as other need. I'm a strong believer in it. I think the public have to also be

aware of the nature of such research. I think the public when they are will act responsibly and will increase their support and awareness for such a program. I don't think that the scientists ought to be in isolation of the public. And I think the public should not be in isolation from the scientists. The public has always been ambivalent about it scientists. The image of the beneficence Dr. paster has always been side by side with a fictional Doctor Frankenstein who pursued knowledge too far and without regard to humanity in real life the benefits of outweighed the monsters by a thousand to one perhaps. But in an age of nuclear weapons the little my own people and even one monster maybe more than we can afford this is there to be more of it in Washington. Our correspondents have been Gustaf stron science attache of the French embassy in Washington D.C. and both gang leader of North German radio Hamburg Germany.

Our producer was John O'Toole the Smithsonian Institution provided assistance in the preparation of this program the Atlanta Dateline is made possible by a grant from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. A memorial to the Marshall Plan.