Stories – several stories to tell today.

Chapter #1

(Air Pump)

This particular version comes from classic STS work

The episode in question involves a controversy between two of the leading

intellectual figures in England at the time.

1. Robert Boyle: leading intellectual figure of the 17th century and one
of the founders of modern chemistry. One of the founders of the
Royal Society of London. Boyle believed that scientific knowledge
(or natural philosophy) should be generated through experiment,
and that Matters of fact” about the world could be produced
through experiments.
2. Thomas Hobbes disagreed. Hobbes, is a philosopher, (1651) book
Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most
later Western political philosophy. In Hobbes view, Boyle’s
experimental procedure could never produce the degree of certainty
that he believed was necessary for any philosophical field (for
example, Geometry)

Third character: not a human, but an apparatus, an unruly

technology: the air pump. Before the air pump, there had been other
instruments for measure natural phenomena, but this device is able to
create conditions that previously did not exist naturally…a vacuum. It
inaugurated the advent of laboratory science…a new kind of science
that was able to create artificial conditions from which to generate
knowledge about the natural world.

Hobbes and Boyle begin a back and forth in published works.

From our perspective, it seems that the outcome was a foregone

conclusion. Of course Hobbes would lose (40 years older). But at the
time, lets imagine how novel and threatening this idea was – that
knowledge could be created inside a laboratory, with a limited number
of observers, and what is more, with unreliable devices that created
artificial conditions that were hard to reproduce exactly.
But Shapin and Shaffer conclude that there was much more at stake
than whether the experimental device was accurate. It was also a
question of politics. What Hobbes feared, therefore, was not the air
pump, but a new style of reasoning that (available to a select few –
scientists) that could challenge traditional sovereign authority

What counts and knowledge and valid “evidence”? This was during the
Reformation, when political stability was the goal, and a universal
truth might prevent further splintering of factions. Both Boyle and
Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that would preserve
social order and consensus. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued
that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that
gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone
agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for it in natural law and sovereignty and
viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild.

I don’t think I have to tell you who won the dabate…contemporary science still
follows the scientific method that Hobbes and the Royal Society established.

Solutions to the problems of knowledge are solutions to the problems of

the social order (332)

Or, in other words, the way we order science and technology (as
knowledge and practice) has repercussions in the social and political
domains.

Hopefully that will become clearer in my next story.

Chapter 2 starts in UC Berkeley, and I’m a character.

2005- started working at UC Berkeley, OPHS. Administration/support for

the university’s IRB.

IRB

The system of human research regulation came out of a long history of

codes and guidelines established over the past century.

TIMELINE – Nuremberg Code to the (over 30 years) establishment of

Human research regulations. During this time, though we had tried and
convicted the Nazi physicians and resaerchers for their violations of
international ethical standards, US researchers continued practices that
were in direct violation of the Nuremberg Code. Through the 70s, the
majority of phase I trials in the US (first in human trials to evaluate
safety/side effects).

Ok so back to the story.

Imagine you’re about to be a freshman in college (it’s the summer) and you
get a package in the mail from Virginia Tech. As part of your orientation
experience, you are invited to submit a saliva sample for three genetic
markers (not sensitive or potentially health-related). You don’t have to do
anything, but those who participate can go on a website and enter a code
that matches their sample to get the results.

How many of you would submit a sample?

This particular project crossed my desk – I flagged it as potentially

problematic and worked with the committee to get it to what I though
“approvable” state as far as consent and privacy, which were my main
concerns.

Principles

Questions we asked:

Will subjects (including minors) give fully informed consent?

Will privacy and confidentiality be protected?

Will risk be minimized?

Questions we should have asked

Larger social/political implications of direct to consumer testing?

What are other possible interpretations of results and the risks?

What indirect financial interests do researchers have?

What types of behaviours and orienations to the world are being
encouraged?
How might we include a broader constituency in the decision?

Who will benefit, how much, and does it reflect justice?

Bioethics as Biopolitics