The Professor is Excused

Arri Eisen and Roberta M. Berry (2002) argue that there is a problem with the ethical quality of some research in the biosciences, that the problem is receiving greater scrutiny than it had before increased funding resulted in greater public expectations of the diverse scientists involved in this research, and that providing an ethics curriculum for bioscience researchers, delivered as a part of their graduate education, will resolve the problem. It is worth clarifying what the problem is and then trying to figure out whether the creation of a formal research curriculum would be the best way to address it.

First, we should distinguish research involving human subjects from other bioscience research and determine which presents the problem raised here. Most of the cases that have brought research ethics "into the spotlight" have involved the abuse of human subjects, as a review of the cases cited in the target and response articles demonstrates. While the issue of the ethical conduct of bioscience research may have been generally neglected, as the authors claim, it is hard to argue that this is true for human- subjects research, which has been the center of a great deal of attention over the past couple of years. Indeed, the substantial federal resources available to subsidize new curricula designed to protect human subjects has created a small industry across the country, and it is now impossible to find a major medical institution that is engaged in research involving human subjects that does not have a course, program, reading group, working group, federal grant, Web-based curriculum, support office, or something else (or a combination of all of the above) in place to deal with this issue. Further, this is hardly an area without a professional code. From the Nuremberg Code promulgated more than fifty years ago, to the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki, most recently amended in 2000, to the current version of the "common rule" applied to such research by the federal government, there is plenty of consensus (and, at the margin, some clearly aired disagreement) over the ethical principles that govern research involving human subjects. Those engaged in this research are morally obliged to follow some of these codes and legally obliged to adhere to others. It is not uncharted ethical territory; rather, it is an area blanketed by principles, codes, laws, and both formal and informal curricula. The scientific community is not lacking a consensus, a code, or a diversity of courses regarding research involving human subjects.

If we found some compelling ethical defect in bioscience research that had not yet been addressed, we would have to address the next question: will the development of some ethics curriculum lead to research that is more ethically sound? Eisen and Berry argue persuasively that some kind of curriculum could meet a set of four well-defined learning objectives in a measurable way, but their argument does not address the question of whether such a program would also lead to more ethically sound research. While this is a more difficult proposition to measure, it is hard to imagine that any formal curriculum would have prevented the most awful research abuses that have, in fact, made this a public issue. Would those researchers who conducted gene therapy trials with unjustifiable risk have acted differently if they had been through a research curriculum? Would Tuskegee have been avoided if the Public Health Service had a course in place? Would the Nazi doctors have turned their backs on their research if they had been properly trained? Are ignorance of the bioscientific research norms, absence of ethical reasoning skills, and a lack of understanding of "policy concerns" to blame for these atrocities? While the answers to the questions are not certain, it hardly seems like a formal academic experience would have been useful in dissuading these scientists from their wrongdoing.

This is not to argue against ethics education of researchers, of course. Education is rarely a bad thing...