Bioscience, Governance and Politics

J. Gillott

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137374998
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Through case studies, theoretical research and interviews with leading players in science and governance, this book introduces a new understanding of change in governance of bioscience research. In particular it examines change as it is shaped by approaches developed by Science and Technology Studies and Sociology of Scientific Knowledge theorists.

1

Introduction

The idea of making this speech has been in my mind for some time. The final prompt for it came, curiously enough, when I was in Bangalore in January. I met a group of academics, who were also in business in the biotech field. They said to me bluntly: Europe has gone soft on science; we are going to leapfrog you and you will miss out. They regarded the debate on GM here and elsewhere in Europe as utterly astonishing. They saw us as completely overrun by protesters and pressure groups who used emotion to drive out reason. And they didn’t think we had the political will to stand up for proper science. I believe that if we don’t get a better understanding of science and its role, they may be proved right. Let us start with the hardest thing of all to achieve in politics: a sense of balance. Already some of the pre-speech criticism suggests that by supporting science, we want the world run by Dr Strangelove, with all morality eclipsed by a cold, heartless test-tube ideology with scientists as its leaders.

Tony Blair, 2002

In 1945 Robert Oppenheimer, physicist and scientific leader of the Allies’ atomic bomb project, argued that ‘it is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity’ (Pais and Crease, 2006, p. 51). In that same year, Vannevar Bush, head of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, published a report entitled ‘Science, the Endless Frontier’. In it he envisaged endless benefits to American society from scientific advance. Science would bring jobs, rising living standards, and improvements in culture.

If the post-war period was the atomic age, with physicists in the ascendancy, today is the age of the biosciences, with biologists and information specialists to the fore. And in their eulogies for the completion of the ‘rough drafts’ of the human genome in June 2000, scientists and politicians made bold claims for the future, echoing the themes of Oppenheimer and Bush. Mike Dexter of the Wellcome Trust, which funded a substantial proportion of the public sector effort, described the project’s significance as surpassing that of the wheel: ‘I can see technology making the wheel obsolete’, he said, ‘but this code will be useful and used as long as humans exist’. American President Bill Clinton was similarly hyperbolic: ‘With this profound new knowledge, humankind is on the verge of gaining immense, new power’.

But such apparent continuities cannot hide the fact that we all – the public, scientists and politicians – sense even if we don’t fully understand that our relationship to scientific innovation has changed in the past half-century.

Compare the concerns of two leading scientists from the respective eras, Joseph Rotblat and Bill Joy. Rotblat resigned from the atomic bomb project (the Manhattan Project) in late 1944 when he learned that Germany had abandoned its attempt to make a bomb. It was a lonely step but one which won him respect and support in the years that followed. He campaigned thereafter, for the rest of his life indeed, for scientists to sign an oath to do no harm, akin to the Hippocratic oath signed by doctors. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995, his central focus was opposition to the obvious and possible military uses of science, and support for socially and environmentally useful alternatives.

In the same year that scientists and politicians were celebrating the completion of the rough drafts of the human genome, Bill Joy, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, worried that ‘the future doesn’t need us’ (Joy, 2000). He argued that the combination of three new technologies, robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology offers not just dangerous power to the wilfully destructive, but also threatens accidental catastrophe. Echoing more contemporary themes about the dangers of unforeseen events, of things running out of control, he wrote: ‘This time – unlike during the Manhattan Project – we aren’t in a war, facing an implacable enemy that is threatening our civilization; we are driven, instead, by our habits, our desires, our economic system, and our competitive need to know’. For Joy, who helped to develop some of these technologies, the only solution is a far broader relinquishment than that called for by Rotblat: ‘to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge’. Recognising the role he played, and the possibility that the cat might already be out of the bag, he concluded, sadly, ‘henceforth, for me, progress will be somewhat bittersweet’ (Joy, 2000).

Joy’s is an extreme voice within the scientific community, as was Rotblat’s in his day. But in a focused way they highlight shifting general attitudes. This is not to say that we are not still fascinated by science and hopeful of its potential. Indeed, numerous surveys all agree that a majority of people believe that scientific progress makes the world a better place. But we are also worried, not just about deliberate use and misuse, but also about a wider and more diffuse set of issues: the speed of developments, the unintended consequences of scientific advance, and the threat innovation may pose to the values we hold dear. Today we tend to see science as something that happens beyond our control, as likely as not driven by commercial self-interest rather than the quest for pure knowledge or social benefit. The link that Oppenheimer made – between expanding knowledge and value to humanity – is today still present, but less clearly so in the public mind. It is also a link that is less clear in the minds of some scientists themselves, or is one that they do not always proclaim from the rooftops. And for some scientists working in the areas that so troubled Bill Joy, responsibility must rather be embedded in the very practices of research and knowledge production (McCarthy and Kelty, 2010).

The changing governance of science?

An aspect of changing attitudes towards natural scientific research is a significant shift in the discussion of the governance of natural scientific research, one that has accelerated since the mid-1990s. In the opinion of a number of social scientists this change was particularly rapid and is particularly marked in the United Kingdom (Brown, 2009; Gottweis, 2008; Irwin, Jones and Stilgoe, 2006). The discovery in 1996 of a link between Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), a disease affecting cattle, and variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (vCJD), a new form of a similar disease in humans, shook the Conservative Government, which was perceived to have falsely re-assured the public about the safety of eating meat from UK cattle. This episode also, quite quickly, and with long-term effects, catalysed a transformation in public deliberation on the governance of science. Indeed, the meaning of governance itself is now different in many contexts.

Intense discussions took place in the media, civil society, academia and within government and elite scientific circles in the years that followed. Then further to that, and in part encouraged by it, while much reflection was taking place on the appropriate governmental and governance response in the period 1999–2001, further controversies erupted around genetically modified food and crops, the safety of mobile phones and the use of human tissue in research, all of which either directly or indirectly fed back into further debate on research governance.

The political damage caused by BSE was perceived to be about the mishandling of risk and in particular risk communication. Lord Phillips’ official inquiry cleared the UK Government of serious wrongdoing when it reported in October 2000, but it also made clear that official attitudes could never be the same again: ‘The Government was preoccupied with preventing an alarmist over-reaction to BSE because it believed that the risk was remote. It is now clear that this campaign of reassurance was a mistake’ (The BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. xvii).

The implication of this was that governments should not reassure people or seek to calm panics, for the report did not merely mean that the ‘campaign of reassurance’ was a mistake with hindsight. Phillips meant it was wrong, full stop. This is justified in the report with the comment that ‘the importance of precautionary measures should not be played down on the grounds that the risk is unproved’ (The BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 266). In this way, the precautionary principle, or approach, became, in popular discussions, the most well-known aspect of the new approaches to governance.

But the new approach is about far more than precaution, or about far more than precaution understood narrowly. David Gee, a former Director of Friends of the Earth UK and a driving force behind the influential European Environment Agency reports ‘Late lessons from early warnings’ (2001 and 2013) puts it like this: the precautionary principle has the potential ‘to trigger or facilitate debates that go well beyond the issue of risk and into the area of responsible and socially relevant innovation’ (Gee, 2013, p. 660). The debates and approaches envisaged by Gee have been characterised in a number of ways and called a number of things over the past decade and more. For the editors of the critical investigation The Limits to Governance, they entail ‘an increased role of non-government actors in policy-making through various participatory networks and mechanisms’. This understanding, they go on to note, foregrounds governance as ‘an inherently political process, concerned with articulating different actors’ interests, values and beliefs’ (Lyall, Papaioannou & Smith, 2009a, p. 261). Simply and directly it was dubbed the ‘Democratic Model’ by social scientists Alan Irwin and Peter Healey in a submission to the important House of Lords inquiry into Science and Society (published in 2000). Ian Hargreaves, former editor of the Independent, has championed this framework, and argued that it should include ideas of ‘socially, economically and environmentally sustainable development’ and be ‘“based largely on participatory processes in which publics (as citizens and consumers) predominate”’ (Hargreaves and Ferguson, 2000, p. 11).

In the immediate aftermath of BSE through to and after the controversy over GM foods and crops, critics of previous practice secured the moral high ground in public debate on issues as diverse as modern farming methods, genetic engineering, global warming and mobile phones. Jonathon Porritt, another former Director of Friends of the Earth and an advisor to both Prince Charles and Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister, believed that science would only regain trust if it became ‘more precautionary; more participative; less arrogant; less compromised by its paymasters; more compassionate; and more holistic’. Porritt hoped to persuade, but suggested that we might have to ‘constrain’ scientists, addicted as they are to the Promethean spirit; accustomed accordingly to ‘pushing endlessly on into new territory’ (Porritt, 2000, pp. 33, 136).

But while the controversies of the time provided him with an elevated platform, Porritt feared that behind and through all the talk of change individual scientists and also Governments and scientific institutions were still wedded to the (old) values of science. In other words, while there was much talk of change and much innovation in terms of consultations and the like, regarding the big picture of government thinking and action, and at the practical level of governance and research practice, it was business as usual, or nearly so. Thirteen years later, Gee argued that the problems identified by Porritt in 2000 and in the Late lessons report of 2001 remained as pressing as ever, or more so:

A key message in the 2001 report was the notion that ‘the growing innovative powers of science seem to be outstripping its ability to predict the consequences of its applications, while the scale of human interventions in nature increases the chances that any hazardous impacts may be serious and global’. This is happening at an ever-greater pace, with globalised industries racing to introduce new technologies but with limited understanding of what their impacts might be. (Gee, 2013, pp. 670–671)

A number of social scientists agree with Porritt and Gee. Starting with a critical assessment of the Phillips report into BSE (which they regard as being far too sympathetic to the government) through to continuing opposition to the government’s support in principle for GM technology, they wonder what has in fact changed, beyond the extensive talk of change. With regard to the broad themes associated with the Democratic Model, for leading Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) theorist Sheila Jasanoff, the need to pursue change is as strong now as it always was:

we need disciplined methods to accommodate the partiality of scientific knowledge and to act under irredeemable uncertainty. Let us call these the technologies of humility. These technologies compel us to reflect on the sources of ambiguity, indeterminacy and complexity … This call for humility is a plea for policy-makers to cultivate, and for universities to teach, modes of knowing that are often pushed aside in expanding scientific understanding and technological capacity. It is a request for research on what people value and why they value it. It is a prescription to supplement science with the analysis of those aspects of the human condition that science cannot easily illuminate. It is a call for policy analysts and policy-makers to re-engage with the moral foundations for acting in the face of inevitable scientific uncertainty. (Jasanoff, 2007)

There is undoubtedly much continuity in both the rhetoric and practice of governance. Regarding the rhetoric, in the United Kingdom one could point to any number of speeches by Prime Minister Tony Blair or his successors Gordon Brown and David Cameron celebrating natural science and its importance in a way that Porritt, Jasanoff and others would characterise as hubristic, exclusivist and deterministic (such as the one by Tony Blair I quoted from at the beginning of this chapter, and others I will refer to throughout this book). There is also a general sense of agreement with a point Jasanoff made in 1996, one that applies even more so today perhaps, that natural science is ‘the institution that many regard as the most potent source of authority in the modern world’ (Jasanoff, 1996, p. 393).

However, while most would agree that there is a good deal of continuity, some social scientists have suggested that we should be careful not to start from the a priori presumption that little or nothing has changed. Alan Irwin for example argues that:

the starting point for inquiry must be to view the new scientific governance as a legitimate object of study in itself. Rather than contrasting current discussions with some Habermasian ideal, seeking to squeeze them into one analytical model or else dismissing them as ‘business as usual’, it is important to approach these various statements as an expression of government thinking in the face of what is seen as a crisis of public trust in scientific institutions. (Irwin, 2006, p. 310)

In this book I consider the possibility of substantive change when taking stock of developments over the past 15 to 20 years, substantive change beyond the talk of change. Examining the nature of contemporary governance in this spirit raised the question, or the difficulty, of how to analyse changes in governance and how to weigh up the role of particular factors and agents in any change. This book provides some answers to the latter issue as it investigates the substantive question of the scale and nature of change in governance.

The focus and framing of governance

A distinction needs to be drawn between different aspects or components of natural science governance, which may depend in turn on the nature and the aspect of science under consideration. In the quote given above, Jasanoff is particularly critical of the use of or issues associated with science as authority. It is other things as well of course; notably science is a research activity, a practical process of inquiry and knowledge generation. Science is also closely entwined with innovation and economic activity, and much government activity as well as social science analysis is concerned with encouraging, attempting to channel and critiquing patterns of innovation and associated policies and ideas.

There are connections, clearly – prior claims about the state of knowledge point to and are used to justify research activities, as are promissory claims about the (projected) outcomes of research. Critical social science investigation and critique over the past 15 to 20 years has run up and down the continuum of science seeking to open up debate. Attempts have also been made to link a critical perspective on science trajectories to an analysis of the state of the human and natural environment and to economic, political and social theory. The Late lessons reports fall into this category, as does, for example, a substantial recent study, Emerging biotechnologies, from the UK’s influential Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which argues that innovation policy should be framed by caution, pluralism and diversity, operating on two levels at once, the technological and the social and political (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2012, paragraph 8.38).

In this book the focus is the governance and politics of bioscience as a research activity, and changes in governance and politics influenced by the Democratic Model. Of course in considering the overall patterns of governance, other factors are important, some might say more important in some contexts, than themes associated with the Democratic Model. One could consider the state of the economy. The role of ‘pro-science’ and ‘geek’ lobby groups and open source approaches to scientific research and data sharing are also important. Implicitly and to a degree explicitly I cover some of these issues, which is essential given the connections between the different aspects of science and science governance. However, my primary focus in this book remains the interactions between traditional, mainstream, approaches and newer ones associated with the Democratic Model. This is because o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 SSK’s Challenge to Natural Science Governance
• 3 The Changing Governance of Science?
• 4 Theorising Governance, Politics and Change
• 5 Precautionary Governance, Participation, Engagement, Tissue and Research
• 6 Engagement, Pluralism, Deliberation, Embryos and Research
• 7 The Changing Governance and Politics of Bioscience Research
• Appendix: List of Interviewees, in Date Order
• Bibliography
• Index