David Koepsell

On Genies and Bottles: Scientists' Moral Responsibility and Dangerous Technology R&D

The age-old maxim of scientists whose work has resulted in deadly or dangerous technologies is: scientists are not to blame, but rather technologists and politicians must be morally culpable for the uses of science. As new technologies threaten not just populations but species and biospheres, scientists should reassess their moral culpability when researching fields whose impact may be catastrophic. Looking at real-world examples such as smallpox research and the Australian “mousepox trick”, and considering fictional or future technologies like Kurt Vonnegut’s “ice-nine” from Cat’s Cradle, and the “grey goo” scenario in nanotechnology, this paper suggests how ethical principles developed in biomedicine can be adjusted for science in general. An “extended moral horizon” may require looking not just to the effects of research on individual human subjects, but also to effects on humanity as a whole. Moreover, a crude utilitarian calculus can help scientists make moral decisions about which technologies to pursue and disseminate when catastrophes may result. Finally, institutions should be devised to teach these moral principles to scientists, and require moral education for future funding.

Let’s Get Small: An Introduction to Transitional Issues in Nanotech and Intellectual Property

Much of the discussion regarding nanotechnology centers around perceived and prosphesied harms and risks. While there are real risks that could emerge from futuristic nanotechnology, there are other current risks involved with its development, not involving physical harms, that could prevent its full promise from being realized. Transitional forms of the technology, involving “microfab,” or localized, sometimes desk-top, manufacture, pose a good opportunity for case study. How can we develop legal and regulatory institutions, specifically centered around the problems of intellectual property, that both stimulate innovation, and make the best possible use of what will eventually be a market in “types” rather than “tokens”? This paper argues that this is the most critical, current issues facing nanotechnology, and suggests a manner to approach it.

Back to Basics: How Technology and the Open Source Movement Can Save Science

The recent debate arising from leaked emails from a UK‐based research group working on the issue of climate change is another in a long string of historical lapses that periodically threatens public confidence in the institutions and methods of science. As with other similar events, it did not have to happen. What should concern us is that the accepted methods and practices of science have once again to be shown to be too easily set aside, ignored, or broken due to human frailties. Years of research are now in question, publications must be viewed in a new, more skeptical light, and research programs that might have no direct relation with the one involved in the controversy are affected. One response to scandals like “ClimateGate” is to renew an oft‐repeated call for increased openness in the sciences. The apparent disappearance or alteration of data, and its implications for the trustworthiness of published results of ongoing research suggests strongly that a more transparent, open, and accessible system could have prevented personal inclinations or policy concerns, even if benevolently motivated, from undermining the indifferent and detached progress of climate science.

Creating a Controlled Vocabulary for the Ethics of Human Research: Towards a biomedical ethics ontology

Ontologies describe reality in specific domains in ways that can bridge various disciplines and languages. They allow easier access and integration of information that is collected by different groups. Ontologies are currently used in the biomedical sciences, geography, and law. A Biomedical Ethics Ontology (BMEO) would benefit members of ethics committees who deal with protocols and consent forms spanning numerous fields of inquiry. There already exists the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI); the proposed BMEO would interoperate with OBI, creating a powerful information tool. We define a domain ontology and begin to construct a BMEO, focused on the process of evaluating human research protocols. Finally, we show how our BMEO can have practical applications for ethics committees. This paper describes ongoing research and a strategy for its broader continuation and cooperation.

Principals, Agents, and the Intersection between Scientists and Policy-Makers: Reflections on the H5N1 Controversy

When the news broke that Ron Fouchier and his research team at Erasmus Medical Center (MC) in the Netherlands had genetically modified the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus and that it had acquired the ability to transmit between mammals, it was a story of scientific discovery and progress and an exciting new development in the international effort to prevent the next pandemic. However, public anxieties and national security concerns would soon become a point of contention between virologists and biosecurity experts in the media and in highly politicized discussions about science-policy. In considering the controversy and the conflicts between scientists and policy-makers, we propose that regarding the situation as a principal–agent problem can yield useful analytical results. Principal–agent problems occur when two parties that are driven by competing self-interest negotiate the terms of a relationship or contract and act together toward a mutually defined end but an informational asymmetry provides one party (typically the agent) with certain advantages, thus creating tensions. Principal–agent theory provides a template of relational action and the conditional effects of actions in contract situations defined by a functional differentiation, such as between scientists and the government (on behalf of its citizens). Exploring the science-policy nexus from this perspective may further efforts to develop effective policies that address dual-use concerns in the life sciences by offering insights into methods of dispute resolution and the effective design of institutional mechanisms that balance the interests of the parties involved thereby level the playing field.

Synthetic Biology and IP: How Do Definitions of “Products of Nature” Affect their Implications for Health?

Currently, under the law of intellectual property, IP owners may exclude from use or production substances and processes that we would ordinarily consider to be products of nature. This has helped companies monopolize disease genes, and thus diagnostic testing for those diseases, and “biosimilar” products, pharmaceutical materials that mimic biological materials. Extending the current paradigm to the world of synthetic biology and nanotechnology will create further injustices in the delivery of health care to billions of people around the world. As such, I advocate heading this trend off at the pass. Scientists ought to conduct basic research into the building blocks of biology and matter in the open, publishing their results, releasing knowledge into the public domain upstream so that beneficial innovation can be produced without fear of downstream litigation, and so that what ought to remain in the public domain as a matter of right (products of nature) does not become unjustly monopolized.

Human Research Ethics Committees in Technical Universities

Human research ethics has developed in both theory and practice mostly from experiences in medical research. Human participants, however, are used in a much broader range of research than ethics committees oversee, including both basic and applied research at technical universities. Although mandated in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, non-medical research involving humans need not receive ethics review in much of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Our survey of the top 50 technical universities in the world shows that, where not specifically mandated by law, most technical universities do not employ ethics committees to review human studies. As the domains of basic and applied sciences expand, ethics committees are increasingly needed to guide and oversee all such research regardless of legal requirements. We offer as examples, from our experience as an ethics committee in a major European technical university, ways in which such a committee provides needed services and can help ensure more ethical studies involving humans outside the standard medical context. We provide some arguments for creating such committees, and in our supplemental article, we provide specific examples of cases and concerns that may confront technical, engineering, and design research, as well as outline the general framework we have used in creating our committee.

Dealing with socially constructed concepts in an ontology.

different typologies would need to be applied. “Justice in recruitment” is advanced by DuBois as an example of a non-universal and variant type that cannot be represented in an ontology. But this is in fact an excellent example to illustrate the potential usefulness of our proposed ontology. Comparing and contrasting differing views of justice in recruitment by linking cases through an ontology whose coverage domain includes a type labeled justice in recruitment will make for some interesting and useful studies, and possibly help to alleviate injustices due to local bias or prejudice. The assumption is that there is some commonality among multiple uses of the term “justice,” even if there are differences among local customs, traditions, and interpretations of specific cases. Even if DuBois is correct in his views about ethics, therefore, we believe that the BMEO will maintain its utility. In fact, however, we disagree with the two assumptions that underlie these views, namely: (1) that ethical principles are never founded in objective reality, and (2) that legal or regulatory principles are not subject to ongoing interpretation. Let’s start with the first. DuBois makes the broad claim that “ethical concepts within pluralistic societies are social constructs.” This leads him to the conclusion that within the realm of ethical “concepts,” there are no natural kinds, and thus ontological analysis is useless. This claim is troubling. It implies among other things that, for instance, prior to the Nuremburg Code, the use of human subjects without informed consent was not unethical or immoral. We, in contrast, hold to the view that what is morally wrong today was morally wrong 100 years ago. Certainly, in building the BMEO, we must work hard to understand the many different sorts of entities that comprise what we would call “social reality” in order to determine what basic structures are salient to the domain of biomedical ethics, and thereby to develop an ontology that shows how these structures are reflected in codes, laws, rules, and processes. The latter are all in a sense “socially constructed.” This does not, however, imply that everything about them is socially constructed (any more than the socially constructed nature of supermarket checkout procedures implies that the rules of DAVID KOEPSELL Delft University of Technology