The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power

15. Learning to Reflect or Deflect?: U.S. Policies and Graduate Programs’ Ethics Training for Life Scientists

During a family vacation to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2003, I visited a new Smithsonian exhibit entitled “Genome: The Secret of How Life Works.” To enter the exhibit, prominently sponsored by the drug company Pfizer, the museumgoer is directed into a narrow passageway that tells “the story of you.” At the first turn, a large-sized picture of a blastocyst is labeled, “this  you.” On the wall of the next turn, a mirror greets the patron along with the statement, “this  you.” Finally, the narrow, winding passage ends with a picture of a double helix that claims, “this is the  of you.” As the museum patron enters the exhibit proper, she walks by a twenty-five-foot-long strand of DNA. Meanwhile, a nearby video screen shows a vaguely familiarlooking white man who effusively exclaims: “Hello! My name is Eric Lander. What you see before you is the DNA double helix. It’s the secret of you, the secret of me, and actually the secret of all life on this planet. The DNA double helix is made up of genes which are sort of a recipe for who you are. The only problem is, that recipe is written in a secret code. It took a very long time to figure out how to read that code—but now we have it!!” (The exhibit is also published online at 405 15 Learning to Reflect or Deflect? U.S. Policies and Graduate Programs’ Ethics Training for Life Scientists  - http://genome.pfizer.com/menulong.cfm, last accessed November 15, 2004). The remainder of the exhibit takes a similar tone, cheerfully describing the wonders of the human genome and its probable future applications to human health. One could spend an entire chapter deconstructing this exhibit, tracing the ways in which genetic determinism and commercial interests in genetics are intertwined. But for my purposes, the exhibit raises a related question: what was left out? The ethical implications of human genome research were barely mentioned. At the last station of the thirty-two in the exhibit, called “Reality Check Theater,” Eric Lander remarks: “[M]ost scientists agree that trying to make a human baby by cloning is a bad idea. The chance of birth defects is just much too high to take the risk and there are serious ethical issue [sic] to think about.” He concludes: “The promise is enormous but not everything about genetics is clear cut so it’s important to separate fantasy from reality, entertainment from real issues.” This token attention to ethical concerns in genomic research nearly denies that they exist (except as “fantasy”) and raises the question of how and where biological scientists learn to think about issues such as how their work is communicated to the world and whether it has commercial value. Since October 2000, the main federal funding agency in the United States for life scientists, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has required grantees to complete certified training in research ethics, primarily in the treatment of human subjects. In so doing, the NIH asserted that scientists and scientists-in-training, not just clinicians, need to consider the social implications of their work. The logic of the NIH’s decision was based on an expectation of rational action on the part of graduate programs. This model of policymaking assumes that if funding is affected, scientists will have incentives to reflect seriously about the social and ethical context of their work. This chapter focuses on the degree to which U.S. doctoral programs in molecular biology have complied with the NIH’s new requirements.1 Is there evidence that these educational policies are enacted and taken seriously by these programs, as the NIH’s incentive system suggests that they should be? Or do university scientists deflect the impact of such requirements by appearing to follow the federal guidelines while in fact resisting any real change? To examine these questions, I use archival and interview data. I collected information on a random sample of fifty molecular biology and biochemistry PhD programs in 2001 and 2003 and conducted pilot 406  - interviews with life scientists about the implementation of the NIH guidelines. I explore when the ethical and social aspects of science might be discussed informally rather than being a part of the formal, visible curriculum, and why some scientists express an adverse reaction against government funding agencies legislating a...