IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 49

work as expert advisors for the
committees and subcommittees in
the Congress and the various agencies in the Executive Branch. The
National Academy of Science is
the primary workhorse and works
in the background to provide the
technical expertise and experience
to such risk assessments.
Importantly, this process is
greatly affected - enhanced and/or
hindered - by the information technology revolution too. More and
more groups are performing "sunlight" activities (official and unofficial investigation and comment)
on what government-sponsored
research is doing and they are
reporting their findings and analyses and sometimes their diatribes
in various types of web-based
multimedia products. The general
public is exposed to more information and yet the public is also challenged with a task of raising their
scientific and political literacy in
order to make sense of what may
or may not be present in scientific
research today [see Sidebar].

technology, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and the ethics
of these issues. Furthermore, we
train students to develop their own
critical and analytical minds to
continue the process of elucidating
the problems and potential solutions that will arise from genomicinformed therapies.
It is reasonable to place ethical
understanding, analysis, and training into the core curriculum for indepth training along with all of the
physical and life science courses.
Also, some of the ethics courses
should be controlled to consist of
a diversity of university/college/
community
students/laypersons
that will result in a cross section of
community as one community or
a plethora of communities might
encounter in multiple dimensions
a genomic-informed therapy or

Knowledge and Wisdom:
Rational Methods and
Normative Outcomes
Borrowing from Robert Nozick's
thought experiment - The Experience Machine [12] we put forth the
idea of the necessity of building a
Wisdom Machine. Building upon
Dr. Charles L. Harper's (The John
Templeton Foundation) ideas about

Allowing the Fox to Guard the Henhouse
Consider Dr. James Watson's 2003 thoughts on a real ethics process that he himself
proposed to much acclaim at the NIH to ostensibly govern and regulate work on
Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of genetic therapy in human beings.
Not that Watson has ever put much stock in "ethics." At a recent NIH symposium
honoring Watson, he was hailed for having proposed that 3 percent of the human
genome project budget be devoted to exploring the ethical, legal, and social implications of the research. No one, however, bothered to mention legal scholar Lori
Andrews' witnessing of Watson explaining his real agenda in setting up a bioethics
component of the genome project.

Transformational Education
and Community Engagement
Improvements upon present regulatory and advisory processes in
genomic-informed therapies and
related weaponry/defense applications will be best accomplished
through transformational education and community engagement.
We have attended numerous highlevel advisory body meetings on
issues of biological and neurological scientific research and clinical
activities (i.e., President Clinton's
National Bioethics Advisory Council and President Bush's Council
on Bioethics.) Both were excellent public forums where scholars and laypersons alike could
engage some of the top researchers and thinkers on biological
issues of the day. We have taught
and continue to teach university
and college students in seminars
designed around these issues to
become educated in the science,
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

weapon/defense application in all
of its complexity. When scientists
serve in such advisory bodies in
their later careers and encounter the politician, the retiree, the
immigrant, the priest, the conspiracy theorist, or the president - it
will not be the first time that they
attempt to work toward a common
good that happens to not be made
up of all genetics students in a university laboratory.

"I wanted a group that would talk and talk and never get anything done,"
Andrews quotes Watson as telling a meeting. "And if they did do something, I wanted them to get it wrong. I wanted as its head Shirley Temple
Black."
Since re-engineering humans according to Watson's program arguably not only
affects all future generations but at least theoretically raises the prospects of altering the species itself, some would claim that this is a choice for the global village
of humanity to make, not individuals or even nations. Needless to say, this idea is
repellant to Watson.
"I think it would be a complete disaster to try and get an international
agreement," he asserted. "You end up with the lowest possible denominator. Agreement among all the different religious groups would be impossible. About all they'd agree upon is that they should allow us to breathe
air. ... I think our hope is to stay away from regulation and laws whenever
possible."
We have taught ELSI university courses for biotechnology programs and posed
Watson's comments to our students to consider in light of their careers as biotechnology professionals. Among many anecdotes that we have received - prior to
more formal analysis - a favorite was "should we let the fox guard the henhouse?"

SUMMER 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013