The Ethics Blog

A research blog from the Centre for Resarch Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Author: Pär Segerdahl (Page 32 of 43)

How does biotechnology become real?

12 March, 2014 / / 0 Comments

PÄR SEGERDAHL Associate Professor of Philosophy and editor of The Ethics BlogSeeing things with our own eyes, not just hearing about them, makes a difference. Words certainly arouse images, but they are our own images of what we never saw.

This is a challenge for the rapid development in biotechnology. Genetically modified organisms are created, in vitro fertilization is practiced, stem cells are grown, and biobanks are constructed.

For most of us this is only hearsay. The words we hear arouse images, but as I said: images of what we never saw with our eyes. When we then respond to new forms of biotechnology, perhaps with anxiety or a sense of unreality, it is often our own images we respond to.

It’s like trying to form an opinion of a person who is hidden in a cloud of rumors. What a difference it makes to actually meet the person, and not only respond to the images that the rumors create within us.

Increased popular scientific efforts don’t automatically solve the problem. On the contrary, relying too much on the visual potential of, for example, computer animation can contribute to the cloud formation. People are stimulated to create even further images of what they never saw.

So how can biotechnology be made real? I believe: by showing what can be shown. Just seeing a genetically modified tomato or a person who underwent stem cell treatment makes biotechnology more real to me than any image of the DNA helix or stem cell differentiation can.

Seeing what can be shown – often practical applications – doesn’t necessarily make me approve of all forms of biotechnology, but I can discuss the technology without being too much distracted by my own cloud of images. I can discuss what became real.

How new forms of biotechnology can become real for the public is discussed in a new article in the Croatian Medical Journal, written by Anna Lydia Svalastog, Joachim Allgaier, Lucia Martinelli, and Srecko Gajovic.

They introduce the notion of Knowledge Landscapes to think more concretely visually about communication with the public about new forms of biotechnology. They emphasize science museums as one arena where biotechnology can be discussed as a reality rather than as an urban myth.

Show what can be shown.

Pär Segerdahl

We like real-life ethics : www.ethicsblog.crb.uu.se

The risk with knowing the risk

5 March, 2014 / / 0 Comments

PÄR SEGERDAHL Associate Professor of Philosophy and editor of The Ethics BlogInforming individuals about their genetic risks of disease can be viewed as empowering them to make autonomous decisions about their future health.

But we respond to risk information not only as rational decision makers, but also with our bodies, feelings and attitudes.

An American study investigated elderly people whose genetic test results showed a predisposition for Alzheimer’s disease. One group was informed about the risk; the other group was not.

In subsequent memory tests, those who were informed about the risk performed markedly worse than those who weren’t informed.

Knowing the genetic risk thus increased the risk of a false positive diagnosis of dementia. The informed participants performed as if they already were on the verge of developing Alzheimer’s.

The risk with knowing the risk is thus a further complication to take into consideration when discussing biobank researchers’ obligation to return incidental genetic findings to individual participants.

Returning information about genetic risks cannot be viewed only as empowering participants, or as giving them valuable information in exchange for contributing to research.

It can also make people worse, it can distort research results, and it can lead to false diagnoses in clinical care.

Pär Segerdahl

We like challenging findings - The ethics blog

Is it human fan club mentality?

26 February, 2014 / / 0 Comments

PÄR SEGERDAHL Associate Professor of Philosophy and editor of The Ethics BlogPhilosophers often put humans on display as beings that have some unique quality, like rationality or conceptual powers. And conversely they present animals as beings that lack that quality.

What comparison underlies such a notion of “human positivity” and “animal negativity”?

One could suspect that the dualism arises through a human-centered comparison. As if intellectual football fans treated football as the sport with which all sports are to be compared, which would turn football into the sport that has the unique qualities of full-fledged sport, while all other sports are grouped together as hollow sports that lack what football has.

One could thus suspect that philosophy implicitly employs a human standard for its comparisons, as if philosophy was a human fan club, busy to secure power and exclusive membership rights.

I have my doubts, though, since football can be surveyed in a way that human life cannot be. It is hardly possible to place “us” at the center, since we don’t know who “we” are as football fans know what football is.

Whatever is placed at the center, it will have to be an idealization; not actual human lives.

This implies that the philosophical dualism might be unjust not only to animals, but also to humans who breathe and talk and live independently of philosophical ideals and claims about their essence.

Pär Segerdahl

We challenge habits of thought : the Ethics Blog

Stress turns ordinary cells into pluripotent stem cells

19 February, 2014 / / 0 Comments

PÄR SEGERDAHL Associate Professor of Philosophy and editor of The Ethics BlogTissues of the body originally form when “naïve” undifferentiated embryonic stem cells differentiate to form the “mature” cells of specific tissues: liver cells, brain cells, skin cells, and so on.

The mature cells are then locked in their differentiated forms, as if they met their fate.

I recently mentioned that Yamanaka and Gurdon were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2012 for their surprising findings about dedifferentiation. Through direct genetic modification of nuclear function, mature cells can be reprogrammed to return to naïve stem-cell states. These dedifferentiated cells are pluripotent and can differentiate again and form a variety of mature cell types.

The rejuvenated cells regain the naïve properties of embryonic stem cells!

In January this year, an article published in Nature reported that the genetic reprogramming can be achieved more easily, without direct nuclear manipulation.

All you need to do to dedifferentiate mature cells, according to this article, is to subject them to stress: like an acid environment. Not all but some of the mature cells will be freed from their fate as liver or skin cells and return to naïve pluripotent states.

An easy to read summary can be found in BioEdge, and here is a link to the article:

Using mature cells to create stem cells with properties of embryonic stem cells might thus be easier than expected. In fact, the new findings weren’t even made in a stem-cell laboratory.

The ethical responses to the findings are not as thrilling as the findings. Some welcome the possibility of creating “ethical stem cells” that avoid the controversy about embryonic stem cells. Others see “new ethical issues” on the horizon.

These responses are characteristic of a routine view of ethical assessment as a static one-way process: ethicists assess others. But these findings indicate that processes in the opposite direction are possible as well, since they seem to challenge ethical assumptions about the unique function of the embryo.

I’m tempted to extend Thomas Kuhn’s notion of scientific revolutions to ethics. The new findings could function as anomalies for ethically paradigmatic ways of thinking about the embryo.

As stress turns mature cells into naïve pluripotent stem cells, these findings could stress some ethicists to return to more open-minded states that in the future can differentiate in new and unexpected directions.

Pär Segerdahl

We like challenging findings - The ethics blog

Self-contradictions of anti-movements

12 February, 2014 / / 0 Comments

PÄR SEGERDAHL Associate Professor of Philosophy and editor of The Ethics BlogOne cannot say, “I’m the humblest person in the world,” without displaying arrogance. One cannot protest, “How dare you call me arrogant? My whole life I’ve served individuals who don’t even deserve to tie my shoelaces!” without once again displaying arrogance.

Or listen to this: “Nothing is certain; here is the proof.”

Anti- and post-movements – anti-metaphysics, post-humanism etc. – display similar difficulties of avoiding comical self-contradiction. It is difficult to reject the grandiose ambitions of metaphysics to describe the world order, without trying to describe a world order that evades description.

That is to say: it is difficult to resist the temptation.

Rhetorically brilliant anti-metaphysicians compete contriving the most awe-inspiring neologisms to unveil the world’s essential evasiveness… a nomadic world of quasi-objects, hybridization and crossings of borders.

“How dare you call me a pretentious metaphysician? I know everything about the world’s inexplicability!”

Pär Segerdahl

The temptation of rhetoric - the ethics blog

Why do cancer patients participate in clinical trials?

5 February, 2014 / / 0 Comments

PÄR SEGERDAHL Associate Professor of Philosophy and editor of The Ethics BlogHearsay and good intentions won’t suffice. If a new treatment is chosen for a patient with cancer, one must first have seen that the treatment is at least as efficient as the conventional treatment. And one must have looked at side effects and right dosages.

Seeing this, however, presupposes that some patients agree to test the treatment… before one has clearly seen its efficacy. This is done in so-called clinical trials arranged in phases where first side effects and dosages are studied, and finally efficacy is compared to conventional treatment.

This gives rise to questions: Why are some patients prepared not to be patients on the same conditions as other patients? Why are they prepared to test a treatment one hasn’t yet seen is most efficient?

Do they understand what they agree to participate in? Since they participate in a study of a new treatment, do they understand that in order to see its efficacy, some in the group will be given just the conventional treatment?

Tove Godskesen, PhD student at CRB, noticed that such questions were relatively unexamined in the context of Swedish clinical cancer trials. She therefore did a survey study with cancer patients in several Swedish phase 3 clinical trials (where experimental and conventional treatments are compared).

Godskesen’s study (done together with Mats G. Hansson, Peter Nygren, Karin Nordin and Ulrik Kihlbom) was recently published online in the European Journal of Cancer Care:

The article contains many interesting findings. For example, patients-participants seemed generally to have understood the information about the “seeing” that they were willing to support by not being patients quite the same way as others.

Most important and salient, however, was that patients have two main motives for participating. They hope for a cure; and they wish to help future patients.

I would like to say: Patients hope that they will be given the new treatment already and that it will turn out to be more efficient than the conventional one. And they want to help future patients get the treatment that one has seen is most efficient.

Sight and future, patient role and research participant role, hope and altruism, in complex association.

Pär Segerdahl

We have a clinical perspective : www.ethicsblog.crb.uu.se

Scholastic reasoning versus modern cell biology

30 January, 2014 / / 0 Comments

PÄR SEGERDAHL Associate Professor of Philosophy and editor of The Ethics BlogEmbryonic stem cell research can find effective treatments for a wide range of currently untreatable diseases. No wonder embryonic stem cell research can be perceived as an important practice.

A human embryo can develop into someone’s child, who breathes, talks and lives. No wonder embryonic stem cell research can be perceived as a controversial practice.

What interests me here is how these two in my view humanly comprehensible perceptions of stem cell research are translated into an intellectual arena called “ethical debate.”

On this arena, forms of reasoning with different historical roots meet to combat each other. The idea is that here finally the issue shall be settled: is embryonic research, as a matter of fact, morally controversial, or is it not?

Or are we rather debating Aristotle versus modern cell biology?

Attempts to prove that the research is controversial bear witness of a legacy from the metaphysics of Aristotle. The human embryo is supposed to have a unique potentiality to become a person: a potentiality so actively present in the embryo that the embryo is to be understood as a “prenatal person” or as a “potential person.”

Attempts to disprove such scholastic claims instead rely on the latest scientific evidence in cell biology. In 2012, Shinya Yamanaka and John B. Gurdon were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work on what is called “dedifferentiation.” Stem cells derived not from embryos but from, for example, skin cells can be genetically induced to regress into less differentiated states that in turn can differentiate into various directions.

These findings are invoked in an article in The American Journal of Bioethics to finally take leave of the argument from potentiality:

  • “Technically speaking, fertilized egg cells (earliest embryos), iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells), and skin cells are all potential ‘baby-precursors,’ in part due to modern cell biology.”

So much for the unique potentiality of the human embryo: a skin cell will suffice.

To what extent do such debates concern the two perceptions of stem cell research in their human comprehensibility?

Pär Segerdahl

We think about bioethics : www.ethicsblog.crb.uu.se

Readings on biobank regulation

21 January, 2014 / / 0 Comments

PÄR SEGERDAHL Associate Professor of Philosophy and editor of The Ethics BlogToday I recommend three short and instructive readings on biobanking:

The European Parliament voted in October 2013 on an amended proposal for a new European Data Protection Regulation. In a newsletter from CBR and BBMRI.se, the legal scholars Jane Reichel and Anna-Sara Lind explain implications for biobank research:

A new law on biobanks entered into force in Finland in September 2013. The law allows broad consent for future research and enables use of already collected samples. It also gives donors a stronger position and better protection of their integrity, Joanna Forsberg and Sirpa Soini write in Nature:

International guidelines on biobank research diverge, not least concerning the specificity of the consent and the use of already collected samples and waiver of consent. These ambiguities are discussed in the European Journal of Epidemiology, in an article by Joanna Forsberg, Mats G. Hansson and Kathinka Evers:

These texts help clarifying the complicated regulatory framework.

Pär Segerdahl

We recommend readings - the Ethics Blog

Some considerations on the creation of artificial life (by Mirko Ancillotti)

15 January, 2014 / / 0 Comments

mirko-ethicsblogIt is hard to understand and explain why new biotechnologies often are so upsetting. I am inclined to think that many people accord a special value to nature and to what is considered natural. This stance is held in spite of the fact that human beings have purposively modified nature, e.g., through the selection of plants, since they started with agriculture and breeding about 10,000 years ago. It should be admitted that these interferences have highly improved their (our) quality of life. Biotechnologies alter what is naturally occurring and these changes are felt as being particularly dangerous for human beings (directly or through fatal modifications of the environment). In my opinion, what is natural is morally neutral and it would be paradoxical to assume “naturalness” as a guiding principle.

The paper of Douglas, Powell, and Savulescu investigates whether the creation of synthetic life is morally significant and concludes that it is not. As mentioned in the original post, they consider three attempts to establish the moral significance of creating artificial life. I would like to focus on the third attempt, the one claiming uncertainty about the ontological and moral status of synthetic products because of their uncertain functional status.

The ontological status of synthetic products is regarded as being problematic because these products don’t clearly fit the organism-artifact dichotomy. The worry about ontological status is understood by the authors as a worry about functional status. According to the etiological account of functions, those expressed by an organism are the result of evolution and it can be thought that a living entity has an interest in expressing its functions, and be alive.

In what the authors call “Moral Prudentialism,” the moral status of an organism depends on interests and interests depend on functions. An artificial organism may have interests in remaining well-functioning, but what is problematic and gives rise to functional uncertainty is that its functions are not the result of evolution. Instead, they have been purposively designed and built into it by an external rational agent (an artificial organism’s function satisfy human purposes).

I agree with the authors in rejecting the attempt to give moral significance to the creation of artificial life on account of functional (and ontological) uncertainty. The moral assessment of an entity should be based on what the entity actually is and expresses. The etiological account of functions seems to be a poor help in assessing individuals, but I think that it should still be taken into account. Indeed, there is to consider the fact that synthetic organisms have not developed through natural or slightly modified (by humans) selection in an evolutionary equilibrium with other species and ecosystems (naturally occurring organisms are not necessary in harmonious equilibrium, but they are typically at least tolerated without provoking an ecological havoc).

If their genealogy is not considered a central factor in assessing their value or significance, it is nevertheless worth noting that, given the extreme potentialities of synthetic biology to give rise to forms of life completely different from existing ones (possibilities that are much more prominent than in genetic engineering), it seems reasonable to investigate the moral significance of creating artificial life by looking at the whole picture and not at the individual capacities of an organism considered in isolation.

Mirko Ancillotti (MA, Philosophy, CRB)

Human and inhuman

8 January, 2014 / / 0 Comments

PÄR SEGERDAHL Associate Professor of Philosophy and editor of The Ethics BlogThe words “human” and “inhuman” are often used as moral judgments. For example: reasoning is (brilliantly) human; violence is (terribly) inhuman.

Such forms of speech are perfectly in order. Yet, we easily go astray if we use the same forms of speech in attempts to diagnose war and conflict, or the path to peace. (Which is extremely tempting, especially for sensible people.)

The human is purified as rational being. Violence and conflict are understood as results of inhuman interference with human reason. Can such idealized analysis illuminate real problems?

What occasions these thoughts is a review in the Guardian, which in terms of blogging was published ages ago. Stuff worth thinking about was written already in 2006. The British philosopher John N. Gray then reviewed Amartya Sen’s book, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny.

Sen explains violence between groups as caused by inhuman interference with what is properly human. A proper human makes rational choices in a plurality of group belongings. But ill-disposed propagandists make gullible people think that their human identity already is fixed through a singular group belonging. This short-circuits reason and causes them to blast car bombs and commit genocide against people with other narrowly defined identities.

Without denying the reality of identity-driven violence or the danger of propaganda, Gray questions the innocent intellectualism of Sen’s diagnosis. Sen makes it sound as if people resort to violence because a false theory of human nature was drummed into them. He presents violence as if it were caused by inhuman factors disturbing human nature.

But people hardly lynch each other because of “erroneous beliefs.” And the fear, despair and cruelty of their actions are only too deep-rooted human traits, Gray observes grimly.

It is difficult to think clearly about the human. Perhaps even Gray, in spite of his clear-sightedness, occasionally starts out from a moral delimitation of the human: a more disillusioned one that prefers blaming rather than exalting the human.

(Gray’s own new book, The Silence of Animals, was reviewed last summer by Thomas Nagel.)

Pär Segerdahl

Minding our language - the Ethics Blog

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