Regulating the research enterprise: international norms and the right to bodily integrity in human experiment litigation

Issues in Law & Medicine, Fall, 2007 by John Lunstroth

Science is a complex social phenomenon, hut morally the picture can be expressed somewhat simply. It is an amoral, self-regulating, entity with a tremendously ambiguous position on private property. On the one hand scientific knowledge is the property of everyone, and on the other hand scientific discoveries and technology are highly coveted things that can be owned, at least nominally, and profited from. It claims to exist on a "higher moral plane" than the rest of society, and from its empyrean, rational heights it asserts objective and absolute "truths" that create their own moral environment, since morality follows ontology. Because internally it seeks to purge itself of value judgments and metaphysics, from subjectivity and ethics, then its moral dictates to society at large must be the same (free of such constraints). And here is the rub. The idea that society can function without moral values is untenable. The idea that society should, contradictorily, hold science up as the primary, or a highly privileged, value is likewise untenable, since science does not, cannot, provide ethical guidelines for living things. (27) It cannot "see" living things by its own admission, rather what it "sees" are technology and logic, biomechanical and biochemical objects. For example, science cannot see human rights, dignity, or any of the bases of law and politics. Science cannot "see" the qualities of life that underlie any other social institutions, including Hippocratic medicine. (28)

The foregoing explains why the most serious challenges to the autonomy of science arise when its inquiries are into the nature of human life. Experimentation with humans for medical and other purposes is now regulated after a fashion, and there is ongoing anxiety about scientific and technological incursions into the human genome (genetics) and neurological system (neuroscience). Krimsky notes the regulation of human experimentation is a constraint on science, but characterizes it not as a threat to the moral autonomy of science, hut rather a sign of the emergence of a "new concept of scientific autonomy and public responsibility." If by this Krimsky means that science has to engage in accountability procedures because its acts, or seeks to act, on the public body, I agree. If by this he means that science has lost some autonomy, I do not agree, as the research enterprise is only accountable to itself, and there are no accountability procedures with ethical content at all in genetics and neuroscience. Regardless of the self-characterization of science, it is reasonable for society to ignore its claims and assign to it, science, the same duties and responsibilities it assigns to all other social institutions, regardless of the political theory by which social justice is determined.

As a matter of principle, human experimentation is dehumanizing because it only sees biochemical, or animate, machines that fit into its statistical protocols. This is not to say human experimentation per sc is unjust, hut it is a warning sign that society should not simply accept the representations of science. It should be a red flag to health workers and their educational institutions that science is at best a double-edged sword. Although technology provides benefits, the benefits do not mean, contrary to the message that comes with the benefits, that science can provide moral guidance to humanity or medicine. The moral position of the research enterprise is categorically incompatible with received notions of dignity and social justice, however, the ethos of sacrifice could complicate the moral picture considerably.