What is bioethics? Is Margaret Somerville a bioethicist or a Roman Catholic apologist?

I had an interesting conversation with a student the other day. She's studying "bioethics" at the University of Toronto. This is a program run by the Deptment of Philosophy.

I asked her to define "bioethics" and she couldn't. To her credit, she immediately recognized that this wasn't right. If she's taking an entire program in bioethics she ought to be able to explain what it was all about. She was then joined by her friend, who is also majoring in bioethics. My colleague, Chris DiCarlo also joined us. He's a philosopher writing a book on ethics.

We described a scenario where I wanted to end my life and Chris was willing to help me. Neither of us have an "ethical" problem with that decision. So why is assisted suicide thought to be a problem for bioethics? If some people don't want to participate in euthanasia then nobody is going to make them? Where's the problem?

Does it only become a bioethical problem if some people want to impose their views on others? In this case, the people who are personally opposed to euthansia want to pass a law preventing me from ending my life with the help of my friend. Our students were puzzled by this discussion. Even though they have taken many courses on bioethics, nobody had ever raised this issue. Isn't that strange? You would think that any program run by a Department of Philosophy would emphasize critical thinking. Sadly, this turns out to be rare whenever the topic of bioethics comes up.

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Udo Schüklenk on Bioethics and Margaret Sommerville

Udo Schüklenk is a Professor of Philsophy at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His specialty is bioethics.

Udo gave a presentation at Eschaton 2012 on Myths About Atheist Values. He covered three topics ...

1. Are atheists moral? Yes

2. Does life have meaning or purpose? No, not the same kind of meaning and purpose that theists imagine.

3. Do atheists value human life? Yes.

Udo has a blog and one of the services he provides on his blog is to teach us about bioethics. Part of this service is to expose quacks masquerading as bioethicists. It's a thankless job but someone has to do it.

Fortunately, Udo concentrates on Canadian quacks so you won't be overwhelmed. There are only a few hundred, mostly doctors.

Perhaps Canada's most famous quack bioethicist is Margaret Somerville, a Professor of Law at McGill University, (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). She's best known for her opposition to same-sex marriage and she's been advertised on television and in newspapers as a bioethicist who has rational views on the dangers of legalizing same-sex marriage. (She wasn't very persuasive since same-sex marriage is legal in Canada.}¹

Udo Schüklenk chaired an experts panel on end-of-life decisions for the Royal Society of Canada [End-of-Life Decision-Making in Canada: The Report by the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on End-of-Life Decision-Making].

Margaret Sommerville didn't like their recommendations. She claims that further legalization of euthanasia will lead to people being killed against their will.

Here's how Udo deals with that issue ...

Evidence has never been Ms. Somerville's strongest point. So, without any evidence to back up her claims she declares on the Catholic website, "One of the things that's wrong with respect to Justice (Lynn) Smith's judgment (in Carter v. Attorney General of B.C.) is that she purports to review the use of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in the jurisdictions that have legalized it. She said there is no problem, there is no slippery slope. Well, that's simply not right factually." It turns out, in our Report on end of life decision-making in Canada we reviewed the empirical evidence on the slippery slope matter and concluded that there is no evidence that assisted dying leads us down slippery slopes to unwanted killings. Of course, we reviewed evidence, Ms Somerville is in full preaching mode.

I like this guy! He thinks that real, scientific, "evidence" is an important part of any debate.

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1. We're anxiously waiting to see if her predictions about kids of gay parents being traumatized will come true.

The Ethics of Genome Analysis

Lots of people are having their genomes sequenced or otherwise analyzed for specific alleles. Those people should get all the information that comes out of the analyses although, hopefully, it will be scientifically correct information and any medical relevance will be explained by experts.¹

There's another group of people who submit their genomes for research purposes only and they usually sign consent forms indicating that their name will not be associated with the results. Under those circumstances, the researchers should never have access to the individual's name or any circumstances that are not relevant to the study.

Apparently that simple ethical rule is not always standard practice. Gina Kolatea writes about some ethical issues in the New York Times: Genes Now Tell Doctors Secrets They Can’t Utter.

Here's an example from her article ...

One of the first cases came a decade ago, just as the new age of genetics was beginning. A young woman with a strong family history of breast and ovarian cancer enrolled in a study trying to find cancer genes that, when mutated, greatly increase the risk of breast cancer. But the woman, terrified by her family history, also intended to have her breasts removed prophylactically.

Her consent form said she would not be contacted by the researchers. Consent forms are typically written this way because the purpose of such studies is not to provide medical care but to gain new insights. The researchers are not the patients’ doctors.

But in this case, the researchers happened to know about the woman’s plan, and they also knew that their study indicated that she did not have her family’s breast cancer gene. They were horrified.

This is a rather simple case of the researchers violating a standard protocol. They should not have known the identity of the patient and they should not have known what she intended to do.

Most of the "ethical problems" in the article are of this type. They involve researchers who are supposed to be concentrating on research and not on the treatment of individual patients. Those researchers have no idea whether the patients already know which alleles they carry or whether they are already undergoing medical treatment. That's just as it should be. If a DNA donor doesn't want to be contacted then it's ethically wrong for the researchers to violate that contract no matter how justified they think they are being. Furthermore, it should be impossible for them to find out the name and address of the donor so the issue should never come up.

John Hawks thinks this is an interesting ethical problem and he wants his students to discuss it in his classes [Grasping the genomic palantir].

That case is ethically straightforward compared to others, because the researchers could make a difference to an immediate medical decision. On the other hand, how many risk-free research participants went ahead with prophylactic mastectomies because researchers didn't know about their plans?

I think the article will be a good one for prompting student discussions in my courses, and I'll likely assign it widely. But I think the central ethical problem discussed in the article is temporary.

What will students learn from discussing issues like these? What controls are in place to make sure that students are informed about all the ethical issues? Will they be told that standard scientific protocols were violated once the researchers knew what the patient intended to do?

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1. "Experts" do NOT include employees of any for-profit company that took money for sequencing the genome.

Guns and the Moral Law

 
From MSNBC and Associated Press: Police: Teen shot dead after Halloween prank.

ATLANTA — Authorities say a driver enraged after his Mercedes was splattered with eggs on Halloween fatally shot a 17-year-old in the neck and leg as the teen tried to run away.

Atlanta police spokeswoman Kim Jones says the driver confronted the teen and fired 10 shots at him around 8 p.m. Sunday. The Fulton County Medical Examiner's office says the teen, Tivarus King, died as he was being taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.

Just keep repeating to yourself, "Guns aren't the problem, criminals are the problem."

The real problem is that if you give a gun to a Mercedes owner in Atlanta he can soon become a criminal. (Ten Shots!)

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[Hat Tip: Greg Laden]

How to deal with scientists who cheat

 
What do you do when a scientists (PI, post-doc, graduate student) is caught falsifying data? Should they be expelled from the community, fired from their job, or given a slap on the wrist and rehabilitated?

This isn't an easy question as Janet Stemwedel demonstrates in Tempering justice with mercy: the question of youthful offenders in the tribe of science. I hate it when she does that. It would be so easy to conclude that cheating scientists should be drummed out of the profession but then along comes Janet to confuse me.

She's right, of course. There ought to be a range of punishments that fit the wide range of crimes and motives.

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Vaccine refuseniks are free-riders

 
There are some really interesting ethical issues associated with vaccinations. The advantages of vaccination benefit the entire community (the "herd") but not necessarily the individual. If everyone is vaccinated then one person can opt out without a great deal of risk. They get the benefit but don't pay the cost. They get a free ride.

Janet Stemwedel is interested in these ethical problems. Read what she has to say about those who refuse to vaccinate their children at Vaccine refuseniks are free-riders.

I wonder if there's a cultural difference when it comes to these kinds of problems? Are there some cultures who value the society more than the individual and others who value the individual more? If so, do they differ in the number of people who refuse to be vaccinated?

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An Ethical Question

 
Eva Amsen was reading a book in a student study lounge when she was asked to participate in a survey [Spent - Review]. The question was ....

It was a short questionnaire about what you would do if you were standing in line at the post office for more than 30 minutes, waiting to mail a package, and someone offered to take you to the front of the line in exchange for $3. Would you pay the three dollars or keep waiting?

My answer is different than Eva's so this got me thinking.

See the poll in the left sidebar. What would you answer?

Is there a "right" answer?

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Conservatives Condone Torture, Liberals Don't

 
Let me make this perfectly clear—in my opinion, any society that condones and practices torture is a society in which the rights of all individuals are diminished. The rights of individuals and the goal of a just society are qualitative traits, not quantitative traits. If some people are deprived of those rights and if some people aren't part of the just society, then the "rights" don't exist and the society is not just. You can't have the right to fair treatment under the law in some situations but not in others. That's a mockery of justice.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). The leadership of FDD consists of people like Newt Gingrich, Bill Kristol, Steve Forbes, and Joe Lieberman. They are "small-c" conservatives. Mostly Republicans, I think (including Lieberman, the Republican-in-all-but-name).

Last Saturday Gerecht wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times in defense of torture [Out of Sight].

He starts off by defending extraordinary rendition. This is the tactic of sending suspected criminals to other countries where they can be tortured and then returned to the USA. The idea is to be able to deny that the USA is in violation of its own Constitution and respect for human rights.

Mr. Obama will soon face the same awful choices that confronted George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and he could well be forced to accept a central feature of their anti-terrorist methods: extraordinary rendition. If the choice is between non-deniable aggressive questioning conducted by Americans and deniable torturous interrogations by foreigners acting on behalf of the United States, it is almost certain that as president Mr. Obama will choose the latter.

Aside from the fact that torture is legally and ethically wrong, there's three other slight problems with this tactic. First, who are they trying to deceive? Is there anyone with an IQ over 50 that can be fooled by extraordinary rendition?¹ Second, there's very little evidence that torture works. Third, many innocent people have been tortured.

Canada is particularly sensitive about rendition because of Maher Arar. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was arrested in 2002 at Kennedy Airport in New York and send to Syria where he was tortured and confined for 10 months. He was subsequently released and the Canadian government has established that he is innocent [Canadian cleared of terrorism after rendition, torture in Syria].

We don't know how many other innocent people have been tortured but chances are the numbers are substantial. The problem with rendition is that the individuals are deprived of their right to face their accusers and prove their innocence. No respectable society should condone such behavior.

Gerecht then raises the standard canard that seems to be the last refuge of those who would violate people's rights.

However, troubles in Pakistan may well reverse Mr. Obama’s luck. He has said he intends to be hawkish about fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Central Asia. So, let us suppose that he increases the number of Special Forces raids into Pakistan, and those soldiers capture members of Al Qaeda and their computers, and learn that the group has advanced plans for striking American and European targets, but we don’t know specifically where or when.

What would Mr. Obama do? After all, if we’d gotten our hands on a senior member of Al Qaeda before 9/11, and knew that an attack likely to kill thousands of Americans was imminent, wouldn’t waterboarding, or taking advantage of the skills of our Jordanian friends, have been the sensible, moral thing to do with a holy warrior who didn’t fear death but might have feared pain?

No, Mr. Gerecht, torture is not a sensible, moral thing to do. It is stupid and immoral.

Stupid because the chances of finding out useful information under such circumstances are slim to zip. Stupid because under the Golden Rule we are putting the lives of all of our citizens at risk when they are captured by the bad guys. Stupid because it is contrary to the very thing that we are supposed to be fighting for. Stupid because the Americans who carry out rendition can be, and should be, put in jail. (I would even advocate that those who advocate breaking the law as almost as guilty.)

Immoral because .... never mind, he wouldn't know morality if it bit him on the posterior.

This issue is important in Canada for another reason. Our recently appointed Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, has a somewhat checkered history of modest support for torture. Recently his writings have been more clear about his opposition to torture while pointing out the moral dilemma [If torture works ...]. I'm going to quote extensively from his essay because this is a man who will be Prime Minister of Canada.

It is difficult to think about torture honestly. In a recent article on the interrogation techniques employed by the US, the writer Mark Bowden observed that few "moral imperatives make such sense on a large scale, but break down so dramatically in the particular." The moral imperative—do not torture, any time, anywhere, in any circumstances—is mandated by the UN convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency," says the convention, can "be invoked as a justification of torture." That terrorists themselves torture does not change these imperatives. Our compliance does not depend on reciprocity.

.....

Elshtain justifies coercive interrogation using a complex moral calculus of "dirty hands": good consequences cannot justify bad acts, but bad acts are sometimes tragically necessary. The acts remain bad, and the person must accept the moral opprobrium and not seek to excuse the inexcusable with the justifications of necessity.

My own work on "lesser evils" brings me close to the Elshtain position. I agree with her that necessity may require the commission of bad acts, which necessity, nevertheless, cannot absolve of their morally problematic character—but I still have a problem. If one enumerates the forms of coercive interrogation that have been judged to be inhuman and degrading by the Israeli and the European courts—hooding, holding subjects in painful positions, exposing them to cold or heat or ear-splitting noise—these techniques also seem unacceptable, though at a lower threshold of awfulness, than torture. Like Elshtain, I am willing to get my hands dirty, but unlike her, I have practical difficulty enumerating a list of coercive techniques that I would be willing to have a democratic society inflict in my name. I accept, for example, that a slap is not the same thing as a beating, but I still don't want interrogators to slap detainees because I cannot see how to prevent the occasional slap deteriorating into a regular practice of beating. The issue is not, as Elshtain implies, that I care overmuch about my own moral purity but rather that I cannot see any clear way to manage coercive interrogation institutionally so that it does not degenerate into torture.

So I end up supporting an absolute and unconditional ban on both torture and those forms of coercive interrogation that involve stress and duress, and I believe that enforcement of such a ban should be up to the military justice system plus the federal courts. I also believe that the training of interrogators can be improved by executive order and that the training must rigorously exclude stress and duress methods.

Two significant problems remain. First of all, there is the problem of the exceptional case, one where lives can be saved by the application of physical methods that amount to torture. "Ticking bomb cases" cannot be wished away. They might arise especially where an American or European city faced the threat of WMD. An outright ban on torture and coercive interrogation leave a conscientious security officer with little choice but to disobey the ban. In this event, as the Israeli supreme court has said, even a conscientious agent acting in good faith to save lives should be charged with a criminal offence and be required to stand trial. At trial, a defence of necessity could be entered in mitigation of sentence, but not to absolve or acquit. This is the only solution I can see that remains consistent with an absolute ban on torture and coercive interrogation. Let us not pretend that the enforcement of this rule would be easy. Where the threat could be shown to be genuine, it seems evident that few legal systems would punish such a conscientious offender. So an outright ban on torture creates the problem of the conscientious offender. This is a small price to pay for a ban on torture.

Does an outright ban on torture and coercive interrogation meet the test of realism? Would an absolute ban on torture and coercive interrogation using stress and duress so diminish the effectiveness of our intelligence-gathering that it would diminish public safety? It is often said—and I argued so myself—that neither coercive interrogation nor torture is necessary, since entirely lawful interrogation can secure just as effective results. There must be some truth to this. Israeli interrogators have given interviews assuring the Israeli public that physical duress is unnecessary. But we are grasping at straws if we think this is the entire truth. As Posner and others have tartly pointed out, if torture and coercion are both as useless as critics pretend, why are they used so much? While some abuse and outright torture can be attributed to individual sadism, poor supervision and so on, it must be the case that other acts of torture occur because interrogators believe, in good faith, that torture is the only way to extract information in a timely fashion. It must also be the case that if experienced interrogators come to this conclusion, they do so on the basis of experience. The argument that torture and coercion do not work is contradicted by the dire frequency with which both practices occur. I submit that we would not be "waterboarding" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—immersing him in water until he experiences the torment of nearly drowning—if our intelligence operatives did not believe it was necessary to crack open the al Qaeda network that he commanded. Indeed, Mark Bowden points to a Time report in March 2003 that Sheikh Mohammed had "given US interrogators the names and descriptions of about a dozen key al Qaeda operatives believed to be plotting terrorist attacks." We must at least entertain the possibility that the operatives working on Sheikh Mohammed in our name are engaging not in gratuitous sadism but in the genuine belief that this form of torture—and it does qualify as such—makes all the difference.

If they are right, then those who support an absolute ban on torture had better be honest enough to admit that moral prohibition comes at a price. It is possible, at least in theory, that subjecting interrogators to rules that outlaw torture and coercive interrogation, backed up by punishment if they go too far, will create an interrogation regime that allows some interrogation subjects to resist divulging information and prevents our intelligence services from timely access to information that may save lives.

If there is a significant cost to an outright ban on coercive interrogation and torture, what can possibly justify it? Many of the arguments that human rights activists make in justification amount to the claim that torture shames their moral identity as human beings and as citizens, and that they do not wish such acts to be committed in their names. Other citizens in a democracy may not value their own moral scruple over the collective interest in having accurate security information, even if collected by dubious means. It may be obvious to human rights activists how to adjudicate these claims, but it is not obvious to me. That is, I do not see any trumping argument on behalf of the rights and dignity of security detainees that makes their claims prevail over the security interests (and human right to life) of the majority. The best I can do is to relate the ban on torture to the political identity of the democracies we are trying to defend—by claiming that democracies limit the powers that governments can justly exercise over the human beings under their power, and that these limits include an absolute ban on subjecting individuals to forms of pain that strip them of their dignity, identity and even sanity.

We cannot torture, in other words, because of who we are. This is the best I can do, but those of us who believe this had better admit that many of our fellow citizens are bound to disagree. It is in the nature of democracy itself that fellow citizens will define their identity in ways that privilege security over liberty and thus reluctantly endorse torture in their name. If we are against torture, we are committed to arguing with our fellow citizens, not treating those who defend torture as moral monsters. Those of us who oppose torture should also be honest enough to admit that we may have to pay a price for our own convictions. Ex ante, of course, I cannot tell how high this price might be. Ex post—following another terrorist attack that might have been prevented through the exercise of coercive interrogation—the price of my scruple might simply seem too high. This is a risk I am prepared to take, but frankly, a majority of fellow citizens is unlikely to concur.

I'm more skeptical than Ignatieff about the efficacy of torture. Just because lots of people do it does not sound like a good argument for defending the usefulness of torture.

Nevertheless, when it comes to the bottom line, I'm with Michael Ignatieff, "We cannot torture ... because of who we are." If there's a price to be paid for doing the right thing then I'm prepared to pay it and suffer the consequences.

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1. Apparently patriotic conservatives are easily fooled—that's why I set the cutoff IQ so high.

[Hat Tip: daimnation! via Canadian Cynic]

The Ethical Frontiers of Science

 
I'm at the Chautauqua Institution this week where the theme is The Ethical Frontiers of Science.

Today's speaker was Arthur Caplan Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. His topic was "Is it Immoral to Want to Live Longer, Be Smarter and Look Better?" The answer is no, it is not immoral. There's nothing wrong with wanting to take advantage of modern scientific advances to prolong life, enhance intelligence, and look better." I agreed with everything he said.

Caplan looked over the speakers for the rest of the week. Many of them are his friends and he's very familiar with their views. That's why he was able to congratulate us for coming to the first lecture. "It will be the highlight of the entire week," he said, "because all the other speakers are wrong." I suspect he's right but it will be fun, nevertheless, hearing what some of them have to say.

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Kristin Roovers Punished for Falsifying Data

 
Kristin Roovers was a post-doc at the Ottawa Health Research Institute in Ottawa (Canada) until last week. Her job was abruptly terminated when OHRI learned that she had been convicted and punished for falsifying data while she was a graduate student and a post-doc at the University of Pennsylvania. Apparently they first heard that something was wrong from an article in The Chronicles of Higher Education [Journals Find Fakery in Many Images Submitted to Support Research].

Read about it in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen [Researcher's tainted past leads Ottawa health facility to sever ties]. See the fraudulent data on baylab [Kristin-gate at the OHRI].

You can read the July 2007 report from the Office of Research Integrity (USA) at Case Summary - Kristin Roovers.

Here's the question. Why was she hired at OHRI? They probably didn't ask for letters of reference and they certainly didn't Google her name.

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Eating Clones

 
We eat cloned organisms every day, but they're plants (e.g., bananas).

Apparently, some people have a great fear of eating cloned animals. Is this irrational fear an "ethical" problem? The underlying question is how do we define an ethical problem? Just because some people incorrectly see a problem where none exists, are we obliged to bow to their definition of "ethics."

Join the discussion on Balblab [Clonal Discrimination].

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This ranks among the most morally illicit acts, ethically speaking ...

 
Researchers from Stemagen a private stem-cell research company in California, have created human clones by the same techniques used to clone other mammals. The clones only went through a few cell divisions before being discarded [Ethical storm as scientist becomes first man to clone HIMSELF].

There's nothing remarkable about the science. It's one step toward cloning humans using standard procedures that have been worked out over the past three decades. What's remarkable is the reaction to this announcement. I'm still having trouble figuring out what is the ethical problem here.

I think it's all related to abortion. If you are opposed to allowing a woman to decide what to do with her own body then you're also against stem cell research. The "ethical issue" is mostly confined to religious people (men?) who oppose abortion. At least that's how it appears to me.

Stemagen isn't doing anything wrong; they make this clear on their webpage.

All research at Stemagen is performed in strict accordance with US Federal Regulations for the ethical treatment and protection of human subjects covered in the 45 CFR Part 46 policy issued by the Office of Human Research Protection (OHRP). More specifically, this requires that all research involving human eggs, embryos or human subjects be approved and carefully monitored by an independent Institutional Review Board (IRB) composed of members of the medical and general community, with additional ethical and legal expertise sought when required.

Those who choose to donate oocytes (eggs) and embryos for this type of research do so through informed consents that follow the guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research from the National Academy of Sciences (www.nationalacademies.org).

Stemagen's mission is to maintain exemplary standards in human embryonic stem cell research in accordance with the highest ethical and research principles.

This is an important point in so-called "ethical" debates. The scientists are not being unethical and many observers, like me, don't see any ethical problem. Others see an ethical problem as described in the newspaper article.

John Smeaton, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: "We have got scientists wandering around in an ethical wilderness, forgetting about matters of justice relating to our fellow human beings.

"We have people creating human beings with the intention of destroying them. That's appalling."

And the Vatican condemned the cloning of human embryos, calling it the "worst type of exploitation of the human being".

"This ranks among the most morally illicit acts, ethically speaking," said Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Vatican department that helps oversee the Church's position on bioethics issues.

Here's the issue. At what point does something become an "ethical" issue for society? How many people have to be against something on "ethical" grounds" in order for it to become an ethical problem?

What if their objections are irrational? For example I imagine that US Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is against stem cell research but his reasons are likely to be as ridiculous as his reasons for opposing same-sex marriage. Does that still count as an ethical problem? It seems to me that elevating stupidity to the level of "ethics" is not the way we want to go.

Why couldn't the headline have been "No Ethical Problem, According to Most Atheists?" Why do we let religious groups define ethics for us? I don't subscribe to their version of ethics, do you?

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Take a Short Quiz on Cheating - Do You Agree with the First Year Engineering Students?

 
What freshman engineering students think about cheating.

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Hugh McLachlan on Cloning Humans

 
Last week I posted an article on cloning humans. It was a reference to a piece in New Scientist by Hugh McLachlan, a Professor of ethics at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland (UK). McLachlan does not oppose the cloning of humans and neither do I.

Here are some other articles on the same topic [Ignore The Boys from Brazil - say Yes to human cloning], [Poor reasons for making human cloning illegal].

McLachlan sent me the following message in response to some of his critics. It addresses some of the issues that have come up in the comments on Sandwalk. He has given me permission to post it.

I think that the risks to the embryos are irrelevant to the issue of whether or not human cloning should be illegal. (Whether public money should be spent on human cloning if it is a very inefficient technique is another matter.) The potential mothers should be informed about the known risks and they must, of course, give their consent. The risk to the mothers is not a justification for making the technique illegal in my view.

Consider an analogy. Imagine that 100 people were trapped, unconscious in a building. They might, for instance, be hostages. A bomb might be primed to explode shortly. If they are not rescued fairly soon they will die. Suppose that the only way they could be rescued is if they were snatched by SAS. The snatch might kill them all. It might result in some being injured, impaired and disabled. It might even result in some living a life that was not worth living. However, there is a chance that one or more might survive to live a normal life. Should we take the chance and snatch them? If we are thinking only about the interests of those 100 people, we must do it even if the chances are remote that any will be saved.

To say that it should be illegal to make the snatch because of the risk to the hostages would be absurd. It is similarly absurd to say that, because of the risks to the embryos involved, human cloning should be illegal.

There is a risk to the soldiers. However, since people volunteer to be soldiers and might even volunteer for particular dangerous missions it is generally judged acceptable that soldiers are exposed to such risks. I can see no reason why we should not allow potential mothers to accept the risks of delivering clones if that is what they want to do.

The objection about the risks to the embryos/clones involved looks at the issue of risk and uncertainly the wrong way round. Suppose that some technique or other were devised to reduce the suffering of those people who had some particular relatively minor ailment. The question of the risk of the technique to these potential patients might be relevant particularly if we assume that to live with the ailment is still pleasant and worthwhile even if not as pleasant and worthwhile as life without the ailment. Suppose that, with the technique, the likelihood is that X% of the patients will be cured completely of the ailment, Y% will end up with a worse case of the condition and that Z% will die in the course of treatment.

In a situation such as this, it is important to know what numbers X, Y and Z stand for to try to judge whether the risk involved in worth taking. Ideally, we would tell the patients and let them decide for themselves. However, human cloning is quite different from this imagined scenario. For the people who might be born as a result of cloning - whether, in the event, they actually are born - cloning is their only chance of birth and life. In the absence of cloning, they will not be born. Hence, cloning is not a risk for them but an opportunity - their only opportunity. To make cloning illegal in their interests on the grounds that, in the course of the technique, not all implanted embryos will become healthy mature human bodies is absurd.

Should Cloning Humans Be Legal?

 
In the July 21 issue of New Scientist, Hugh McLachlan thinks that we should legalize cloning of humans [Let's legalise cloning].

But why are we so against the idea of cloned human babies? As a bioethicist specialising in reproductive issues, I believe it has more to do with an irrational fear of cloning than any logical reason. All the arguments in favour of a ban describe risks that we accept quite easily and naturally in other areas of reproduction.

One argument against human cloning is the idea that it is morally wrong or undesirable to create replicas of people. But although a clone has the same gene set as the adult from which it was cloned, environmental factors will ensure that the resulting individual is not an identical copy, either psychologically or physically. What's more, we accept genetically identical people in the form of twins. If anything, clones would be less alike than twins because they would be different ages and be brought up in different contexts. Objecting to cloning on these grounds makes no sense.

I agree with McLachlan. Aside from the safety issue, there doesn't seem to be any good reason to forbid the cloning of humans.

This is a topic that's frequently discussed in "ethics" classes. I've never really understood what "ethics" actually means—but I'm working on it. The cloning of humans isn't an ethical issue for me personally because there isn't a conflict between two versions of what I think I ought to do. However, maybe it's an ethical issue for society as a whole because there are some people who think that it is unethical to clone people. Is that right? What's unethical about it?

Do we define "ethical" issues in terms of conflict between different groups? If so, is there a way of distinguishing between issues where the two sides are almost equally represented and those where one side has an overwhelming majority? For example, is the cloning of humans still an ethical issue in a society where 99% of the population is opposed? Does it cease to be an ethical issue if 99% are persuaded to accept human cloning?

Who Owns Your Lab Notebooks?

 
When post-docs and graduate students finish their projects in a research laboratory they leave their notebooks behind. Those belong to the principal investigator who runs the lab. Graduate students often have a hard time understanding this policy so Janet Stemwedel explains it on Adventures in Ethics and Science.

The original article is Lab notebooks and graduate research: what should the policy be? and the followup is Kept all my notebooks; what good are notebooks?.

This is a good example of an ethical problem in science.

The Ethics of Stem Cell Research

 
Arthur Caplan is the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. He was written an article on the MSNBC website that addresses the new work on reprogramming cells to produce totipotent stem cells [Does stem cell advance provide an ethical out?].

He claims that the new work will not replace conventional creation of embryonic stem cell lines using embryos because the new procedure has only been shown to work in mice and because it involves retrovirus vectors. This may be true, although Rudi Jaenisch seems to be more optimistic [see Reprogramming Somatic Cells].

I'm interested in another part of Caplan's essay where he says,

As much as critics of this field of research would like to have you believe that human embryos in dishes are people, that moral argument is not compelling.

Human embryos in dishes are not people or even potential people. They are, at best, possible potential people.

Frozen embryos in infertility clinics face a fate of certain destruction anyway. The moral case against using them, or cloned embryos, which have almost zero chance of becoming people, is no less compelling because progress has been made in another area of research.

The existence of a new way to perhaps make embryonic-like stem cells is not enough to make frozen embryos and cloned embryos off-limits for American scientists or for research relying on federal funds.

Those in favor of human embryonic stem cell research, and that is the majority of Americans according most polls, including one done by CNN just last month, do not have to change their minds about the morality of such research even when another avenue for creating embryonic-like cells is found in mice.

What Caplan fears is that those who are opposed to destroying embryos will use this new work to reinforce their opinion that a ban must be enforced. This is almost certainly correct but there's little that he can do to change their minds.

What puzzles me is that Caplan argues the case that these embryos are not humans—in fact they are not even "possible potential" humans. This seems to be typical of the sort of debate that passes for ethics these days. I don't get it.

For those of us who are pro-abortion the argument makes no sense at all. We are already committed to the concept that real potential humans can be destroyed so the destruction of earlier stages poses no problem whatsoever. We simply don't care to debate whether embryos at the pre-blastula stage are human or not since the decision has no bearing on whether they should be destroyed.

For those who oppose abortion, and the destruction of embryos, the declaration that they are not even "possible potential" humans rings hollow. For them, the issue is not going to be settled by scientists. If it were, it would not be an "ethical" issue at all but a simple scientific problem. For many of them the facts are quite obvious. God created man and woman to make babies and any direct interference in that process is an attempt to disrupt the process that God intended.

This is a group who distrust scientists from the get-go. The idea that they are going to allow men in white lab coats to poke at human embryos just in order to advance their careers is a non-starter. Remember, most of this group doesn't even believe in evolution or a 4.5 billion year old Earth. Why should they believe what scientists have to say about embryos?

So what's the point of making the argument about the "humanness" of embryos, especially from someone who is director of bioethics at a major university? Who is he trying to convince, George Bush? Where are Mooney and Nisbet when we need them? Caplan needs a lesson on spin framing.

I have recently discovered that there are many moral realists in philosophy departments. This group believes that there is an underlying "truth" behind every ethical problem and it is the goal of ethical reasoning to discover this "truth." I wonder what the "truth" is about destroying embryos in order to create stem cells? I would have thought that the definition of moral truth depends on your cultural/religious background but I'm told that this "ethical relativism" is very much a minority position among philosophers.

[Hat Tip: Shalini at Scientia Natura: Stem cell breakthrough]

Take the Carnegie Mellon University Survey on Ethical Standards

 
This is a survey on ethics developed by workers at Carnegie Mellon University for readers of the New York Times [Survey on Ethical Standards]. We can take the survey thanks to John Tierney and his blog TierneyLab: Putting Ideas in Science to the Test [Test Your Ethics (or Lack Thereof)].

The nice thing about this survey is that you can instantly see how you answered the questions relative to everyone else who took the survey. I was very pleasantly surprised at some of the responses. If you take the survey, make sure you do it alone and in a private place. You must answer all questions honestly and you may not want friends or relatives to know your answers. Try it, and then see how everyone else answered the questions.

I've been trying to stimulate some discussion about ethics without much success [Ethical Issues in Biochemistry]. There's a growing tendency in science education to include classes on ethics but nobody seems to be able to define ethics in a way that makes sense to me. What, exactly, is an ethical issue? [see, Ethics on Wikipedia] Take the survey to see if your sense of "ethics" agrees with others.

The other problem is how do you teach ethics to undergraduate science students? What are the basic principles of ethical reasoning? Is ethical relativism a valid philosophy or are there some "rules" that every undergraduate should memorize? [see, Moral Relativism on Wikipedia] I've encountered scientists who claim that we need to teach students that ethical relativism is a failed philosophy and there really is a "right" and a "wrong."

Here's a question that's not on the survey. Does whether or not you would have your genome sequenced [Sequencing Jim Watson] count as an ethical question? I don't think so. It's a question about personal preferences and the answer depends very much on how you feel personally about issues such as privacy. This isn't "ethics" as far as I'm concerned.

Jim Watson Comments on GM Crops and Recombinant DNA Technology

 
Watch this clip of Jim Watson commenting on recombinant DNA technology and its uses in making genetically modified plants [Dr. James Watso]. The video is produced by Monsanto so those of you with a bias can easily dismiss it without a second thought.

The rest of you should pause to think about what Watson is saying. He's definitely outspoken but is he right? He says ...

Recombinant DNA is the safest technology I’ve ever heard.

Read Nobel Laureate: Paul Berg for information about Asilomar and the recombinant DNA controversy of the 1970's. Read the comments to that article for other points of view and references to Watson. Hsien Hsien Lei has an opinion and so does Jeremy.

Roundup Ready® Transgenic Plants

By the late 1990's it was apparent that recombinant DNA technology [see Nobel Laureate: Paul Berg] had advanced to the point where it was feasible to consider the production of genetically modified crops. One of the first targets was the creation of plants that were resistant to the herbicide glyphosate or Roundup® [How Roundup® Works].

Surprisingly, in spite of extensive spraying with Roundup® no resistant plant species had been detected. Since the target of glyphosate, EPSP synthase (EC 2.5.1.19), is also present in bacteria, a search for resistant bacteria was undertaken. The idea is that if a glyphosate-resistant enzyme from bacteria could be transferred to plants it might make the plants resistant to the herbicide. Such Roundup Ready® transgenic plants be an enormous advantage for farmers since a crop of, say Roundup Ready® soybean, could be sprayed with Roundup® to kill all weeds without affecting the crop.

Coincidently , it would be of enormous advantage to Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup®, especially if they could control the distribution of the genetically modified plants.

The C4 strain of Agrobacterium sp. proved to be just the thing. This is a species of bacteria that was found growing in the waste-fed column at a factory that made glyphosate. The EPSP synthase enzyme from this bacterium (C4 EPSP synthase) was almost completely insensitive to glyphosate.

The C4 EPSP bacterial gene was cloned and inserted into a bacterial plant vector in order to prepare for cloning into plants. The details of one of the Monsanto C4 EPSP cloning vectors are shown in the first patent filed on September 13, 1994 [US Patent 05633435].

This is a modifed bacterial plasmid vector designed to be propagated in E. coli (for cloning and construction) and Agrobacterium tumefaciens (for transforming plants). Ori-322 is an origin of replication from plasmid pBr322. It is used in E. coli to replicate the plasmid. Ori-V is an origin from plasmid RK2, a plasmid that can propagate in a wide variety of gram negative bacteria, including Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Rop is a small gene that encodes a protein requried to maintain plasmid copy number in bacteria.

There are two selectable markers. SPC/STR encodes a protein conferring spectinomycin/streptomycin resistance. The gene is derived from transposon Tn7. AAC(3)-III encodes bacterial gentamycin-3-N-acetyl transferase type III allowing selection for gentamycin resistance in plants. The bacterial AAC(3)-III gene has to be modified in order to allow effient expression in plant cells. A plant promoter (P-35S) is inserted at the 5' end. This promoter is the 35S promoter from cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV). The 3' end of the gene is modified by inserting the polyadenylation site (NOS 3') from the nopaline synthase gene of the tumor-inducing (Ti) plasmid from Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

Similarly, the bacterial C4 EPSP gene was modified to have a strong plant promoter (P-e35S, related to P-35S) and a polyadenylation site (NOS 3'). One additional modification is necessary because the plant EPSP synthase is in chloroplasts where synthesis of chorimsate takes place. The bacterial gene has to have an N-terminal leader sequence that targets the protein to the chloroplast. This is supplied by CTP2, the chloroplast transit peptide from the Arabidopsis (wall cress) EPSP synthase gene.

The shuttle plasmid is built in E. coli then purified plasmid DNA is used to transform Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This bacterium infects plants and injects DNA from a Ti-like plasmid into plant cells where it enters the nucleus and becomes incorporated into the plant chromsomes. Under normal circumstances Agrobacterium tumefaciens causes gall tumors in plants but in this case the recombinat DNA is transferred and no tumors are formed. The transformation is mediated by cutting the plasmid at the RIGHT BORDER to produce a linear DNA molecule. Defective Ti plasmids in the bacterial cell are required to promote the transfer of the recombinant DNA.

The interesting feature of this transformation is that it is mediated by the bacteria. All you need to do is expose the plant cells to the bacteria under the right conditions and your gene of interest will end up in a plant chromsome.

The complete process begins with the isolation of small bits of plant tissue. They are grown on nutrient plates before being exposed to the bacteria carying the recombinant DNA plasmid.

Transformed cells will start to grow and they can eventually be isolated and transferred to a liquid that promotes shoot growth. After a few weeks you end up with an entire plant carrying the recombinant DNA. This plant is then propagated to produce thousands of genetically modified plants and seeds.

Roundup Ready® soybean was the first crop plant produced by Monsanto. Today, 90% of the soybean crop in the USA consists of Roundup Ready® plants. You can't buy soybean products that don't come from genetically modified plants.

Two thirds of the cotton and a quarter of the corn crop are Roundup Ready® plants. There is some resistance to growing Roundup Ready® wheat.