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by Anders Nordgren Kluwer Academic, 2001 Review by Arantza Etxeberria, Ph.D. on Mar 20th 2003 
The main
question of this book is whether scientists --in this case, geneticists- hold
moral responsibility for the consequences of their research. And the answer is
yes. In the front of the book stands a quote by Bertrand Russell: “It is
impossible in the world for a man of science to say with any honesty, 'My
business is to provide knowledge, and what use is made of the knowledge is not
my responsibility' ”. Yet, unfortunately, scientists often take refuge in the
belief that pure learning is value-free and independent of practical
consequences, and prefer to leave those to be dealt by other instances, social
or institutional.
This book,
written after the Human Genome Project is virtually complete, elaborates at
length this issue of research responsibility, which is denounced to have been
"neglected" by the ELSI (officially in charge of discussing all
ethical issues raised by the HGP). The author takes upon him the task of
carefully making explicit what kind of responsibilities should geneticists
assume, and it starts with two initial chapters aiming to ground ideas on how
to think about what moral responsibility imports in general, and for those
involved with science.
The view
defended is that, in order to know what is ethical, it is better to abandon the
path of searching for foundations or principles, and assume empirical results
showing how moral ideas arise from the metaphors that help us think in the given
situations. Thus, moral issues can be posed and thought about in the frame of
an "imaginative casuistry", so that what happened in similar
situations serves to make decisions, given the apropriate adjustments:
"moral reasoning is a matter of imagination". Although principles are
not completely rejected, the idea is that, instead of deducing courses of
action from them, one should be able to imagine possible consequences of the
one's acts using prototype cases as examples.
In what respects
scientists, the author considers two different perspectives for moral
responsibility, the internal one of those doing science, which concerns with
those issues that have to do with scientific "good" practice
(misconduct, treatment of human subjects), and the external one, related to all
kinds of possible social consequences. Both are important, and all
considerations developed in these two chapters can boil down into some concrete
specifications about how to proceed: “What should responsible scientists do? My
general proposals to these scientists -as individuals and as a community-- are
as follows: 1) Use your moral imagination to envision different ethically
relevant consequences of research, and to figure out different ways of taking
responsibility for these consequences. 2) Learn from history, i.e. from
earlier, prototypical cases. 3) Participate in dialogue with the general
public, politicians and industrialists. 4) Integrate ethical reflection with
scientific practice by choosing an appropriate form of responsibility, i.e.
adequate means of implementing the content of responsibility at different
social levels. ” (p. 84)
The rest of the
book follows by considering the case at hand, the HGP (chapter 3), and by
applying the general framework previously exposed to several possible
consequences or applications derived from the sequencing of the human genome
(chapters 4, 5, 6). One is "gene hunting", specially with the aim of
producing genetically tailored drugs: the author analyses several possible
scenarios in which the practice of searching for certain genes can encounter
moral conflict, especially in what concerns of privacy or property. Another is
possible genetic modifications, namely gene therapies, germline modification
and the use of animals in research. And the last one is the possible
consequences for human reproduction, in reprogenetic medicine.
Each argument of
this book is exposed in a detailed and thorough mode. Its ideas are interesting
and have been developed with knowledge and courage, yet the book is not an easy
read. The reader who is familiar with the topic will find here more profound
discussions than those usual in the literature, both in the detail in which
they are exposed and in the scope of the matters considered; for starters or
readers with a mild curiosity, the book might be too demanding.
© 2003 Arantza Etxeberria
Arantza
Etxeberria, Ph.D., Dept. of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of
the Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain. |
