Science and Ethics

The strong ecological association between human fetal cell line-manufactured vaccines and autistic disorder change points calls for further investigation of these childhood vaccine contaminants, and for the sake of preserving critical vaccination coverage, even a return to animal-based manufacturing.

On the other hand, it is estimated that 18 people die every day due to a national shortage of organ donations. This crisis can be solved.

Don’t worry: This is not one of those pieces calling for you to consider signing the donor section on the back of your driver’s license. My solution is more radical: When you die, the government should take your organs....

If the government can save 18 people a day by harvesting every available organ, why doesn’t it pass a law making it so?...

About 2.5 million Americans die every year. Most are burned or planted in the ground, completely wasted. Vast numbers of them rot away, their bodies containing potentially lifesaving organs, left intact — or embalmed — for only one reason: Politicians are too cowardly to challenge the ancient idea that there is something sacred in a hunk of flesh.

Rather than falsify data in order to get published, researchers have taken a new tack this year by writing glowing expert reviews for their own papers. When asked by journal editors to suggest names of experts in their field who were not involved in their research, at least four submitting authors suggested names and emails that then forwarded back to their own inboxes. The trend, first reported by Retraction Watch, was caught by one journal editor when author Hyung-In Moon, assistant professor at Dong-A University in Busan, South Korea, offered up names of reviewers with Google and Yahoo rather than university email accounts.

Our modern society has commodified the human body so much that I feel sometimes that I am living in a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.  It seems that none of us are safe if someone else thinks that they could use our parts better than we can.

The NHS is considering its biggest shakeup of the ethical, legal and professional rules governing transplants, floating ideas to prolong the lives of people who have no chance of surviving in order to harvest their organs, and to make people opt out rather than in to the donor register.

The options are included in a survey of medical, scientific and public opinion to be launched this week to test the boundaries of what might be acceptable, as a precursor to significant reforms.

The survey, on the NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) website from Saturday with a deadline of 21 September, will also suggest:

• Giving priority for transplants to the 19.1 million registered donors in the UK.

• Deploying new technologies to preserve organs beyond the current method of packing them on ice.

• New financial rewards for intensive care units for every organ they provide. Hospitals currently receive about £2,000 per organ to cover their costs, which the NHSBT compares with the €7,000 (£5,500) paid in Croatia.

• Presuming consent unless people have actively opted out.

From FreakingNews.com

I took a drug called Follistim to super ovulate me. The retrieval went fine, but not too long after that my stomach started to swell, and every time I leaned over I could feel my ovaries "plop." I went to see the doctor, and he told me I had OHSS...nurse stuck a needle in my stomach, and it was a loud pop I could feel, like a balloon was popped. She stuck a bag on the end of the needle to drain the fluid, and the bag filled with 2 quarts in about 5 minutes. She had to quickly put another bag on and some of the fluid spilled on the floor. She filled the next bag too—in all, 4 quarts were drained out of my stomach.... The staff at the hospital would shake their head at me and took pity on me, because I was an egg donor and they said they saw this a lot.... It took a year and a half to clear up the medical bills. My menstrual cycles are few and far between. I was pregnant in 2008, but I lost the baby. I hope to have children some day, and every time I do have a period, I get really excited because I rarely have them anymore.

"Give us the eggs. If we don't succeed, then be critical," said Wood. "You have to give people the tools that are required to determine whether the methodology will work."

If the primary moral objection to reproductive cloning is that it will likely result in genetic error in reprogramming, then of course we want research to prevent that kind of problem.  But how do we do that?  The best way is to see how cloned embryos develop and to study them, gestating them in female chimpanzees, artificial wombs, or human volunteers, then aborting them to see which are normal and which are not, then experimenting to see how to create only normally developing embryos/fetuses.

Nowadays it seems that science and scientists can do no wrong.  If a scientist says he needs to create and destroy human life for research, we barely bat an eye.  Most people think, "Well a scientist would know better than I would what is ethical, right?"  And scientists often bristle at any suggestion of restrictions on their research for ethical reasons.  Combine this worship of all things science with society's acceptance of death as a legitimate medical treatment and a perfect storm is created.  A storm where 90% of Down Syndrome children are aborted, the sick are pressured to kill themselves so they do not become a burden, and human embryos are created, manipulated and destroyed in record numbers.  This video is a cautionary tale reminding us that even scientists have to be held to a moral standard and it is our job to make sure that happens.  Watch it and pass it on!

I have to admit nothing gets my dander up like a debate on human cloning.  The reason is not the cloning part (as bad as that is), it is the lies and distortions by scientists and the media surrounding the issue.  It seems impossible for anyone to tell the truth. Namely that SCNT, the scientific name for cloning, creates cloned embryos, indistinguishable from IVF embryos.  Or that SCNT is cloning and is NOT synonymous with stem cell research.  Or that SCNT requires so many eggs that most of the women of child bearing age in this country would have to donate their eggs for SCNT to actually treat patients.

When I point out these facts with references from the American Medical Association, Our Bodies, Ourselves or the National Academy of Sciences, even from James Thomson, embryonic stem cell pioneer, their reply is simply that it is only my opinion that SCNT creates embryos, is cloning NOT stem cell research, and needs so many eggs that it puts millions of women at risk for exploitation.  The refusal to acknowledge simple facts is beyond infuriating.

I found solace in this post by Wesley J. Smith where he recounts first hand experience with scientists that flat out lie both about cloning and embryonic stem cell research.  He is frustrated as well:

One of the most infuriating aspects for me in the embryonic stem cell debates has been the continual lying I have seen–indeed, personally witnessed–by scientists. I say lying because that is a knowing and willful misstatement of fact, as opposed to hype, which is an exaggeration or what we in law call “puffing.”  Scientists blatantly lie about the biological nature of embryos, about the biology and consequences of somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning, about whether a human embryo is actually “human.”  I debated one “scientist” who told the audience an early embryo wasn’t human because it doesn’t have toes or fingers!  And to win a political debate and get money from the federal government, they blatantly used desperately sick people by blatantly and maliciously misstating the time in which any ESC based products would provide medical treatments.  It was a shameful exercise aided and abetted by the anti Bush media that continually reported stem cell stories through the prism of destroying the president’s funding policy.

As someone who is certified to do genetic testing in humans, I am horrified that any scientist could say that a human embryo was not a human organism.  Give me a sample of DNA from any human embryo, cloned or otherwise, and I could easily prove it is human in any clinical genetics lab in the country.  But when you want public funds for your research it is easier to just say human embryos are not human or that SCNT is not cloning. 

I am all for having a spirited debate on the issues of cloning and embryonic stem cell research.  I would even keep it totally secular for those who are not Catholic.  But for that to happen the facts need to be presented correctly.  Without an understanding of the real science behind SCNT, no one can have a proper debate.  It used to be that science wanted to have a real honest discussion.  Not so much anymore.

In response to those that say that science has no answers for moral questions, Harris has written The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, where he proposes that there are indeed answers to questions of morality in science.  From Kwame Anthony Appiah's review in the New York Times:

His new book, “The Moral Landscape,” aims to meet head-on a claim he has often encountered when speaking out against religion: that the scientific worldview he favors has nothing to say on moral questions. That claim often keeps company with the thesis, elaborated by the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion have “nonoverlapping magisteria.” The authority of science and the authority of religion cover different domains, Gould thought, and the methods of each are inappropriate for the study of the other’s problems. Religion deals with questions about what Harris calls “meaning, morality and life’s larger purpose,” questions that have no scientific answers.

Harris, who has a doctorate in neuroscience, holds the opposite view. Only science can help us answer these questions, he says. That’s because truths about morality and meaning must “relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures,” and science alone — especially neuroscience, his field — can uncover those facts. So rather than consulting Aristotle or Kant (let alone the Bible or the Koran) about what is necessary for humans to flourish, why not go to the sciences that study conscious mental life?

The "well-being of conscious creatures" is the standard then for right and wrong.  And Harris falls into the same trap that many do.  How do you define "well-being"?  Who gets to define it?  Is consciousness a good enough definition to determine worth?  What happens if you lose consciousness temporarily or permanently?  All questions of philosophy that science cannot answer. 

As Kwame Anthony Appiah points out this is just the old philosophy of utilitarianism wrapped up in a new package:

In fact, what he ends up endorsing is something very like utilitarianism, a philosophical position that is now more than two centuries old, and that faces a battery of familiar problems. Even if you accept the basic premise, how do you compare the well-being of different people? Should we aim to increase average well-being (which would mean that a world consisting of one bliss case is better than one with a billion just slightly less blissful people)? Or should we go for a cumulative total of well-being (which might favor a world with zillions of people whose lives are just barely worth living)? If the mental states of conscious beings are what matter, what’s wrong with killing someone in his sleep? How should we weigh present well-being against future well-being?

I find the idea that somehow science has ALL the answers so repugnant.  To propose that science is capable of internal moral judgments without help from history, law, religion or philosophy is essentially saying that science doesn't need anyone telling it right from wrong.  That scientists can decide that for themsleves what is ethical without any help from the "less scientific" and therefore "less worthy" disciplines.  And that, my friends, is like putting a Wall Street CEO in charge of business ethics. Scary.  Just like the review on Amazon:

Because there are definite facts to be known about where we fall on this landscape, Harris foresees a time when science will no longer limit itself to merely describing what people do in the name of "morality"; in principle, science should be able to tell us what we ought to do to live the best lives possible.

A world where only science tells me how best to live my life scares me immensely.

In my opinion, science is simply the discovery of our natural world.  The data found in that pursuit makes no moral judgments.  People do that with a combination of many moral compasses like history, law, religion and philosophy.  Anyone, like Harris, who says otherwise is practicing their own religion called Scientism.

I like Wesley J. Smith's assessment:

I am not sure what drives people like Harris to argue that science can determine morality as surely as it can describe the molecular compound of water.  It can’t be atheism. One can be aggressively atheistic and come to carefully considered philosophical conclusions about meaning, morality, and virtue without pretending it is science.

Whatever his motives, Harris appears to be pushing a quasi-religion–faith in science–AKA scientism, perhaps as a way of putting the lid on religion’s coffin.  But he is really just  promoting his own world view and pretending that it is science.  All the fancy talk about letting science decide the right approach to morality is no more than that.

Wesley J. Smith is one of a small group of bioethicists that does not laugh at the concept of inherent human dignity.  While other bioethicists increasingly sneer at the idea that humans are exceptional and that we all have equal moral worth, Smith embraces it.  His quote on the Starbucks' venti size cup a few years ago (which I have on my desk) says it all:

The morality of the 21st century will depend on how we respond to this simple but profound question: Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human?  Answer yes, and we have a chance of achieving universal human rights.  Answer no, and it means that we are merely another animal in the forest.

Wesley Smith has come up with what he thinks are the Top 10 Stories of the Decade in Bioethics.  Here are his picks for biotechnology:

10: The ascendance of an anti-human environmentalism...Radical environmentalism appears to have morphed into anti-humanism, the result of which could be a new impetus for eugenics and radical population control.

9. The growth of biological colonialism. Desperate and destitute people are increasingly being exploited for their body parts and functions…

8. The increase in American pro-life attitudes. In the last decade, polling showed a dramatic increase in the number of people who identify themselves as pro-life…If this trend continues, it could eventually shake the Roe regimen off its foundation.

5: The success of adult-stem-cell research...For example, in early human trials, adult stem cells have helped diabetics get off insulin, restored sensation to paralyzed people with spinal-cord injuries, helped heal unhealthy hearts, and provided hope to patients with autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. These and other amazing advances in adult-stem-cell research provided one of the few pieces of truly good news in a sour decade.

3. IVF anarchy... IVF has led to childbirth as manufacture, with our progeny chosen for their genetic makeup. It is likely that babies will soon be created with three parents. What comes next is anybody’s guess.

2. The Bush embryonic-stem-cell funding policy. When Pres. George W. Bush signed an executive order restricting federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research to lines already in existence on Aug. 9, 2001, he set off a nearly decade-long firestorm…But the real poke in the eye for the Science Establishment and liberal media was that Bush’s policy sent a clarion message that embryos — which are, after all, nascent human life — matter, thrusting his policy into a buzz saw involving our most touchy cultural issues, particularly abortion.

Lately, the one that is disturbing me most is #10.  I am sensing more and more that simple conservationism and good stewardship of the Earth and our natural resources, has turned into the a virulent hatred of humanity that has disguised itself as environmentalism. 

In the coming decades, as more and more environmental measures are put in place to reduce carbon dioxide levels, I would not be surprised if major efforts, including efforts by force, are put into place to reduce the human population.  After all, humans do produce carbon dioxide just by being alive.  I am fearful that any attempts to legislate carbon dioxide reduction, combined with the resurgence of eugenic ideas, adds up to a future global "one-[perfect]-child" policy. Smith is right.  The only way to universal human rights to to acknowledge that all human life has equal moral worth.  Moral worth that is not tied to any carbon footprint.

Embryonic stem cell research has yet to treat any human patient for anything.  The problems with tumor formation and possible rejection make embryonic stem cell treatments a long shot for treating patients.  Some scientists believe it maybe "difficult to impossible" to ensure that embryonic stem cell cultures in the lab are free of abnormal cells.  Meanwhile, adult stem cells are decades ahead in research and are already treating patients for a list of conditions as long as my arm.

Many argue that embryonic stem cell research is important because it is something called basic science.  Basic science is science that is simply for investigational purposes.  As opposed to practical science that has a practical purpose in mind like treating patient for a specific condition.  Some ESC supporters argue that we need to federally fund embryonic stem cell research even if they never are used to treat patients because the basic science is important.  They hold that the information we can learn justifies the destruction of human life.

In the United States, taxpayer funding for embryonic stem cell research comes from the National Institutes of Health, better known as the NIH.  The head of the NIH is Francis Collins who is as famous for his scientific accomplishments as his outspoken Evangelical faith.  In this piece in the New York Times, Collins urges scientists to consider clinical applications for their research.  Collins said:

While acknowledging the importance of basic sciences like biochemistry and genetics, he said he wanted scientists to consider clinical or therapeutic implications in their work. “We’re not the National Institutes of Basic Sciences,” he said. “We’re the National Institutes of Health.”

So if the NIH is NOT the National Institutes of Basic Sciences, then why is it funding embryonic stem cell research?

Hat Tip: Daniel MacArthur and Attila Csordas

There is a disturbing trend in science and medicine.  If you don't like it or it doesn't fit what you want, just redefine it.  This has been done before, but recently I have seen it more and more.  When scientists wanted to harvest cells from week old human embryos, they called them pre-embryos, batches of cells or fertilized eggs.   None of which are really accurate. When scientists wanted to cloned human embryos for research they called them altered eggs or cloned cells.  Some even denied that the cloning process was cloning at all. 

Even Francis Colllins, the God-fearing scientist at the head of the NIH, holds that somehow a cloned embryo is different than an IVF embryo even though both give rise to adult organisms in animals.   I will let you in on a secret: They are not really different. (I mean they are called clones for a reason.) It is just easier to justify creating a human life for research if you call it something else.

My favorite has to be the IVF doctors in the UK that redefined conception to assuage the concerns of parents asking for preimplantation genetic diagnosis.  They said that the embryos they were testing for genetic diseases hadn't been conceived yet.

When we marginalize the beginning of life with redefinitions to make it easier to harvest desirable biological material, the same is bound to happen at the end of life and all points in between.   Wesley J. Smith, in his piece Killing for Organs, discusses how an editorial at Nature wants to redefine death to make harvesting organs for transplant easier:

But there is a growing chorus among the medical and bioethical intelligentsia to obtain more organs by harvesting living patients. Yes, some of our most influential voices now seek a license to kill for organs.They don’t put it that bluntly, of course. Rather—reflecting the spirit of our times—advocates argue that our definition of death should be changed to allow a great pretense that living patients are actually dead, thus permitting organ procurement.

For example, the internationally prestigious science journal Nature recently editorialized for the liberalization of the rules governing the declaration of brain death in order to obtain more organs.
 
Currently, brain death requires the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain and each of its constituent parts. Nature’s editorial claimed—without proof—that doctors obey “the spirit but not the letter, of this law. And many are feeling uncomfortable about it.” 
 
As well they should. But the proper answer to unethical practice isn’t to accommodate wrong behavior by redefining it as right. Rather, it is to work to bring actual methods back into proper alignment with legal and ethical practice.

That definitely seems to be the modus operandi these days, we "accommodate wrong behavior by redefining it as right."  And where is that going to end up?  Smith knows:

Instead, Nature descends into rank relativism, arguing that “the legal details of declaring death in someone who will never again be the person he or she was should be weighed against the value of giving a full and healthy life to someone who will die without transplant.”
 
In other words, some of us are more valuable than others of us, and those deemed inferior can be used as if they were mere natural resources.
 
In that seductive prescription is the end of human equality and universal rights.

(Oregon National Primate Research Center at OHSU)

Not all of our DNA that we inherit is in the nuclei of the egg and sperm that join at conception.  In the cytoplasm of our mother's egg are mitochondria.  Mitochondria have their own DNA called mtDNA.  We inherit our mtDNA only from our mother because sperm's mitochondria are dumped at conception.  There are genetic mutations that cause disease in mtDNA and a woman with a such a mutation cannot help but pass this mutation on to her children. 

This is where the three parent monkeys come in.  Here is how it works.  Scientists took the nucleus out of the mother's egg that had a mutation in her mtDNA and put it into the egg of another female monkey whose mtDNA was normal, after removing that nucleus of course.  They then fertilized the hybrid egg with monkey sperm and "Voila!" monkeys with genetic material from three parents.  From the UK Times Online:

In the research, published in the journal Nature, the modified eggs containing chromosomes from one female monkey and mitochondria from another, were fertilised by injecting a sperm. The resulting embryos were transferred to the wombs of surrogate mothers.

The first monkeys to be born were twins called Mito and Tracker, after a dye called MitoTracker used in the experiments. Two more monkeys were born after later experiments, named Spindler and Spindly after a genetic structure called the spindle along which chromosomes divide.

Tests showed that none of the monkeys had any trace of mitochondrial DNA from the mother that provided their nuclear DNA, suggesting that the process was successful. “We consider it a big achievement,” Dr Mitalipov said. “Anything we study and achieve in non-human primates can be translated much more easily to humans.”

The idea is now that this technology can be used in humans to prevent mothers with mitochondrial disease from passing the disease onto their children.  The Catholic Church would be opposed to this technique even though it was be characterized as genetic therapy because it requires the creation of human life in a dish.

Two important points to take home from this break-through in monkeys are, first, the push to use this technique in humans now.  One published study with a couple of monkeys and there are already calls to make this technology available to women with mitochondrial defects:

Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, of the National Institute for Medical Research in London, said: “These are proof-of-principle experiments suggesting that transfer of the nuclear genetic material from one egg to another may be a valid way to avoid the devastating problems associated with the inheritance of abnormal mitochondria that are present in the eggs of some women.

“It would seem unreasonable to delay real trials where any embryos produced were transferred to the women who wanted to avoid having children affected with these diseases.”

He added: “I think it is quite reasonable to activate the regulation-making power now.”

This is human experimentation straight up.  In the name of reproduction, some are willing to just throw caution to the wind and start implanting human embryos with 3 biological parents "now".  Because it would be "unreasonable" to delay human trials for all those poor women who are "desperate" to have biologically related children.  To hell with any possible long term effects.  (At least see if a few generations of these monkeys do not suffer from unforeseen complications first for pete's sake!)

The second important implication about this story is the ripple it is sending out in the UK.  To use this technique in humans in Britain, authorities would have to repeal the ban on implanting engineered embryos.  You know those embryos created by cloning with cow and rabbit eggs that they promised would never, ever see the darkness of a womb:

British scientists welcomed the Oregon study and urged the Government to change the law. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFEA), passed last year, allows such experiments on embryos but made it illegal for altered embryos to be implanted into the womb. Ministers have the power to rescind this ban.

Ahhh, those pesky laws n' stuff.  Just toss it if it gets in the way.  That seems to be the trend these days.  Of course, at least Britian has such a law.  The United States is still contemplating its navel when it comes to regulating how human embryos are created and what is done to them. 

“To most biologists, an embryo (unborn child during the first two or three months of development) or a fetus is no more a complete human being than a blueprint is a building.  The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”

So we are not human beings because we are living organisms with human DNA.  Websters defines human as "a bipedal primate mammal, homo sapiens" and a being as "a living thing."  (Human being, get it?)  No, that is much too concrete a definition.  Instead Holdren thinks that we must have proper social interaction and nourishment before we develop into human beings.  Does he mean Baby Einstein DVDs and Cheerios?  Or does he mean the family bed and breast feeding? And when exactly do we get enough family, friends and food to become a human being?  He does not say, but that is okay because he says that "most biologists" agree.  That is good and scientific enough right? 

Either way I can tell he is super scientific and the perfect choice for Science Czar. 

Just in case you were thinking that Holdren must be some social scientist instead of a hard scientist to write such soft, mushy, babble about "human beingness" here is his background:

He earned his bachelor’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his doctorate at Stanford.  He worked as a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before becoming a senior research fellow at California Institute of Technology. He then became a professor at the University of California at Berkeley before joining the faculty at Harvard in 1996, where he was the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and director of the Program in Science, Technology and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Rock Stars of Science Rudy Tanzi, Joe Perry, and Francis Collins

Image: Geoffrey Beene / GQ

Trendy science findings more likely to be wrong

Should fashionable scientific findings be subject to a higher burden of proof? Yes, says a study that found links between the research popularity of certain proteins and the accuracy of reports about their behaviour.

Researchers have suggested two reasons why trendy research fields may attract spurious results. First, there are greater rewards for getting positive results, so there is a stronger incentive to massage data or ignore "outliers" – a value that varies greatly from the rest of the data. Second, because more groups test trendy hypotheses. This would lead to more negative results too, but the positive ones tend to get reported more.

Now biologist Thomas Pfeiffer at Harvard University has found that "popular" results are indeed less reliable – at least those regarding protein interactions in yeast. Such interactions are of huge interest because they identify links between genes and their function.

Pfeiffer scoured the literature for reports that one yeast protein interacts with another, and compared these to systematic measurements of these interactions. Claims involving extremely popular proteins were only half as likely to be confirmed as ones involving less glamorous ones.

Members of the President’s Council on Bioethics were told by the White House last week that their services were no longer needed and were asked to cancel a planned meeting, a council staff member said Wednesday.

The council was disbanded because it was designed by the Bush administration to be “a philosophically leaning advisory group” that favored discussion over developing a shared consensus, said Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer.

President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a new mandate and that “offers practical policy options,” Mr. Cherlin said.

Philosophy?  Forgit-about-it.  Who needs to discuss ethical questions when a "shared consensus" is what really matters?  (I am reminded of a science major who I once knew that said that philosophy was a waste of time because "no one can agree."  What he really meant was that it scared him because he couldn't think his way out of a paper bag.) 

Why discuss tough issues facing humanity when you can just look at the practicalities?  Joe Carter from First Things writes:

In other words, the Obama administration already knows where it stands on all those pesky moral issues like human cloning, chimeras, and euthanasia, and just needs a group to provide advice on how to implement its preferred policies.  Whereas the previous councils wrestled with such questions as “What is the nature of human dignity?” the new one will most likely be addressing more practical policy options, such as “How much should we pay women to harvest their eggs for cloning?”

I hate to be the one to point this out Mr. President, but real ethics tackles tough issues, not practical policies.  Addressing ethical issues that cannot be answered by science or business is tough.  Just looking at practical policy is taking the easy way out.  Or it is something else?  Again from the NYT:

Dr. Alta Charo, an ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said that much of the Bush council’s work “seemed more like a public debating society” and that a new commission should focus on helping the government form ethically defensible policy.

A commission of this kind, Dr. Charo said, “lets the president react judiciously to rapid and often startling changes in the scientific landscape.”

Forget about real ethics and helping Americans understand ethical issues surrounding science so they can make informed decisions regarding the policies they want.  This new council will be focused on helping the government form "defensible policy" and making sure the president can "react judiciously."  This sounds like a presidential "CYA" operation.

This is President Obama's administration.  He can run it like he wants for sure.  But I believe it is telling that he has abandoned philosophy and real ethics for practicality.

I am still trying to put my finger on why this piece by GQ, reported by The Scientist, disturbs me so much.  GQ has tried to make science sexy by depicting scientists as rock stars along side real rock stars.  From The Scientist:

Rudy Tanzi, Joe Perry, and Francis Collins
Image: Geoffrey Beene / GQ

In the June issue of GQ, a popular men's fashion magazine, 11 of America's leading biomedical researchers appear alongside celebrated pop musicians for a multi-page spread called "Rock Stars of Science." The scientists traded in their elbow-patched tweed for snazzier, designer threads, for a photo shoot that the organizers of the project, a charitable men's clothing brand, hope will help heighten the public's awareness of these biologists and their work while showcasing the need for greater science funding.

"We need to get the best and brightest excited to go into science and medicine," David Agus, a University of Southern California cancer researcher, who was photographed alongside Scripps cardiologist Eric Topol and multi-platinum-selling singer Seal, told The Scientist. "This is an innovative way to bring attention to research."

And why would anyone do such a spread?  According to Meryl Comer, who came up with the campaign, scientists need more public exposure:

The campaign is the brainchild of Meryl Comer, president of the Geoffrey Beene Gives Back Alzheimer's Initiative, a philanthropic wing of the Geoffrey Beene menswear label, which donates all its net profits to support medical and educational research and outreach. She said she was inspired after reading a March 2008 Harris Interactive survey, conducted on behalf of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, which found that only 4% of Americans could name a single living scientist. "I said, 'Well, let's celebrate scientists," Comer told The Scientist. "They're rock stars."

I understand that this is all supposed to be a slight bit tongue-in-cheek, but frankly I don't want my science sexy, nor do I want my scientists to be rock stars.  I don't want scientists to be easily recognizable by the public. 

Why?  One name comes to mind.  Dr. Hwang Woo Suk.  Over night he became a rock star in South Korea, all for fraudulent results.  Do not tell me the quest for fame and fortune did not have anything to do with the falsification of his results.  Just in case you need a reminder, here is a quote from the New York Times on Hwang:

Copyright 2006 The New York Times

Dr. Hwang began drawing the country's adulation when, in February 2004, he became an international celebrity for writing in the leading scientific journal, Science, that he had cloned human embryos. In June 2005, he published a paper, again in Science, to the effect that he had developed a technique to extract embryonic stem cells from fewer human eggs than previous methods required. This further raised the hopes for therapeutic cloning and the possibility of converting a patient's own cells into new tissues to treat various diseases.

The papers transformed Dr. Hwang into a national hero: a handsome 53-year-old scientist who had risen from humble origins to lead South Korea to places it and the rest of the world had not seen. Web sites went up in his honor, women volunteered to donate eggs, Korean Air volunteered to fly him anywhere free.

The government of President Roh Moo Hyun, who had embraced and promoted him aggressively, gave him millions of dollars in research money, made him the country's top scientist and assigned him bodyguards. It issued a postage stamp that engraved Dr. Hwang's promise to make paralyzed people walk through images of a man in a wheelchair who stands up, dances and embraces a woman. The government also extolled his exploits in government school textbooks, describing him in a sixth-grade textbook as a challenger for the Nobel Prize....

In this atmosphere, Dr. Hwang became untouchable.

"Many of us didn't trust him," Kim Jae Sup, professor of developmental biology at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, said of Korean scientists. "But the pressure from the public and government to support him actually inhibited our criticism."

Anthony Fauci, Sheryl Crow, and Harold Varmus
Image: Geoffrey Beene / GQ

"How do we make science policy? Do we make it based on new decisions retroactively applied from government or do we take into account -- and in effect recognize -- the role of scientists, the public, and the media in actually creating that policy? I think we have to. That's the best way to achieve public benefit."

Sounds reasonable enough, until you really read what Taylor has said, and I don't think he realized he said it.  He actually says that the media should have a say, along with the public and scientists in creating policy.  This is what is so very wrong with the media and our society today.

How about the media NOT have any say in making policy, how about they just REPORT on it?  How about we leave the policy making to the lawmakers and the people who elect them and leave the journalists to just report the news? 

Sounds novel and radical doesn't it?  It shouldn't. 

Thus my reading of [Dignitas Personae] inclines me to conclude that parents may use these vaccines derived from cell lines of illicit origin but they should inquire about the availability of a more ethical alternative and they must make their objections known to the physician, to the healthcare system and to the FDA. Clearly, the use of these vaccines, while morally permissible, is not entirely morally neutral.

I am personally very troubled by the abortion connection even though it is deemed quite remote in the moral analysis. My problem is this: Evil may never be done in order that good might come from it. Yet, evil is done, and not just any evil but the evil of deliberate murder in abortion, with the precise intention of producing a medical good. We strongly reject the evil but, either directly or at least indirectly, we reward and even encourage the evil-doers by our wholesale acceptance of the good they have produced....

I have seen people with shingles and this disease is not at all pleasant. Yet, for me, the choice between accepting the risk of getting shingles and using a vaccine derived from a cell line of illicit origin is easy. I would rather accept shingles and its consequences than send the message that I would knowingly use a vaccine derived from a cell line of illicit origin.  In reality, if everyone did this then one of two things would happen. The pharmaceutical companies would stop making the vaccine or they would begin to look seriously for alternatives that are not tied to abortion. Without our protest, however, these companies have no incentive to change their ways. They will continue to do evil that good may come from it; we will continue to receive the good they produce, and we will thus give moral and financial support to their heinous practices.

In other words, you may use the vaccine to protect yourself and your children if you so wish, but make your objections heard!  Tell everyone that will listen that you want an ethical alternative to vaccines made from unethical cell lines.

It's amazing how far science has gone to destroy life without being blamed. We live in the scientific age, and science's prestige has permitted it to spread far beyond the good it can do.

It continues:

That virus is the amorality of science. Science is unique in that we allow it to have no morality. Destruction and healing are on an equal footing....

Because science is worshipped and scientists have grown used to an ethos of amorality, to protest against diabolical creativity makes you a target of irrational smears. It doesn't seem to bother the defenders of science-at-all-costs that they are acting out of the very irrationality that science is supposed to defeat.

Exactly! I screamed.  I really thought he understood.  Then, I kept reading.  Chorpa has many legitimate grips about how far science has fallen into immoral pursuits, but he also wrote this:

Science deserves to be free, and ideas should never be enclosed in boundaries. No one is talking about the religious-based intolerance and anti-intellectualism that prompted the Bush administration to put a halt to funding of stem-cell research.

Deepak Chopra has clearly failed to connect the dots.  He argues that "diabolical science" must end and yet totally dismisses the government funding of the creation, experimentation on, and destruction of nascent human life.  The Nuremberg Code was written to prevent "diabolical science" after the atrocities the Nazi's perpetrated in the name of science.  The Nuremberg Code states it is unethical to experiment on any "human subject" without informed consent.  Embryonic stem cell research disregards the Nuremberg Code by creating, experimenting on, and destroying human subjects who cannot give consent.

Unfortunately Mr. Chopra, "diabolical science" will continue until society protects the smallest of our species against those who want to experiment on them.  Until we understand that protecting the human embryo means protecting all human life against scientific exploitation, I am afraid "diabolical science" is here to stay.

I have always been impressed with Dr. Thomson. I know he destroyed human embryos in his research, but he has never trivialized it. He has always been very clear that destroying human embryos was a significant moral issue. Unlike many in the scientific community, he does not describe a human embryo as nothing more than just some amorphous ball of cells. He said in the 2007 interview:

If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.

In fact, Thomson was so concerned about the ethical implications that he consulted two ethicists before starting his work with human embryos:

In 1995, he began consulting with two ethicists at his university, Dr. Norman Fost, a physician, and Ms. Charo, a law professor. He wanted to anticipate what the ethical problems might be and what the criticisms might be.

Dr. Fost was impressed.

“It is unusual in the history of science for a scientist to really want to think carefully about the ethical implications of his work before he sets out to do it,” Dr. Fost said.

Thomson rightly knows that science has no answers to questions of morality. But just because ethics are not scientific, it does not mean they do not matter. Unlike Gov. Doyle of Wisconsin, Thomson knew he needed guidance from other disciplines.

The main point I want to drive home is this: In this age where society thinks science has all the answers, we need to remember that while science has improved our lives immensely, it will not continue to do so without proper ethical oversight. We have a right, no matter what our education or occupation, to say where we want our tax dollars to go and want kind of research we want to go on in our institutions of higher learning. We cannot give researchers carte blanche to play with human lives, no matter how immature, in the name of scientific advancement. To do so means we "have not thought about it enough."

The people of Wisconsin chose science over religion and politics, and have said to us that they want scientists to go into the laboratories and to push forward.

And he asks:

Should “science triumph over personal ideologies?”

Doyle's answer would be a resounding "Yes!"

So let us take a closer look at what Doyle is really saying. "Religion, politics, and personal ideolgies" is really just inflammatory language. There are people of all religions that support embryonic stem cell research and atheists who do not. There are Republicans that support embryonic stem cell research and Democrats who do not. And there are lots of people with "personal ideolgies" that think embryo-destructive research is fine. Doyle is one of them.

What Doyle is really saying is that science should trump any "religion, politics, and personal ideolgies" that dare to limit therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell research. Doyle thinks science should not be detered by those who have qualms about the ethics of the research. He believes science should only be held accountable to those who want it to go forward regardless of how many human embryos are created or destroyed.

Because science has no internal way to decide on ethical issues, it needs philosophy, history, theology and the law to be it's moral compass. Nothing is quite as scary to me than the idea of science with no ethical constraints. Science without guidance from such scientifically distasteful things as "religion, politics, and personal ideolgies" is a horror I never want to witness.

So what Doyle means when he says he wants science over "religion, politics, and personal ideolgies" is that he wants science over ethical restraints. Science over ethics.

No thank-you Governor Doyle.

Scientists used to know that answers to questions of morality were outside the scope of science. Collect data, make discoveries about our world and leave the ethics to philosophers, historians, theologians and lawmakers. Of course scientists can have an opinion on such things. We all should. But their scientific knowledge does not make them experts on issues of morality.

So when I read this in a Nature editorial, it left me scratching my head:

Dignity as a concept cannot be a director of moral judgement.

Micahel Cook has a great commentary on this editorial. It is FULL of great stuff, I recommend reading the whole thing. I will leave you with a couple of great quotes:

So it was dismaying to discover that Nature has discarded the concept of "human dignity" as unworthy of mature, intelligent argument. According to an editorial published earlier this month, it is a contradictory, "notoriously subjective" and "slippery" concept. In four glib paragraphs, it jettisons 2,500 years of Western civilisation, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and the constitutions of numerous countries....

However, underlying Nature’s rejection of human dignity is something else. Human dignity is a mainstay of arguments against research on embryos. As it is commonly understood, human dignity is indivisible. You cannot affirm that a black African is a human being and then pass laws to make him a slave. You cannot affirm that the elderly are fully human and pass laws to euthanase everyone over 85.

The problem for stem cell scientists and their boosters, is that the embryo is clearly human. It has the full human genome and barring any mishaps, it will someday become successively a foetus, a baby, a child, and an adult. It is a human being in an embryonic stage of development....

The consequences of rejecting centuries of human dignity and replacing it with a self-serving, gimcrack theory are momentous. Embryos may be small but upon them rests our dignity, too.

Most people who donate organs after death need no reward beyond altruism, but others could use a little nudge, according to the nation’s doctors....

That’s why the AMA has waded into the controversial waters of offering financial incentives for cadaver organ donations, a proposition that can’t even be examined without modifying the National Organ Transplantation Act....

The federal law is aimed at preventing human organs from becoming a commodity, of course, said Dr. Gerald Wilson, a South Carolina surgeon and member of the AMA delegation that introduced the issue.

This is disturbing, not because I do not want all the people waiting for transplants to get organs, but because I worry about what a financial incentive for organs would do to the declining respect for human life.  If I have said it once, I have said it a million times, once we exploit one member of our species for parts, then the rest of us will follow. If human embryos are commodities, then we, and consequently our organs, become commodities as well.

He finally put to words that obscure, creepy and unsettling feeling I get when I think about how many in the pro-death camp really think they are doing the right thing. They really believe that from stem cell research, to end-of-life medicine, to abortion, death is the answer.

I can hear them now: "But, it is only Death for the inconvenient human life that can be marginalized somehow. That is the only way to make things better for the rest of us. Need stem cells? Kill the embryo. Unplanned pregnancy getting in the way? Kill the fetus. Dying in pain? Its just easier (and cheaper) to kill the patient instead of their pain. See people? Death solves everything. It is you backward people who are "pro-life" that are mean, uncompassionate and deaf to the cries of the suffering."

To me this thinking is like a strange mix of ignorance, arrogance and misguided compassion all rolled into one.

In Plague Journal, O'Brien's character, Nathaniel has a dream about an evil serpent that shape shifts into a bear, then a leopard, then a dragon. Nathaniel writes about this dream in his journal:

...I'd been trying to reclaim the lost sleep and in it there was another dragon-snake-bear dreams: the world was in choas, and legions of grey men and grey ladies were trying to fix it. In measured tones they assured us that, if we killed all the "dysfunctional" children and the geriatrics, it would make everything right again. I was arguing with them, but it didn't make the slightest difference. They were absolutely convinced that they were saving humanity. The more I argued the nicer they became, but it was a strained gentility, a professional veneer to keep us powerless until the leopard-bear-dragon arrived.