Communitarianism

My first time through Daniel Callahan’s Individual Good and Common Good, I was struck by a comment he made in the analytical virtues section.  Callahan suggests that, “the social sciences provide a useful source of insight.”  I thought of what Sujatha Raman and Richard Tutton concluded in Life, Science, and Biopower: it seemed to me that their summation was that Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose had over-simplified a much more complex issue or group of interwoven issues.  It gave me a little chuckle because I thought: here is Callahan the distinguished and authoritative scientific voice proclaiming that the social sciences can help provide an answer!  And then, over there, we have four social scientists disagreeing on the answer and two of them stating that there is no single easy answer!  It was a bit amusing until I realized that providing insight does not mean providing an answer to the currant debate over how bioethical concerns should be viewed and explored.  The insights provided by the social sciences help to frame the issues and to inform the debate.

One of the main points of Callahan’s article is that he feels the field of bioethics should be interdisciplinary.  “No one discipline, whatever its foundation, can claim a privileged place.”  I like this idea.  Having a firm ideological stance seems like it would trap you into a position where you would not be able to deal effectively with the innumerable potential benefits and detractions of all that is promised in genomics and the life sciences.  An interdisciplinary approach leaves you free to take the tools you need from whatever source is best equipped to deal with the nuances of that will arise as we move forward.  As Callahan describes it, communitarianism seems particularly well placed to provide a good starting point for the variety of interdisciplinary approaches that could be put into play.  The individual ramifications of applying new technologies are important to consider but far more important a question is what effect it will have on the larger population.

Autobiographies

The article Understanding the Human Genome Project: a biographical approach by Hub Zwart (who has an awesome name)describes the recent autobiographies of three of the chief scientists involved in the human genome project.  It is because they were chief that they had the necessary visibility to be able to write autobiographies.  As Zwart puts it they represent, “the larger research communities they are involved in.”  In this sense, they are able to provide insights into how the whole process that was the Human Genome Project ran as a going concern.  They also represent an insider’s view of what is usually not seen by the public until it is presented as a finished project.  I thought this distinction between esoteric and exoteric communication presented in the article was an interesting one.  The process of actual scientific research is open to every qualified participant but the general public does not have the training or the interest to follow the complexities of that research and so there is exoteric communication—journalists writing, interviews and these autobiographies.  In analyzing the memoirs of John Sulston, Francis Collins and Craig Venter, Zwart is arguing that they provide some benefit in understanding the history of the events in which each author describes his part.  They provide a human element: “They reveal and bring into the open what tends to be forgotten or even consciously ‘repressed’ in more formal self-presentations of science and scientists.”  It is good to be reminded that this was a human effort and, as such, was full of all the drama that usually entails.  Zwart makes his argument well: there is much to be gained in looking at a more complete picture when trying to sum up the importance and the significance of the Human genome Project in particular and in all scientific endeavors in general.