Report on Ethics: Introduction

 

Table of Contents

 

Background

The Executive Committee of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council moved to establish an ad hoc subcommittee on ethics at its March 1995 meeting. Each member institution had the opportunity to place a representative on the committee. In August 1995, NABC Chair Roger Mitchell charged Paul Thompson, Texas A&M University, with organizing the committee and with preparing a report to the Executive Committee. The Ad Hoc Committee is charged with advising the Executive Committee on what measures member institutions, as well as the NABC itself, could and should undertake to ensure that ethical issues receive an appropriate level of consideration as one component of the non-profit sector's program of research and development of food and agricultural biotechnologies. The committee interpreted this mandate in light of a particular understanding of both biotechnology and ethics. Members of the Ad Hoc Committee included:

 

A. What is Biotechnology?

For the purposes of preparing this report, the committee presumed that biotechnology includes the use of recombinant DNA in developing products for virtually any application within food, agricultural and natural resources. Most clearly this includes modification of plants and animals for enhancement of agronomic value, or to development of new markets for traditional agricultural plants and animals. In addition, the term biotechnology includes use of rDNA in development of products and processes used in food and agricultural production, such as recombinant vaccines or animal drugs produced by recombinant microorganisms. All of these applications imply some form of genetic engineering, or movement of genes from one organism to another (often in a manner that would not be possible through the species' own reproductive mechanisms) using modern laboratory techniques. The definition is also intended to include use of rDNA techniques to acquire data or basic knowledge in a research setting (genome mapping, for example) even when genetic engineering proper is not involved. The definition is narrower than some in that it does not include tissue culture, cloning or embryo transfer except when these techniques are combined with genetic engineering.

The rationale for this definition is largely pragmatic. Members of the Ethics Committee agreed that the ethical issues associated with food and agricultural products of biotechnology are generally special cases of more general questions that should be raised in evaluating any new technology. As such, many of the committee's recommendations might be generalized and discussed as recommendations for institutions that research and develop food and agricultural technologies of any type. Yet to generalize our recommendations in this manner would clearly exceed the committee's mandate, as well as the scope of interest for the NABC itself. As such, a restriction to biotechnology was assumed. Furthermore, the record of NABC conferences itself testifies to the fact that, whether warranted or not, there has been an unusual degree of interest in the ethical issues associated with recombinant DNA. Although reproductive technologies such as cloning and embryo transfer have been controversial when applied to human beings, there has been little criticism of them when deployed in food and agricultural settings. Ironically, the situation seems to be quite the reverse for genetic engineering of crops, animals and for products employed in food production, at least in the United States and Canada. While biomedical applications of genetic engineering have typically been heralded, food and agricultural applications have elicited a significant amount of public controversy and resistance. This controversy has served as something of a guide to where ethical issues are most acute.

 

B. Ethics

The term ethics is no less ambiguous than biotechnology. Laboratory researchers may tend to understand ethics in terms of personal integrity in their research techniques, such as accurate recording and reporting of data or acknowledging the contributions of coworkers. The evidence from public opinion surveys indicates that where biotechnology is concerned, the general public tends to interpret "ethics" in a manner more consistent with the way that philosophers do: ethics is the general subject of what should and should not be done in using rDNA techniques to affect food, agriculture and natural resources. Philosophers apply logic and a two thousand year tradition of articulating and defending answers to the questions "What should we do?" in their study of ethics. Philosophical ethics often involves developing theories about the general strategies that can be employed in thinking about norms and ethical responsibilities, and these theories show that certain strategies have weaknesses or "blind spots" to issues or concerns that are made prominent by other approaches. The main contribution of philosophical ethics to the study of food and agricultural biotechnology is an increase in the clarity and precision of normative claims (claims that something is good or right, bad or wrong), and a greater sensitivity to the range of normative claims that might be made by others with a different vantage point or a different conceptual strategy for thinking about ethical issues.

Since philosophical ethics increases sensitivity to alternative points of view, ethics is closely tied to problems of communicating with the public about food and agricultural biotechnologies. Here ethics becomes a tool less for arriving at one's own answer to the question "What should I do?" than a tool for understanding how people from different walks of life arrive at very different answers. Understanding the views of others is the first step in truly communicating with them, hence ethics has a natural affinity with programs in extension, public communication and education. This link comes full circle when one raises the question of how science and technology should be managed in democracy, especially when public funds or public institutions are used to do the research. Under most views of democracy, the management of public institutions must be consistent with some criteria of "consent of the governed," hence communicating with the broader public and securing their consent is itself an ethical responsibility for administrators and researchers in public research organizations.

In summary, the committee takes a broad view of ethics, to include personal conduct issues as well as public controversy over food and agricultural biotechnology. Yet the emphasis in our recommendations is on improving scientists', students' and citizens' ability to make judgments and articulate their own beliefs about what is right and wrong with respect to these challenging new technologies, and to understand and appreciate the beliefs and concerns of others.

 

C. The Content of Ethics Programming

It is possible to summarize the specific areas in which one would expect teaching, public education and faculty development programs to be active. Four of these areas relate to unintended consequences of technology that might be associated with any new technology. They are product, not process related. A fifth area that is also not unique to biotechnology takes up questions in the governance of science and technology in a democracy. A sixth revolves around debates over the appropriateness of intellectual property rules for the products of genetic engineering, or for genes themselves, and a seventh takes up religious and metaphysical questions. Each area is summarized very briefly below.

  1. Unintended Environmental Consequences
    Much of the public controversy over agricultural biotechnology has centered on the potential for plant biotechnology to pose unique or unacceptable ecological risks. Although a substantial part of this controversy is technical, there are crucial philosophical questions embedded in it as well. What is humanity's responsibility to protect the integrity of natural ecosystems? Do issues of risk to human beings (economic losses or fragility in the food system such as was typified by Southern Corn Leaf Blight in the 1970s) exhaust the range of significant consequences? Or does impact on the rate or character of evolution in a non-agricultural species matter, too? How should we think of the need to balance preservation of habitat with expansion of food production, especially when a product of biotechnology (such as proposed vaccines for tropical diseases in cattle) permit dramatic new expansions of agricultural production?
  2. Food Safety and Quality for the Consumer
    One approach to the ethical issues here emphasizes the ethical importance of achieving an optimum degree of risk, when compared both to the relative benefits and to the costs of eliminating risk. Another approach stresses individual knowledge and consent, even when individuals may systematically make choices that deviate far from an optimum. A series of philosophical questions affect the way that one would evaluate the choice between these two approaches. For example should "spiritual health," as evidenced by religiously based dietary practices be included in our optimizing equations, or are we better to trust such choices to informed consent? Do people with a radical mistrust of government and science have a right to opt out of any scientifically based and governmentally organized system for regulating food safety?
  3. Animal Well-Being
    As techniques for modifying agricultural animals come on line, the questions that have begun to be raised about animal agriculture production practices will increasingly be applied to genetically engineered animals. Survey research shows that genetic engineering of animals has the highest level of perceived ethical significance among members of the lay public, exceeding the perceived significance of human biotechnology. What is the basis for concern with animal well-being, and how will biotechnology affect it? Would it be ethically acceptable to engineer animals that are neurologically incapable of suffering as a means to improving efficiencies in food production? The mixture of technical science and philosophy in these questions makes them some of the most interesting to be taken up.
  4. Social Consequences
    The century-long transition from family-based to more industrialized agriculture touches biotechnology as it touches every area of agricultural technology. Concern for the perceived decline of northern dairy regions led both producer and consumer resistance to recombinant BST, for example. Why are small or family farms or diversified rural communities significant, and how would products of biotechnology affect them? These questions are especially poignant in developing country settings, where there is a high degree of vulnerability to the economic forces that are unleashed by technical change, and where social institutions for easing the transition are largely absent.
  5. Technology and Democracy
    All of the issues above raise second-order issues about who should choose which technologies to develop, and when should compensation or risk mitigation be required in order to move a socially beneficial technology forward. What sorts of things should scientists and research organizations themselves do in order to deserve and win public trust? What sorts of opposition to technology are consistent with rational, democratic decision making, and when does opposition become irrational and obstructionist?
  6. Intellectual Property
    Do the moral foundations for recognizing a product as ownable and transferable property apply to the products of genetic engineering? Tradition ties ownership to individual seeds or animals, but there has been significant modification of tradition (witness the Plant Variety Protection Act) for some time. Are patents an appropriate way to protect private sector investment? Are peasant farmers entitled to ownership rights in the germplasm that they have developed over generations of trial and error?
  7. Religious and Metaphysical Issues
    Ever since Darwin, fundamental advances in biological theory have spawned reaction and rejection on the part of those whose beliefs were being challenged. What could the theological or metaphysical basis for objecting to any form of genetic engineering possibly be? Is it possible to formulate such an objection without also denying the fundamental truth of received biological theories of evolution and molecular biology?

In sum, any and all of these areas pose important philosophical puzzles. The committee has worked under the assumption that aggressive and critical inquiry into the philosophical concepts and arguments that would be deployed in thinking through or proposing an answer to any of these questions is a responsibility for institutions of research and higher learning, such as those who are members of the NABC.