Ethics in Research
Hi,
Recently, all of the Howard Hughes fellows watched And The Band Played On, a movie that presented the work leading to the identification of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. HIV has lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people all over the world, and is a prominent topic of research both at Duke University and around the world. I wrote a group report on antiviral drugs on HIV in high school; it’s amazing how researchers are developing drugs to attack the virus at all stages of its life cycle.
But what really made the movie compelling was that it was about so much more than the discovery of HIV. HIV had initially had a large outbreak among gay men almost 30 years ago before it spread among humans all over the world. Science and politics regularly conflict, but this made the conflict much more apparent. Gays in America have faced discrimination at both the political and personal level, so the idea of shutting down bathhouses that cater to the gay community and facilitated the spread of HIV would seem like a continuation of this. Many diseases and conditions often are more serious to certain ethnic groups or cultures because or different customs that affect their severity, so proactive measures to confront them can often be seen as inflicting on the rights of a particular group. It seems natural that members of gay groups would be greatly angered by any outside forces trying to control them, as they feel this has happened for much of their lives. On the side of the CDC, it makes sense to close the bathhouses because not only do they cause a dangerous threat for all of the gay community, but they help facilitate the spread of the virus which can (and obviously has) infect the entire human population. I think general situations which deal with controlling the interests of groups of people are the hardest to provide clear guidance, because often the repercussions of the group’s interests can affect the general public. Throughout history, we have seen people try to prescribe rights and culture and ideas upon others. In some cases, these can lead to advancements, and certainly treatment for certain ailments and new scientific paradigms are only a few examples of beneficial sharing. In fact, it seems sharing would always be preferred to prescribing, but sometimes you cannot influence people to do what is “best” for them by simply suggesting it, at least not quickly as is often necessary. Many people did not understand the threat of HIV because it’s dangerous nature did not initially garner strong attention from the media. Activists in the movie said things like they would rather live free than oppressed, but after catching HIV, they would probably take statements such as these back. Is it ethical to act in their best interest, even if they do not approve of doing so? It is a difficult answer to provide.
Another example of an ethical situation the movie presented is privacy. Should a patient’s anonymity be protected if exposing their identity could lead to advancement in the prevention of a disease. This reminds of the classical ticking bomb scenario, in which police confiscate a terrorist who knows the location of a bomb that will go off in a densely packed area. Is it ethical to torture the terrorist for the greater good (in this case, to save lives)? One argument against torture is that such a perfect scenario would never occur in real life, in which you could know the truth of all these statements. It’s also interesting that since torture isn’t being used as a punishment, this scenario does not discriminate among terrorists and other laymen (such as family members of the terrorist, or maybe a pedestrian who overheard his plans) since the sole purpose is the obtain information that will promote the greatest good and cause the smallest amount of pain. I think this analogy applies fairly well to case of a patient. The odds that information from one person would help so many others is incredibly small in any individual case, and would allow for many slippery slopes. Resources could be used in other manners that are more effective to the situation at hand. I think this is a reason why privacy is valued so strongly in research that involves humans. If revoking rights to privacy could have such a great benefit on a regular basis I think you would see it occur more often. However, one’s identity, other than basic characteristics that may affect the data, does not play a large role, and is usually then correctly ignored. In the movie, when finding the flight attendant, his privacy for the most part was respected as much as possible, and I think the researchers did a good job of getting the information they desperately needed while respecting his rights.
Also, the theme of academic honesty came into play. It seems to me there are two fundamental pressures in biological academia that keep the system afloat. The most basic is the drive for funding, which is needed, in great amounts, to run a lab and have the equipment needed for creating knowledge. The other is the drive to be recognized, which is more like icing on the cake. Sure, professors on track for tenure and post-doctoral students need to be published in order to fulfill their goals and move up the chain, but it is not as critical as money. Lixian told me today about a lab she knew that had to shut down because it simply was not able to receive adequate funding. These two needs are interconnected, as funding usually finds its way to reputable labs performing meaningful research. Anyway, in a competitive environment, only the fittest will survive. Ideally, this might lead to a little bit of reciprocal altruism and collaboration. Collaboration is needed today because of the increasingly specialization of labs and scientists yet the greater need for interdisciplinary work. But a lot of this cooperation is then by force. So, the conflict as I see it, often can come down to the battle between the two pressures and the strength of the desire for knowledge and truth. Game theory might suggest the pressures would promote ultimately selfishly guided behavior. Researchers might not be willing to provide help or credit to another if his or her resources will not likely be needed in the future. This kind of makes sense with how the movie showed Dr. Gallo, who after discovering the identify of HIV would have made a big enough name for himself that he could be assured of prominence for the rest of his life, and wouldn’t likely have any need to collaborate with the French again. On the other hand, the main character (I’m blanking on his name) working for the CDC enlisted the help of the French, which was seen by Dr. Gallo as almost treason. This was shown as not coming from his desire to further his career but his hope to discover HIV as soon as possible. Usually the two previously mentioned pressures coincide with discovery, so as they promote research. Problems occur when they do not, and I believe this is a major area that could be reformed in academia, so there is less attention paid to personal achievements and more toward advancing knowledge. I believe academia is self-selecting in the sense that the people who enter it are primarily motivated by this quest to push the frontier of knowledge, because basically there is a lot more money to be made much more quickly and easily in other professions. While researchers do not necessarily need to earn higher salaries, I believe more funding needs to be available. I realize this is not a bold position from somehow who has experience in a lab, but I think because science can seem so distinct to most Americans they have difficulty relating to it, and see the greater necessity for other areas of spending such as defense, which can have a more immediate imaginable impact.
I was thinking the other day, what would happen if all the peer-reviewed journals switched to a policy in which articles were published in an anonymous basis. This obviously wouldn’t work at all today, in which publishing is a necessity for primary investigators to get grants accepted and other students to work their way up the long chain. But it would be interesting to see if the quality of research would increase or decrease, perhaps in a ten-year period.
This article in Popular Science describes a paper in Nature that has since been retracted: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-03/nobel-prize-winner-retracts-paper. Although the researcher, Linda Buck, cited this previous work in a paper that helped her earn a Nobel Prize, the retracted paper is only seen as a more minor footnote and that does not deal with the main topic of the work that won Buck the Nobel, which was discovering a gene family involved in olfaction and that particular odors generate combinations of olfaction sensory cells that activate together to give us an impression of a particular smell. Her retracted work dealt with a particular olfaction pathway. I bring this up because from the nature of labs, with many people working together and errors can occur. While many problems can happen in science because of misconduct, they more often occur because we are, after all, human. It appears that this was the case, and Buck’s major findings are still valid.
Anyway, the cool thing about drosophila (besides their relatively small genome, ease of physically manipulating in the lab, [although I still have my struggles], and ability to be selectively mated and mutated for certain genotypes) is that they don’t resemble humans and probably have very little, if any, consciousness. This lets us do things with them that we cannot do with apes and rats, which we, for many reasons (which can be argued if they are just or not), associate more with ourselves and for possessing higher cognitive abilities.
If you are interested this is a video on youtube I watched a couple weeks ago with Richard Dawkins, the author of The Selfish Gene, interviewing Peter Singer, a professor of philosophy at Princeton who is famous for his utilitarian views concerning poverty and animal rights among others. He wrote the book Animal Liberation, which is famous for its role in the Animal Rights movement. Singer is angered more by the way we use animals for food than research; the former is much less regulated. Anyway, I don’t think he would have a large problem with fruit fly research compared to other practices in the animal industry, but he is pretty radical in his views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYNY2oKVWU
I thought Transformers 2 was pretty good, considering it basically lacked any plot. Right now I am going in to lab every day but I’m still finding time to watch a lot of movies. Hopefully I will have more time to read in the near future.
I have worked in the lab a little later recently. The lab is surprisingly very relaxing and warm at night when no one is there. I would try to go early in the morning but my tiredness would likely wipe out this nostalgia.
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Nick
