Open Writing

Many rank and file scientists are pressured to pursue certain lines of research by venal employers and over-ambitious heads of university departments. On the plus side, scientific research has relieved humankind of many of its stifling superstitions, creating a better, less fearful world for many of us, though there are people who still prefer to cling to myths in the face of facts.

Dreadful diseases have been tamed and miraculous cures and procedures have extended lives and relieved suffering. I have personal reasons to be grateful for these benefits, being the recipient of two prosthetic knee joints, and lens replacements that enable me to see clearly without glasses for the first time in 30 years.

What I find troubling is that lines of research are pursued even though the laws of the country explicitly ban them. Banning research is of course a complicated issue. Scientists in one country may well move to another in order to continue their work, and who is to decide that a particular field of research should not be pursued?

Some research is patently evil, particularly some that is related to warfare, and the like of experiments carried out by the Nazis in World War II. But there are many gray areas that have ethical implications, like stem cell research and cloning. On the one hand, these endeavors have enormous potential benefits, so we are told, but on the other, they allow plenty of scope for mischief and tinkering.

It’s not too farfetched to imagine the cloning of worker humans and thinker humans or warrior humans who would not engage in any other activity than that for which they were engineered.

The topic in the ethics of science that sparked my interest is an article written by Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D., Director of Emory University’s Center for Ethics. In the article Dr. Wolpe states that neuroscience is advancing so rapidly that, under certain conditions, scientists can use sophisticated brain imaging technology to scan your brain and determine whether you can read a particular language, what word you are thinking of, even what you are dreaming about while you are asleep.

The research is still new, and the kinds of information scientists can obtain through brain imaging are still simple. But the recent pace of progress in neuroscience has been startling, Wolpe says, and new studies are being published all the time.

In one experiment, researchers at Carnegie Mellon looked at images of people’s brains when they were thinking about some common objects – animals, body parts, tools, vegetables – and recorded which areas of their brains activated when they thought about each object. I find this news disturbing, and no doubt it will stir debate.

One outcome may be the banning of such research, but after a long silence, I would wager that information will surface indicating that the work has continued. This has been true of many projects: Organ transplant surgery, and the implantation of an artificial heart, to name but two.

In these cases, no one would argue that the covert persistence of people like Dr. DeBakey, and the transplant pioneer Dr. Christiaan Barnard, was anything but beneficial, but their work did not have a dark side, as does cloning, genetic engineering, epidemiology and nuclear physics. At the same time, their actions demonstrate that powerful, strong minded people will have their way.

In a sense, writers such as Jules Verne, with his Captain Nemo, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, tap into the dark side of science. The evil Auschwitz camp doctor, Mengele was proof that such people exist in real life.

So what is to be done about dubious science? Probably nothing, except perhaps to beef up the ethics courses taught to science students, and perhaps find ways to limit the financial rewards of such work.

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