Biomedicine on Display

Part of the fun of being involved in a medical museum these days is that the notion of ‘biomedicine’ is so much broader than traditional medicine and health care taught in faculties of medicine and health science.

As a university institution for biomedical science communication we are, by default as it were, confronted with some of the most fundamental issues in the world today. Financial crisis, atomic weapon threats and global warming  aside — the rapid technical development in biology and biomedicine raises some pretty hefty social, political and ethical questions which we, as a museum, can hardly avoid dealing with if we want to stay just minimally atuned to the world around us.

Take the issue of synthetic biology. Forget about the potentials benefits and risks of stem cell biology, nanotech, gene therapy, and so forth. Synthetic biology — the design and construction of new biological systems not found in nature, for example, constructing living cells from simple molecules (proto-cells); creating new biological systems based on biochemical pathways not found in nature; etc — is potentially more powerful, not least for medical therapy and human enhancement. 

Is it safe and secure? Well, of course it isn’t! In yesterday’s issue of Public Service Review: Science and Technology, Markus Schmidt, who leads the SYNBIOSAFE project at the Organisation for International Dialogue and Conflict Management, raises some of the problems involved in the development of synthetic biology:

With the availability of genetic sequence information available on the internet and outsourcing of DNA synthesis to specialised synthesis companies, we are facing the risk that some person with malicious intents might place an order for pathogenic genes.

But there is always two sides to new technologies. In the future, more and more people will probably be able to construct new biological systems (read: democratic technology). Already, the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine competition in Boston invites students from all over the world to construct new biologies. And there are several DIY biotech groups who want to get the techne out of the laboratory, to bring it to the people. Such democratisation of synthetic biology might, as Schmidt rightly observes, lead to a creative revolution similar to that we have seen in the computer industry and the internet. Imagine synthbio 2.0 — love it or hate it.

Schmidt’s institute is only the last in a row of initiatives to discuss the safety and the political, governance and ethical issues involved in synthetic biology. Two years ago a report from the J. Craig Venter Institute discussed the governance problems associated with synthetic biology, and last year a report from the International Association of Synthetic Biology proposed a number of technical solutions for improved biosecurity. And there are several other initiatives around — enough to fill the agenda of a future-looking medical museum.

Schmidt’s analysis is expanded in M. Schmidt, A. Kelle, A. Ganguli-Mitra and H. de Vriend, eds., Synthetic Biology: The technoscience and its societal consequences (2009); there is also a 55 min video here: SYNBIOSAFE: Synthetic biology and its social and ethical implications.

In an interview for the Danish daily Information about his new book The Politics of Climate Change — which is scheduled for publication in May, with laudatory pre-blurbs by Martin Rees, Ulrich Bech and Bill Clinton on Amazon.com — British sociologist Anthony Giddens reminds us that Martin Luther King famously said ‘I have a dream’, not ‘I have a nightmare’. In other words: dystopian thinking is not a good basis for political action.

I guess he’s basically right. There is much that supports the idea that climate policy changes will be served better by what Giddens (1990) called ‘realistic utopianism’ than by fear scenarios (even though critical and negative scenarios sometimes are necessary stepping stones towards more positive agendas).

However, it makes me wonder: could the same reasoning be applied to the way we talk about biomedicine and medical technology?

I’m asking because almost everything I have read about biomedical and medical technology policy in books and articles by social scientists and humanities scholars over the last decades has been guided by what one could call a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion‘.

The scholarly literature is carried by a strong, mostly unexplicit, undercurrent of skepticism and negative criticism. Biomedicine and medical technology invariably poses ethical, political and social ‘problems’ and ’challenges’ — rarely opportunities, possibilities or means for liberation. Social science and humanities scholars writing about the future of biomedicine and medical technology have nightmares, rarely dreams.

I guess the ubiquity of this critical and negative scholarship could be understood as a kind of collective gut reaction against the commonplace (and often pretty naïve) scenarios of a bright biomedical and medicotechnological future envisioned by scientists and engineers. The biotech revolution has to a large degree been carried by enthusiastic utopianism. Pharma websites are cluttered with pictures of happy children playing on lush green meadows with beautiful mothers and benevolent-looking grandpas in the background.

So I understand the need for a balance. But why do we have to choose between naïve scientific and corporate enthusiasm on the one hand and academic skepticism on the other? Why is it so difficult for social science and humanities scholars to develop a more ‘realistic utopianism’ with respect to the future development of biomedicine and medical technology?

At the moment, academic designers (like Suzanne Lee) seem to be more upbeat than social scientists and humanities scholars. Could we learn from the attitude of bio-designers and bioartists to avoid the quagmire of negative scenarios?