sciethics

Caution or prejudice?

2007-07-09T21:13:00.000+01:00

I am pregnant. The baby is due on Christmas Day. Because of this, I have been looking into the choices available for childbirth. My local maternity unit has a birthing pool, so I've been looking into water birth as a possibility.

This study, published in 2000, disturbed me a little. The results section of the abstract, which was all I had access to, seemed to suggest a whole host of benefits from labouring and/or giving birth in water: less injury to the mother, less pain relief needed, happier mothers, healthier babies… and yet the conclusion is a very underwhelming 'Waterbirths … do not demonstrate higher birth risks for the mother or the child than bedbirths'.

Why the vote of unconfidence? I started looking for more recent articles, and for articles which described drawbacks to water birth. I found that many of the latter appeared to be published in a single journal, Pediatrics. One article in particular, a description of four case reports of water births with complications, had a comment appended by the editor of the journal. 'Editor’s Note: I’ve always considered underwater birth a bad joke, useless, and a fad, which was so idiotic it would go away. It hasn’t! It should!' Speak your mind, why don't you, don't be shy!

Further searching in this journal revealed a more recent article, from 2004, whose main thesis appeared to be that water births shouldn't be used because they had not been subject to randomised controlled trials. Yet a Cochrane review from 2002, two years earlier, found eight such trials, and confirmed that water immersion did reduce the pain levels and the need for pain relief.

So, when such information is so easily available, why should an article that denied it be published? Could it be that the editor's opinions lead him to selectively publish articles that reflect his own viewpoint, rather than making up his mind on the available evidence? The latter is surely the point of evidence-based medicine, and the gold standard of randomised controlled trials.

Nanotechnology ethics journal

2007-06-24T20:44:00.000+01:00

Springer has launched a new journal, NanoEthics, to concentrate on ethical issues in the area of nanotechnology. The first issue is freely available.

There are many ethical issues to discuss in this emerging technology, though many if not most are just the same ethical issues we see elsewhere (informed consent, wise use of discoveries, ends versus means). But it's worth discussing these issues for nanotechnology in specific, if only because so many people are ignorant of what nanotechnology is about or is likely to become.

Food aid: GM or not, it's still dumping

2007-04-26T12:39:00.000+01:00

Sudan has agreed to take a shipment of food aid after all. The shipment, from the US, had previously been rejected on the grounds that it was genetically modified; the World Food Programme claimed that this was impossible.
It's not unreasonable to assume that food aid from the US might be contaminated with genetically modified food (if you don't know that GM sorghum hasn't been developed); 60% of the land that is used worldwide to grow GM crops is in the US, and a lot of this harvest ends up in food aid (source). But the problem, as the BBC article suggests, may not be the presence of genetically modified material as such, but rather the policy of dumping food in the guise of aid.
Sudan has had a bumper crop this year. It would be well capable of supplying food to the refugees. What it needs is a purchaser and a distribution network. The WFP is well placed to do this. Except it's not.
Donors, particularly rich countries like the US, tend to give food rather than money. It's a great way of getting rid of the excess food produced by the over-subsidised agricultural industry. So the WFP doesn't have any money to buy Sudan's food. Instead, it has to distribute the foreign food, which ends up driving the local farmers out of business when they can't sell their crops.
Jennifer Clapp's paper The Political Economy of Food Aid in
An Era of Agricultural Biotechnology suggests the US also has another motivation for distributing GM material as food aid: in the developing world, countries are generally hesitant to approve the growing of GM food. As they don't have the resources to do extensive testings, they tend to follow the European model of caution rather than the US one of 'innocent until proven guilty'. This means that the market for GM crops outwith North America is very small – unless they can break the resistance by presenting people with a fait accompli.Equally, the developing countries have an economic motivation for refusing GM foods: they might lose their export licences to the EU if any of the food grain is found to have been sown and crossed with local varieties.
Ultimately, of course, the problem is with all food aid, not just that involving GM material, where the food is the result of Western subsidised excess rather than having been sourced as locally as possible. In general, it's better to give money in such situations rather than food.

Funding bias affects all fields

2007-01-13T15:36:00.000Z

We've known for a while that the results of pharmaceutical trials are influenced by the source of funding. Now two separate studies have been published showing that the same is true in the fields of nutrition and technology. I suppose it's unsurprising. The results you get out of research depend on the questions you ask. And the questions you ask depend on why you're asking them. I think all we can do is make the sources of funding as explicit as possible, and do regular comparisons along the lines of the studies linked to here in order to be able to correct for any bias that results.

This is just plain scary

2007-01-11T18:16:00.000Z

I don't think I'll trust the Times again.
As the author points out, it's impossible that the authors of the article in the Times couldn't have known that they were writing falsehoods; that is, if they were doing any research into the subject at all.

How many more such articles are there out there? Mark Liberman at the Language Log points out that calling foul on news articles in the mainstream media is becoming more possible with the possibility for everyone to publish through blogs. And this is a good thing.

We've seen this before, of course. It's called peer review'. Philica even offers a very similar system of review to that of the blogosphere, with articles being published first and then reviewed. But there's a lot of drivel there, and who is going to have time to look through it all? Nature has recently given up on a test of open peer review for lack of uptake. I don't see academia moving over to this system any time soon. But as for popular reports, take everything you read with a pinch of salt. Or, in the case of the Times, empty the whole bag in.

DaimlerChrysler climbdown

2007-01-11T12:40:00.000Z

I see that DaimlerChrysler has issued a statement, in response to the BBC news article claiming that their chief economist dismissed the notion of climate change as 'Chicken Little' behaviour. Apparently he just said that other people said that, not that he agreed with it.

I would tend to wonder why, if he didn't agree with what he was saying, he said so much of it (the BBC article quotes quite extensively). But it is in car and oil companies' interests to at least appear in public to be green. The New Scientist points out that companies like BP, who market themselves strenuously on their green credentials, are doing much better than ExxonMobil. And this is especially important when, as the BBC article points out, the US economy is struggling. So the damage limitation people are out in force.

At the same time, there is a petition against the proposal to introduce mileage charges instead of the current flat-rate road tax. This follows the fuel tax protests in 2005. Personally, I would prefer fuel tax to a GPS-based system, simply because the former is so much easier to administer. But either way, the protests are about the increased cost of driving around per se.

I would love the facts about pollution to turn out to be wrong. I would be very happy to continue my current profligate Western lifestyle. But I think that it would be fooling myself to ignore the warnings. It's not a matter of Chicken Little yelling that the sky is falling because an acorn fell on his head. Chicken Little has been pointing out, at length, for several years that the sky is now measurably lower than it was in the past, and although estimates disagree on the rate of descent, they all agree that it will fall further, that we know what is causing the sky to fall, and that the consequences of falling sky are already visible. Since people aren't going to change by themselves, we need legislation, such as higher taxes on fuel. So it's time to go and see the King.

I can't imagine why

2007-01-09T12:26:00.000Z

I really cannot fathom why any doctor would refuse to inform a patient of their diagnosis. For years. Of a serious illness for which such treatment as there is needs to be started as early as possible.

Medical journalism corruption still rife

2007-01-04T20:04:00.000Z

This week's New Scientist has an article showing that drug companies have not stopped their attempts to influence the media in favour of their products, attempting to cover over controversies and suppress reporting of inconvenient results.

Nine years old forever

2007-01-04T18:40:00.000Z

I was surprised, though pleased, to see the general response to the Ashley treatment. I was expecting much more of a knee-jerk reaction, but people have for the most part been very understanding in their comments. Maybe this is a UK/US thing, since US boards seem to have a much harsher take on it. Or maybe this is because the story broke in the US first, and so the UK people, posting later, have a fuller view of the case?

In case it's not clear, my sympathies, too, are with the parents. It would be nice if such decisions didn't have to be made, but the world isn't like that.

Thanks, but no thanks

2007-01-03T20:14:00.000Z

The charity Sense About Science is asking celebrities and journalists to check the facts before supporting any campaigns. I think this is a great idea, and a good response to Lord Rees' comments a while back. It might even make a difference to some of the more barmy campaigns out there.
SPAN class="fullpost">

Self-archiving and open access

2006-12-18T12:28:00.000Z

My dissertation is now available! (It's even had a flattering review.)
The main part of the dissertation is based around a survey of 430 or so people on whether they knew about self-archiving and whether they accessed journal articles online from sources other than the official publishers' website. Over 70% of respondents did, a higher proportion than in previous surveys, though it depended a great deal on subject area. People in the field of medicine had hardly heard of it at all and were very unwilling to trust self-archived material. Why should this be?

There's a possibility of a sample bias, but other studies have found a similar tendency in medicine (there is much less self-archived material available in medicine than in other fields, as well). I suspect two things: firstly, that many researchers in medicine spend a lot less time immersed in academia than people in other subjects, and the concept of open access hasn't spread beyond academia yet; and secondly, that there is a much greater need for papers in medicine to be seen as authoritative, as determining the trustworthiness of articles is both more important and more difficult. More difficult, because the trials and experiments described are often expensive, long-term, or subject to stringent ethical stipulations; more important, because of the consequences if, say, a doctor acts on incorrect advice.
Whether these attitudes will change as self-archiving increases in popularity (as I believe it will) remains to be seen.

Science as entertainment

2006-12-04T15:08:00.000Z

Mark Liberman at the Language Log has been tackling for some time the misinformation in Luanne Brizendine's book The Female Brain. In the latest twist, despite Brizendine's retraction of the material in question, the popular press are still promulgating it as if nothing had happened.

The press appear to rarely bother to check scientific facts before posting something, and may not admit their mistakes (another example, this time with the BBC as the culprit, has been dealt with in depth elsewhere). Mark Liberman suggests that this is because science news is viewed as entertainment, rather than on the same level as current events stories.

In a way, of course, almost all news is entertainment. There's very little in the daily news that directly affects people's everyday lives. Instead, as C.S. Lewis famously had it, 'He reads daily, with unwearied relish, how, in some place he has never seen, under circumstances which never become quite clear, someone he doesn't know has married, rescued, robbed, raped, or murdered someone else he doesn't know.' And, while scientific discoveries do have the potential to affect everybody's lives, the chance of any individual discovery directly affecting any given individual person is quite small.

On the other hand, that shouldn't stop journalists from checking their facts.

GM potatoes

2006-12-01T12:32:00.000Z

As a gardener, I welcome the announcement of UK trials of potatoes genetically modified to be resistant to blight, for reasons given below. I was rather less pleased at the reaction of the GMWatch spokeswoman on the Today programme. She used the event as a hook to hang a very standard anti-GM rant off, without dealing in any way with the specifics of this particular implementation – and this is not a standard GM trial.

There are several ways in which this particular GM trial differs from many others that have occurred in the past. The gene inserted is from a wild potato plant, not a gene from another species. The same effect might be attained through many years of careful cross-breeding in the traditional manner; genetic modification just gets it done more quickly and more surely.

The purpose of the gene transfer is to give the plants resistance to potato blight, which is a deadly disease for which there is no organic treatment (organic potato farmers are permitted to use Bordeaux Mixture, which is primarily copper sulphate, but this is a concession by the Soil Association to the fact that without using some sort of inorganic compound, it is impossible to grow potatoes in an area subject to blight.

Potatoes crop, and reproduce, not by setting seed but by producing tubers. There is therefore a much lower chance of 'contamination' with other plant species (especially as there are far fewer relatives of the potato in the wild than there are of grass-based plants such as wheat). And, as I said above, the gene is one that occurs in wild potatoes anyway, and confers resistance to a fungal infection, not a weedkiller or pesticide. So if the gene did start appearing in wild plants, what harm would it do anyway?

It is true that reports of a toxicology experiment in the past have claimed that rats fed a certain strain of GM potato had damaged immune systems. But the full results of that trial, when they were finally released, were inconclusive, and some claimed the design was flawed and the paper should not have been published. And in any case, this is a different strain and would be expected to behave differently. But how can we tell that for sure without doing the trials?

Sleepwalking into extremism

2006-11-30T12:43:00.000Z

The President of the Royal Society, Lord Rees, said on the Today programme this morning that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a future of extremism unless we do more to promote a scientific worldview. In particular, he accused the news media of giving too much publicity to 'mavericks' in a misguided attempt to show both sides of any argument.

We've heard this before, of course. In relation to climate change in the US (another example here), and the MMR vaccine in the UK (as I posted about a few months ago).

But Lord Rees is talking not in terms of informing the public to enable people to make their own minds up about things, but in terms of educating the public so they can make decisions about science policy. I'm a little dubious about this. Call me a snob, but I'm not sure any change in media policy is going to educate most people sufficiently to enable them to make decisions about science, simply because most of them won't care enough to be bothered. Unless it's something scary that might do Bad Things to them directly. Then they're at least interested enough to buy the newspaper that tells them the bad news.

Long silence

2006-10-21T21:47:00.000+01:00

Sorry I've not been around for a bit. I've been writing a dissertation on whether researchers (in science and other fields) use self-archived literature: research material that has been made available by its authors on websites or in archives (repositories) in addition to normal journal publication. I'll post the full results shortly.

China to name and shame dodgy researchers

2006-07-06T10:39:00.000+01:00

In a bid to curb the apparently increasing tendency for fraud amongst research scientists in the far east, the Chinese government has unveiled a plan to evaluate the 'credibility' of the researchers it funds. Those individuals or groups who fail, through breaking the rules or making 'mistakes', will be made public.

Assuming this isn't another control bid by the Chinese government, along the lines of censorship, then I think this could be a good idea. This sort of thing should happen anyway under the peer review system, but so much research is being done these days, much of it highly specific, that it can take a long time for fraud or other forms of misconduct to be found out. On the other hand, there's no indication of what criteria will be used to judge the 'credibility' of scientists. Or of whether any punishment will be applied, aside from publicity.

Faking it and taking it

2006-07-04T12:25:00.000+01:00

Taking responsibility, that is. Hwang Woo-Suk has admitted a part in the faking of cloning research in his lab. A part, that is, as he still maintains that the actual faking was done by underlings.

This is rather disingenuous. Either he was in charge of his lab or he wasn't. If he was genuinely supervising his research staff, he should have known what they were doing. Giving 'specific orders' is neither here nor there. If he didn't know what they were doing he obviously wasn't involved enough in the work to claim the credit for it.

My mother made me do it

2006-06-27T20:17:00.000+01:00

On another blog, Janet D. Stemwedel gives her take on the news that sexuality may be determined in the womb. My reaction is somewhat different. I don't see something caused in the mother's womb as biological determination so much as environmental. It's certainly not genetic, as Andy Forrest from Stonewall, quoted in the BBC article, seems to think. The extension of this is that it's not impossible to foresee a time in the future when we will be able to advise pregnant women to eat certain things, or take certain pills, to reduce the risk of their child being born gay.

I'm not at all sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, there are disadvantages to being gay that most parents would want to spare their children: the discrimination and prejudice, the far narrower field of potential mates, the inability to have (or at least difficulty in having) genetic offspring. If it were a matter of taking a pill to reduce the risk of your child being born disabled or stupid, I can't see many parents refusing it – in fact, we already do it in the form of vitamin supplements and whatever it is the government is advising us to eat this week.

But what if it were a pill to reduce the risk of your child being born red-headed? Or, less obviously unacceptable, how about a pill to reduce the risk of your child being highly emotional? Emotional people (easily upset) can be put at great disadvantages in life too.

I don't agree that there's anything intrinsically wrong with saying that some states of being (such as being able to walk) are better than others (such as being paralysed), in the sense that the 'better' state is generally more enjoyable for the person concerned (not that the person in the 'better' state is intrinsically a 'better' person for it). But even with a continuum of characteristics with number of usable limbs at one end and hair color at the other, it's unclear where sexuality should come on the scale.

Misguided concepts of balance

2006-06-27T12:26:00.000+01:00

A group of thirty leading paediatricians and vaccination experts have written an open letter calling for parents to allow their children to receive the MMR vaccination. (I can't find a copy of the letter itself, but it's widely reported throughout the news media.) They blame 'misguided concepts of balance' in the media for confusing people about the validity of the research that suggests a link to autism.

Done properly, the peer review system should work well at weeding out dodgy research. But it's a paradigm that's very unfamiliar to the mainstream media and to most of those who gain their information from it. 'Person B says that the thing Person A said last year was dangerous isn't so scary after all' isn't a very good headline. How can the reader weigh up the relative merits of the arguments in a very specialised field with a completely different worldview?

The reference to 'misguided concepts of balance' is, I assume, a suggestion that the normal 'two sides to every story' approach taken by the media is counterproductive in this case. It implies equal validity on both sides, and the writers of the letter believe that Dr Wakefield's research is invalid and should be treated in health reporting similarly to the way the BNP is treated in politics journalism. This seems sensible, given the large amount of research suggesting the vaccine is safe, but in a way I can see the point of the opposing argument. Are people not intelligent enough, do we not respect their independence enough, to let them look at the evidence themselves and make up their own minds?

Interestingly, though, the very BBC webpage publicising this story gives, under the 'related links' section, a link to JABS, a group which opposes the vaccine on the basis of Wakefield's evidence, but no site arguing the opposite view, or even a link to the full text of the letter. If it's an open letter, surely it can be republished?

Which comes first: the eagle, or the green energy?

2006-06-26T23:45:00.000+01:00

I hadn't truly paid much credence to the idea that wind farms were a hazard to birdlife. But there seems to be evidence that a Norwegian wind farm has directly caused the death of a number of white-tailed eagles. So it seems we need to look to our priorities: is a charismatic, beautiful and evocative species more important than alternative sources of energy that will help stave off the greenhouse effect?

I think so, not because 'eagles' are 'pretty' (though they're certainly beautiful birds), nor because I believe in preserving the exact environmental status quo, but because if we forget why we're trying to save the environment then we've lost something in ourselves.

Whaling

2006-06-19T12:59:00.000+01:00

Japan have gained an initial victory in its attempt to restart commercial whaling. In a way I think this could be a good thing: my natural honesty is offended by what they do in the name of 'scientific research'. Perhaps we should call it commercial whaling, but keep the limits exactly where they are now.

That petition

2006-05-20T14:10:00.000+01:00

The pro-animal testing petition (the one that Tony Blair signed) is available here.
Interestingly, the BBC article quotes someone as saying that the petition only has 13,000 names. Less than a week after that article was published, there are now 18,000 names.

More animal testing

2005-12-08T21:34:00.000Z

The BBC reports that there has been a rise this year in the number of animals used in experiments in the UK. There has been a large increase in the proportion of genetically modified animals (GM) used, with a fall in the use of non-GM animals.

A lot of these GM animals will have been modified to make them more prone to develop specific diseases such as cancer. This makes it easier to test potential cures for these diseases, particularly where a lot of animals would be needed to find a sufficient number that had the disease by chance. In these cases, using GM animals reduces the number of animals that need to be bred.

I don't think there's many research scientists who wouldn't agree that it would be better not to have to use animals at all. And people are working on alternatives – even with this increase we only use half the animals we did 30 years ago. But in the meantime there are still things we need animals for. And while we do, we should try and do what we can to make sure we use as few as possible.

What should we test for?

2005-11-10T13:30:00.000Z

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is conducting a survey to see whether people think embryos should be tested for a wider range of conditions than they are currently.

At the moment, embryos obtained through IVF are tested for a small number of genes which give the child which has them an almost certain chance of developing certain currently incurable disorders, such as cystic fibrosis. The ideas under discussion would involve genes which give a predisposition to (not a certainly of developing) certain cancers, and/or diseases for which we do have cures.

Is it right to choose not to implant an embryo because it contains a gene that might (not will) cause it to develop a disease that might (not will) be incurable? On the other hand, if you're choosing one of a number generated by IVF anyway, doesn't it makes sense to give your child the best chance possible?

I've seen GATTACA. I know that a chance is not the same as a certainty. My biggest worry is, is it right to decide on matters of morality by public survey, as if it was some sort of popularity contest for ethical policy? On the other hand, is there any other way?

Nuclear power will be necessary

2005-11-10T13:18:00.000Z

According to a new report from the UK Energy Research Centre, in 30 years' time we will be suffering from an energy shortfall. The only way to plug the gap is with nuclear power.

Is nuclear power the only way, or are there safer ways to generate electricity without increasing the amount of atmospheric pollution? And is nuclear power really that bad?

US animal rights activist barred from Britain

2004-08-26T09:23:00.000+01:00

The Guardian reports that Jerry Vlasak, an animal rights activists who has apparently condoned the killing of scientists involved in animal research, has been refused entry to Britain by the Home Secretary, on the grounds that his exclusion would be "conducive to the public good". Vlasak was due to speak at a conference organised by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, a group which advocates intimidating firms who work with, supply, or fund animal researchers.

There are several separate questions to consider here. First, is animal experimentation wrong; secondly, are the methods of SHAC wrong; and thirdly, is it wrong to ban Dr Vlasak because of it?

Where do bioethicists get their funding?

2004-08-24T19:48:00.000+01:00

Bioethic$ Inc. is a very interesting essay pointing out that, increasingly, bioethicists are being paid by the corporations they are meant to be criticising. The trouble is that it's all very well being trained to work out what is right and what is wrong, and telling the companies all about it, but people have to eat and someone's got to pay for it. If not the companies you're talking to, then whom?

New laws proposed to deal with animal rights protestors

2004-07-30T08:29:00.000+01:00

The BBC reports that the Government is considering either developing new laws, or extending existing ones, to enable prosecution of animal rights activists who, for example, protest outside researchers' homes to intimidate them. The full details are to be announced on Friday.

Public consultation on gene testing

2004-07-16T20:10:00.000+01:00

The Human Genetics Commission, the Government advisory body on developments in human genetics, has produced a discussion document on the social implications of some of the recent advancements in genetic technology. In particular, they want to know what people think about embryo screening and selection. Where should we draw the line between avoiding a genetic disorder and creating a designer baby -- and is there anything wrong with designer babies anyway? And given the new technologies, is there anything we should change about the structure or culture of our medical services?

The answers they receive from the general public will be used to produce a report to Ministers next year. The questions then are: Will the government pay any attention to what people have said? And, ultimately, should they?

Slug protection?

2004-07-16T19:56:00.000+01:00

Apparently, new animal protection legislation proposed by the Government would offer the same protection to slugs and snails as to dogs and cats. According to the Telegraph, gardeners are up in arms about this, and deservedly so, if the report is true. Personally I suspect it's a matter of overzealous interpretation by a journalist looking for a story.

It does, however, raise the issue of how far we should go in the defence or protection of other animals. If we made it illegal to kill anything that might possibly suffer, then we'd surely starve. It is surely not wrong to count human lives above animal lives. Human pleasure, though, is a matter of debate. It is obviously wrong to torture a chimpanzee to death because you are a sadist and find it enjoyable. It is fairly obviously (to most people) right to subject mice to a small amount of pain to find a drug that cures cancer. Killing a cow (in a humane manner) because you prefer beef to lentils is accepted by most people, as is poisoning slugs because you want to see pretty flowers. But how about subjecting a chicken or a pig to a painful and miserable existence because you don't like the idea of paying a couple of quid extra on your roast? Any legislation that protects the slugs while leaving the chickens to their hell is seriously mixed-up.

Clinical trials of Drug Companies

2004-06-25T09:07:00.000+01:00

Last week, the American Medical Association urged the US government to establish a national registry of clinical trials. This is to counter the growing problem of drug companies failing to publish the results of trials that don't show their drugs in a good light, either through demonstrating that they don't actually work very well or through uncovering side effects. Journals would refuse to publish the results of trials that were not registered, and it would be very obvious if results were not being reported.

The New Scientist reports this week that although the big companies are making noises of agreement, in practice what they are prepared to do falls far short of this. Merck, for example, supports the proposal in theory, but according to the New Scientist is only prepared to register smaller trials, but only "large, pivotal trials". And while GlaxoSmithKline (currently contesting legal action with regard to its failure to disclose information on the effectiveness of an antidepressant) planning to set up a website showing the results of their clinical trials, this would only apply to drugs that have already been released. Information on drugs which have yet to be approved would still be hidden. Which rather misses the point of it.

In the same issue, and on the same page, the New Scientist also reports that drug companies want to ban people who respond to placebos from clinical trials of antidepressants. This would make their results look better, for sure. But surely the whole point of a trial is to see how well the drug compares to the placebo? If we rule out the placebo-responders from the start, then how can we possibly tell how the drug will perform in a real-life situation? The drug companies have apparently forgotten what the purpose of a medicine is.

A cure for autism?

2004-06-17T00:22:00.000+01:00

Nature reports that promiscuous voles can be made faithful by the addition of more hormone receptors in the brain. The hormone in question, vasopressin, appears to be produced in large quantities during sex, and seems to encourage bonding. And though they caution that pair bonding in humans is vastly more complicated than in voles, the idea of transferring this to human relationships is definitely there.

The BBC report gives a slightly different take on it. Autists have difficulty bonding, so maybe through vasopressin we could find a possible cure for autism.

Both are tempting ideas. We could cure infidelity, or autism, through hormone treatments. But first we have to decide what is a disorder, and what is natural. It would be far too easy, once we have a cure, to define anything other than some theoretical ideal as the disease. What's the difference between an autist and someone who just doesn't like chatting much? How many partners do you have to have before you need treatment for promiscuity?

Some people say we're already in this situation with antidepressants such as Prozac (given, according to some, to anyone who might be a little unhappy), or Ritalin to treat attention deficit disorder (or, perhaps, any child that doesn't sit still). On the other hand, some people say that both these drugs are underprescribed, and many depressed people and hyperactive children are going untreated. (Both sides of the argument can be seen here.) Here already we see the problems of a fuzzy boundary. Where diagnosis is based mainly on personal judgement, health professionals need a lot of time spent with the patient to work out what's going on -- time which they rarely get. More importantly, we need alternatives to the drugs, for those people who need something other than a chemical fix. And this will also be true if we develop a drug to treat autism.

First UK Human Cloning?

2004-06-16T20:55:00.000+01:00

The BBC reports that a research group headed by Dr Miodrag Stojkovic of Newcastle University have requested permission from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to clone human embryos. This is the first such request in the UK. The idea is to isolate stem cells from the cloned embryos which are genetically identical to the donor. These could be used to replace lost cells without any fear of tissue rejection.

Naturally, this raises the issue of "spare parts". Is it right to create a twin of yourself, even a fourteen-day-old ball of cells of one, to pull to bits to plug gaps in yourself? That may be a rather crude and emotive way of putting it, but perhaps that is what we would be doing. Of course, a permanent cure for conditions such as diabetes or Alzheimer's disease would be wonderful, but are we creating people in order to kill them to do so? Or are we just creating a specialised (and rather useful) cell structure from someone's donated cells?

Ideally, of course, we could find a way of creating stem cells without creating embryos. But only embryonic cells are pluripotent -- able to develop into all cell types of the body. If we did find some way that didn't involve cloning, to produce what would, in effect, be embryonic cells, perhaps this could still be called an embryo, even if it's not organised into an embryo shape. After all, it has the potential to become a whole human.

Actually, this ideal process, of creating pluripotent stem cells direct from adult cells, has already been done. By a commercial company, which has patented the technique, and plans to sell the stem cells thus produced. They claim that it is simple and quick. Well, they would. And nobody else can use it without paying the company. Hence, presumably, the continued exploration of therapeutic cloning. But even if they have patented their own method, it opens the possibility of other methods of doing the same thing. And surely then we should be concentrating on this avenue. Not only does it avoid the needless creation and destruction of embryos, it's also likely to be more reliable. Cloning has so far been only fitfully successful at best. Better than finding a cure for diabetes is finding a cure for diabetes that works well.

Fight over sunlight

2004-06-08T08:45:00.000+01:00

On Radio 4's Today programme this morning there was a debate between a pair of scientists about the amount of sunlight we should be exposed to (audio clip here). Everyone knows that UV light can cause skin cancer, but apparently people are now avoiding sunlight so much that we are in danger of becoming Vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D is apparently good not only for fixing calcium in our bones, but also for helping our bodies' own defences against cancer.

The trouble was that neither of the scientists on the programme really got to grips with the other's argument. So instead of a constructive and instructive discussion, we had a situation where two people simply repeated, over and over, a single point. Both of them were exaggerating the other person's position in order to make theirs look like the only reasonable choice. This is not good argument, and it is certainly not good science.

The worst of it is that the two weren't actually all that far apart. One was saying that we need three to five minutes a day of direct exposure to sunlight to make enough Vitamin D. (He didn't make clear whether this was supposed to be whole body exposure or whether face and hands alone would do.) The other was saying that we need to be careful to avoid overexposure for fear of getting skin cancer. I don't really see how these two are at all contradictory. Assuming all you need to show is your face and hands, you'll get more than enough exposure just walking to the shops. I am so fair-skinned that I have been known to get sunburn on a cloudy day. So I tend to avoid the sun. Nevertheless I'm sure that on average I get more than three to five minutes a day. At least in the summer, anyway. I really don't think there's many people so scared of cancer that they run out to the car on a sunny day with a newspaper over their heads, nor so desperate for Vitamin D that they lie out in the sun all day long, risking sunburn and skin cancer, to make sure they get it.

But one scientist accused the other of wanting people to throw away their suncream, and the other accused him of expecting them to lock themselves away in the cellar. The problem is really the irresponsibility of this unwillingness to acknowledge the other. The enire basis of scientific enquiry surely falls down if we cannot bear to take account of the criticism of others. (Can anyone spell "peer review"?) Science is supposed to be a discipline of reason. Scientists must therefore behave in a reasonable manner, or how can we believe what they say?

New rules for animal experiments?

2004-05-20T21:05:00.000+01:00

The Government has announced that a new body will be set up to oversee the use of animals in scientific experiments. How can we further reduce the number of animals used in experiments, and make sure that when animals are used, they suffer as little as possible?

Rules should take into account all the circumstances. I know of a scientist who used to use rabbits to produce antibodies to proteins he was working on. We haven't yet been able to work out how to get a wide selection of different antibodies from cells cultured in the lab. He would inject the (harmless) protein into the rabbit, whose immune system would react to this foreign body to produce a varied selection of antibodies. He would then draw out a couple of millilitres of blood and purify the antibodies for use in his experiments. The only thing the rabbit suffered was a couple of injections. Its job done, the rabbit would be retired. He would take them home and keep them as pets in his back garden, with a hutch and grass -- a pretty good life in return for a couple of injections.

He can't do that any more. The rules were changed a few years ago. Now, once the experiment is finished, the animal must be destroyed. So now he uses mice instead. They are so small that taking out enough blood to use in the experiments kills them. And as they'd have to be killed anyway...

Now, I think I understand what they were trying to do: make sure that animals whose usefulness is over don't languish in lab cages forever. But surely in this case, the rules have missed the point? We have here a problem of over-generalisation. We always need to be careful to ensure that rules meant to safeguard the welfare of animals don't end up acting against the very thing they are trying to protect.

Stem cell bank -- comment from a position of ignorance

2004-05-19T21:53:00.000+01:00

Stem cell research could save the lives of people with genetic or degenerative disorders. Harvesting stem cells from embryos could destroy the lives of the embryos. The ultimate ethical dilemma here is: is it right to kill one person so that another can live?

First of all, we need to decide whether we should consider an embryo a person. Pro-life groups would have no doubt at all. A person's a person, no matter how small -- even if they're only one cell big. Of course, this doesn't mean that the millions of dead skin cells we shed every day are people. It is the potential the embryo has to develop into a person that makes it human.

But it is precisely this potential that makes a stem cell so useful in research. For an embryo to develop into, eventually, an adult human, its cells must be capable of turning into every sort of cell in the body. Hence the possibility of their use in the sort of disease that involves irreparable damage to irreplaceable cells.

The researchers will say that an embryo is not a person. How can it be? It's a clump of undifferentiated cells. It can't think, it can't feel, it bears no resemblance to a human being. At some point during development it becomes a person, but just because the line is broad or fuzzy doesn't mean it isn't there.

Moreover, some of the cells most useful to research will be those that carry a genetic disorder -- taken from embryos discarded during IVF by parents who were looking for a healthy child. These would normally have been destroyed anyway. And of course this raises the question of whether this is morally right, too. Should we pick and choose our children in this way? Do we have the right to kill off people that we think wouldn't have much of a life? Does it count if we do it before they become people, or is future personhood important too -- should we take account of "what would have happened"?

It's worth investigating the possibility that embryonic stem cells can be harvested without killing the embryo. One cell can be removed from a group of eight or sixteen, leaving the others behind to continue to develop. The trouble is that embryos are so small and fragile that a lot of the time even this kills them. And how can we further develop a technology for live harvesting without doing some tests that are going to kill some embryos along the way? And is this a price worth paying?

So no, I don't have any answers, only questions. But in a way I'd be frightened of anyone who did know the answers. If it were a matter of people voluntarily giving their lives, it would be easy. They would be heroes, sacrificing themselves that others might live. We would admire them, and then pass laws against it, just in case anyone felt under pressure. Because to hold that power over someone, something, else, is an awesome responsibility.

Genetically modified what?

2004-05-18T20:02:00.000+01:00

This report on the Greenpeace website tells how Greenpeace supporters have been protesting against Sainsbury's selling of milk produced by cows fed on genetically modified feed imported from the States. We are told "The supermarket chain produces milk from cows fed on GM".

The pedant in me asks "GM what?" GM is, of course, an adjective, not a noun. These cows are being fed on a diet of genetically modified (or, at best, genetic modification). This makes no sense. And yes, I'm a grammatical pedant. But it occurs to me that this is important. It is important to make sure that we make sense, so that we can remember what we're talking about. These cows are being fed on American maize which has been genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate herbicide. By buying the milk from these cows, we are supporting the growing of this maize, and its possible hybridisation with other varieties.

We do need to have our attention drawn to this. But banners such as "There's something scary in the dairy" give the impression that there is some kind of taint that passes from the maize, through the cow, and into its milk. The milk is already two stages removed from the original genetic modification. How far removed must something be to no longer carry the taint? Talk of "shipments of GM" as if there is a single, evil, crop called "GM" makes it easy to forget that we need to investigate each modification we make, because each one is different. If we ban one genetic modification on one species, do we, should we, ban them all?

The UN is recommending more use of GM crops in developing countries, to overcome food shortages and nutrition problems. Greenpeace decries this as a "technical fix". Now, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a good technofix. Spectacles are a technofix for people with poor sight. But "good" is the operative word here. Greenpeace is right to draw attention to what is often the real problem in developing countries: the trade imbalance between them and the developed world, which leaves farmers producing cash crops, which are no use to them, at a loss, in order to sell them at a cheap price to us first-world consumers. Like the air conditioner that cools the house by turning on the chiller while leaving the heating switched on, a technofix that fails to take account of the underlying problem is wasteful and, ultimately, unhelpful.

But simple hunger isn't the only thing being addressed here. The protato, for example, isn't primarily designed to increase yield. It is designed to correct dietary imbalances. What is the alternative to a new high-protein potato? Make them eat more meat? That's not particulary affordable for a poor Indian family, even if they aren't vegetarian for religious reasons. Nor is the creation of large amounts of grazing land where no grazing land has been before particulary environmentally friendly. And importing the high-protein South American amaranth (from which the genes are taken) and planting it in a new environment might be at least as bad for biodiversity as a GM variety of a crop already in use. It's not just the GM varieties which hybridise with the native plants.

We have it easy in the developed world. We can import whatever we like, from wherever we like, and if it's not in season we can force it, or preserve it in carbon dioxide. We can eat kiwi fruit, for heaven's sake. We can eat strawberries and green beans all year round. And mangoes. All this stuff about a varied, balanced diet is for the rich, for those who can afford not only to eat peaches and cucumbers, but to turn them into skin cream instead of eating them. Our poor family in India eat what they can grow on their farm, plus a few things they can buy in their local market -- which is generally whatever the other farmers are growing on their farms. If it doesn't grow "round here", they won't be able to get hold of it.

Currently, most biotechnology research is concentrated on a few crops in the developed world. That's where the money is. We can afford to pay biotech companies for that little bit of extra convenience in spraying our crops with something that is guaranteed to kill everything else but the thing we're trying to grow. There's less money in making "what grows round here" better in quality. But it could give people a better life.

The survey the UN cites indicates that the farmers are willing to give it a try. If we run our technofix alongside other fixes, such as trade reform, then we might be able to save lives. But there is such a thing as hubris. We developed-world people have waded in before thinking we know all the answers. We should proceed with caution -- not the caution that makes us too frightened to do anything, but the caution that makes us step back and look at what we're doing, and consider carefully what could go wrong, and how we are going to deal with it if it does.

Monsanto pulls out of GM wheat

2004-05-13T21:08:00.000+01:00

Monsanto have decided to stop marketing their RoundUp Ready wheat. This is apparently a delay to their plans rather than a change. Monsanto claim there a lack of demand, while opponents of GM food point to the growing consumer resistance to GM in any form. But surely these are the same thing? If people don't like stuff, for whatever reason, they won't buy it. And if the end purchasers, the people in the supermarkets, don't want it, then the farmers aren't going to be able to sell it, so they won't want to grow it. It all fits together.

The question is, of course, why this consumer opposition has arisen. Certainly a crop designed to withstand use of a herbicide which is normally highly toxic to plants is controversial, but most people have no more than a vague idea that "it's bad". Environmental pressure groups press for freedom of choice: GM food should be labelled so that we can choose whether or not to eat it. But this only matters if the fact that something is genetically modified is important.

To me there are two reasons it might be important that a food product has had artificial changes made to its genes. The first is a possible risk to human health. Unless the genetic changes were to introduce a new poison (not the case with a glyphosate resistance), this is not very likely. The second is a possible risk to the environment. This is more of an issue.

But there are so many other things about our food that don't get labelled. I have no idea what chemicals are sprayed on my food, GM or otherwise, or what conditions the labourers work under. The only way to be sure is to buy organic and fair trade -- and when I look at the prices and the lack of choice (and the fact that a lot of it has been jetted halfway across the world, and loses in fuel pollution what it gains in non-chemical production), I usually end up buying the ordinary, pesticide-soaked variety. Surely then I would be a hypocrite to insist on it being GM free?

Welcome to Sciethics

2004-05-13T08:27:00.000+01:00

Many stories on the news these days speak about some ethical dilemma or decision relating to scientific discoveries. How do we use the techniques that we invent? What do we do with the knowledge we gain? Who should make these decisions?

This site is intended to encourage debate, particularly between scientists and lay people, on these questions. It will present issues related to the ethics of science as they are raised. When new research is published or new regulations proposed, it will be reported here. When issues hit the news, this site gives an opportunity for anybody who is interested to contribute to the debate. You will be able to respond with your own comments and raise your own concerns and ideas.

I have started this website because of my own particular interest in science ethics. Given the amount of news space given to this topic, I assume that lots of other people are interested in it as well. But I have found it very difficult to find a discussion forum specifically based around science ethics that is neither aimed at a very specialist scientific community nor designed solely to "tell you what we think". I wanted a site that would enable scientists, environmentalists, legislators, and people who just happen to be interested, to swap viewpoints and help each other come to a better understanding. So I had to start my own.

Like everyone else in the entire world, I have my biases. And like everyone else in the entire world, I call my particular set of biases "common sense". I have a degree in Biochemistry and some practical research experience, which biases me in one direction. I am a committed Christian, which biases me in another direction. This background is also what has given me my interest in the ethics of scientific research. But I will attempt, to the best of my ability, to keep this website balanced and open to all viewpoints.