If a Tree Falls in a Research Lab...?

Rice Bioethicists Explore the Intersection of Science and Philosophy

If stereotypes are to be believed, Rice’s campus geography mirrors the way the world sees the relationship between science and “human” explorations like art, literature, philosophy, and religion. On one side, white-coated inventors perilously design the future with little regard for its potential impact. On the other side, scholars fearfully eye scientific achievements from their ivory towers and fret about the technologically driven Armageddon brewing just across the Inner Loop.

What makes the headlines tends to reinforce preexisting stereotypes on both sides,” points out Andrew Lustig, director of Rice’s Program on Biotechnology, Religion, and Ethics. “There’s this big bad Frankenstein scientist over there and there are these religious leaders who are all basically Luddites.”

Lustig is one of the players in a humanities-based charge to buck such reductionist assumptions. Faculty in Rice’s philosophy and religious studies departments are not only taking on Rice’s cross-campus divide, but have successfully traversed a larger geographic and ideological gulf—the expanse separating Rice and the Texas Medical Center. Similarly, researchers in Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management recently received funding to assess “public trust” and its potential impact on the emerging field of nanotechnology. Ultimately, these faculty aim to engage deep questions at the intersection of science and the humanities, questions often muted by shrill public debates about abortion, stem-cell research, and human cloning.

Asking the Right Questions:
Baruch Brody and the Department of Philosophy

Leading the advance is Baruch Brody, who in 28 years with the Rice philosophy department has secured international stature in healthcare and research ethics. His reach is formidable. He directs Rice’s Program in Bioethics, a collaborative effort with the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine that is one of the two top programs of its type in the country. He heads the ethics program at Houston’s Methodist Hospital and helped found the Program on Biotechnology, Religion, and Ethics—the one directed by Lustig—and chairs that program’s coordinating committee. He has served on advisory boards and task forces at the National Institutes of Health, NASA, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; has authored or edited numerous volumes, articles, and chapters; and was elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine in 2001.

Brody’s compassion is just as powerful as his scholarship. After receiving a reporter in his office on the fourth floor of the 1950s-era Institute of Religion building in the Medical Center, Brody becomes concerned about an unusual cloying odor. Within minutes, he has evacuated his staff and members of a downstairs office to the outdoor courtyard. Between interview questions, he periodically trots off to grill a maintenance crew about the source of the smell. Paint cans in the basement are fingered as the likely culprit, and Brody and the other evacuees are allowed to return to their offices. “It’s better to be safe,” Brody says after the adventure. “You never know with these old buildings.”

It’s a mundane yet illustrative example of Brody’s motivations, a compassion for average citizens that spawned his interest in how ethics and morality work in everyday situations. He brushes aside questions about abortion, cloning, and stem cells and raises a skeptical eyebrow when asked about an interview on National Public Radio in spring 2003 about attempts to win a patent on half-human, half-chimpanzee chimeras.

“Freak cases,” he says dismissively. Abortion, for instance, he characterizes as “a topic where reasoned analysis does not play a major role in the debate.” Then he warns, “Remember, publicly visible doesn’t always mean bigger. These cases are esoteric, sexy, and attractive, but in many ways, they mask the truly significant issues.” The real issues, Brody says, critically underlie routine questions—whether, for example, ongoing research and development is promoted or squelched by patents on the basic tools of biotechnology, such as probes, gene sequences, or knock-out mice (mice genetically engineered without particular genes). Or whether the protocol in a particular clinical trial is safe for participants. Or how ethics committees in hospitals should be structured, who should serve on them, and what they should accept as their mandates.

Brody asserts that people are much more likely to be touched by these day-to-day ethical challenges than the ones making the headlines. Resolving both the low-profile and high-profile issues ultimately means engaging basic philosophical matters associated with justice, exploitation, choice, compromise, complicity, and morality. But, Brody laments, the people running bioethics programs in medical centers around the country often don’t have the theoretical grounding to identify the questions that need to be asked.

Brody’s philosophical partner in the endeavor, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Rice professor of philosophy, attributes this lack of sophistication to the near-sudden emergence of bioethics as a field of inquiry in the 1970s. In a recent paper titled “The Ordination of Bioethicists as Secular Moral Experts” (Social Philosophy and Policy, 19, 2: 59–82), Engelhardt argues that, as medicine became increasingly dependent on technology and externally imposed “standards” of care, the field needed an external source to provide guidance and set policy. Bioethics, he claims, stepped into this role, “fully-grown, like Athena from the head of Zeus.” Yet Engelhardt notes that most bioethicists—who today encompass lawyers, anthropologists, doctors, and philosophers—haven’t fully realized the power they wield.

“People take for granted that this is a field,” Engelhardt says. “But is it? It’s easy to come up with answers, but it’s a lot harder to know what the questions should be. Most people want to do something, but the philosopher says, ‘Stand there! Don’t do something! Think first!’”

Rice’s Program in Bioethics differs from other bioethics PhD programs in the country because it focuses on the philosophical foundation of bioethical questions while offering the chance to apply this foundational knowledge in a bioethical laboratory of sorts—the ongoing research and clinical activities at the Texas Medical Center. Certainly, graduates from Rice are fully capable of sitting on hospital ethics committees, as are graduates from other programs. But more often, graduates from Rice’s program are more interested in and more qualified for work in philosophy departments or other environments where they can contribute to scholarly literature in philosophy as applied to bio- and medical ethics.

A good example is J. Clint Parker, a resident in internal medicine at Pitt County Memorial Hospital in North Carolina and a recent graduate of the Program in Bioethics. Parker took time off from his medical studies at East Carolina University to study bioethics, and he selected Rice because of its strengths in philosophy. “Just as the basic sciences were the foundation for my clinical work as a physician,” says Parker, “I consider philosophy the foundation for particular questions in bioethics.”

Parker wanted to write a “basic philosophy and ethics dissertation,” one with applications to medicine rather than being about bio- or medical ethics. He chose the difficult subject of complicity. Parker’s thesis posits that complicit behavior should be defined as taking a “pro” stance toward a moral wrong, regardless of whether that stance in any way causes the wrong. His theory helps explain a range of behavior that causal definitions of complicity failed to address. One important application is in bioethics—Parker’s thesis addresses directly whether doctors, in supporting the desires of a patient, are necessarily complicit in controversial decisions such as abortions, stem-cell research, or physician-assisted suicides.

In addition to performing his resident duties, Parker is an adjunct professor in bioethics at East Carolina University. “I expect my philosophical background to feed into my medical career, and vice versa,” Parker says. “I would like for my interactions with patients in the clinic to be the stuff of my philosophical studies.” The ultimate goal, of course, is to codify these theories into practices that will improve doctor–patient interactions and the way healthcare is delivered. “Ultimately, none of this is an academic exercise,” Parker states. “Ethics demands action.”

Beyond Religion vs Science:
The Program on Biotechnology, Religion, and Ethics

When it comes to action, the Program on Biotechnology, Religion, and Ethics is writing the book. Literally. The primary deliverable from this program will be a three-volume set of research papers describing how different religious traditions define “nature” and “natural” and how these definitions inform believers’ attitudes and reactions to biotechnology and, by extension, scientific innovations in general. The papers will touch on everything from specific biotechnologies to legal and aesthetic ramifications and impacts. Conclusions from the study will, in turn, be made public and used to engage policymakers.

The goal is to move beyond the “usual religion vs science caricature” to address the true richness of religious responses to biotechnology, says Lustig, who directs the program, which was founded in 2001 through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Brody drove the initial grant submission, along with Lustig and former religious studies professor Gerald McKenny, who is still contributing to the effort in his new position in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. But with 46 participating faculty from around the country, the program is clearly a collaborative, multifaceted effort.

Faculty in the program are divided into nine working groups. Four of these groups are summarizing the religious and ethical response, or lack thereof, to four specific biotechnologies: assisted reproduction, human therapy and enhancement, hybridization, and biodiversity. The other five teams are engaging a series of questions under the rubric “concepts of nature”—these teams will explore what “nature” and “natural” mean across particular periods, cultures, and traditions. The religious and spiritual concepts of nature group is exploring ways that religious groups interpret nature; the philosophical concepts of nature group is looking at this same issue from a more secular perspective; representations of nature will be investigated by the aesthetic concepts of nature group; the science and medical concepts of nature group is focusing specifically on how humans and nature relate; and the final group is examining how nature is owned legally and economically. The independent conclusions of the nine research teams eventually will be integrated into a product that provides both a narrative of the discourse and an evaluation of how the positions taken by various faiths relate to their histories and ongoing inquiries into the human condition.

“The reason the Ford Foundation liked this project is they have a very real stake in wanting to assure that the wide range of voices relevant to policy get heard,” Lustig explains. In a world typically described by sound bites, the diversity of religious responses to science is often lost, both within and across traditions.

Lustig clarifies with some examples. Catholic position statements, for instance, can be negative about reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization but often defend genetic engineering in principle when it provides therapeutic benefit to individuals. Jewish material, he says, often sees biotechnology as an avenue for healing the brokenness of the world. Distilling these responses to their foundational roots not only will help policymakers engage concerns expressed by constituents of different faiths but may ultimately help religious groups ground their position statements more consistently and persuasively.

“We expect that our constructive and critical—in the literal sense—review may reveal how some traditions in their occasional statements on X, Y, or Z technology are not being consistent with the deepest impulses of their own traditions,” Lustig points out. “Our research may prompt them to go back and revisit their own understandings of God, the world, and nature, before they go off prematurely in sound bites.”

Neal Lane, University Professor and senior fellow in the Baker Institute for Public Policy, is serving as a liaison on the scientific and medical concept of nature group. Lane’s interest in the project stems from his experience in Washington, D.C., as head of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and science adviser to President Clinton.

“Industry ultimately tends to do whatever it wants, within the constraints of what government lets it do,” Lane says. “And policymakers do what the public lets them do. I believe in separation of church and state, but in truth, religion is a highly relevant, important force in society. This project stands to provide some solid research outcomes and scholarship that, while not writing policy directly, may enable us to think of a way to translate the results into the right words and the right remedy that could find a way into policy.”

The Reality in Perception:
Public Trust and Nanotechnology

In working to codify religious responses to biotechnology, the Program on Biotechnology, Religion, and Ethics recognizes the critical role public opinion can have on the adoption and development of new technologies. Effects can be profound—just ask Monsanto, which is still reeling from the public’s aversion to genetically modified foods—a reaction that has locked the technology out of entire regions, such as Europe.

So it makes sense that scientists working in nanotechnology, a field being popularized through movies (Spiderman), TV shows (Jake 2.0), and books (Michael Crichton’s Prey), might look to biotechnology as a teacher. For if nanotechnology is truly going to revolutionize industries from manufacturing to medicine, it is going to have to surmount public perception already labeling it, at best, a science-fiction fad, or at worst, a pending environmental disaster of “grey goo.”

In just its third year of funding from the NSF, Rice’s Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) has become the international hub for discussions about the safety of planned and potential nanotechnology products. Its research focuses not only on biological and environmental applications of nanotechnology—everything from cancer cures to more efficient water filtration systems—but on the ramifications of this technology as it approaches commercialization. The center is looking at critical questions such as how nanostructured materials behave differently from their larger-scale cousins and the extent to which these differences should be considered in product development.

Now, in addition to exploring the science-side of nanotechnology, CBEN will be investigating public perception of the technology. What does the public think about how much attention scientists and companies put into assessing environmental and health risks associated with lab discoveries and new technologies? The research is funded primarily through CBEN’s NSF funds, though the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship also is contributing to the study.

The study is an outgrowth of ongoing research into trust and its impact on business and conflict management—research conducted by Steven Currall, the William and Stephanie Sick Professor of Entrepreneurship and associate professor of management, psychology, and statistics in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management. Currall is advising Eden King, a doctoral student in industrial and organizational psychology, on the CBEN project.

Trust, Currall says, is defined as a decision to rely on another person under a condition of risk. One question regarding nanotechnology is whether the public trusts scientists or engineers or business developers to do the right thing, but perhaps more important is the impact that suspicion or mistrust may have on technologies as they are introduced.

“Our expectation is that if people perceive that scientists and engineers and companies do consider thoughtfully the impact of their work, this will ultimately help the technology gain standing in the marketplace,” Currall says. “Conversely, mistrust will make it harder for the technology to fly. Either way, our study will help scientists understand public perception so that they can take it into account in their research and product strategies.”

With science becoming embroiled in everyday activities and decisions, it’s increasingly important for someone to stand between disciplines. Whether they are contributing to scholarly arguments, guiding policy decisions, or advising scientists and businesses about how to communicate more effectively with the public, look for Rice scholars to continue to ask—and answer—the urgent ethical questions arising at the confluence of science and the humanities.