What if scientists paid no attention to ethics?
He Jiankui’s genetically edited babies might be the best example to answer this.
By Aaron Zhao
It is important for ethics and scientists to get along, but when they don’t, various consequences can show up. From the general public reaction towards ethical breaches like the unauthorized human gene editing of He Jiankui and the harvesting of embryonic stem cells, it’s clear that ethical breaches are always met with backlash.
However, if we further analyze this question, we will see that if researchers decide not to pay any attention to ethics, their research results can actually lead to TWO scenarios:
- Innovation
- The collapse of their reputation and trustworthiness
The definition of ethics
Ethics is an obscure set of rules that apply to research, based off of morality. In other words, they are present to guide scientists into distinguishing what’s right and what’s wrong. There may be a rulebook for ethics that scientists should read, but generally speaking ethics is an instinct for researchers. Most people inherently know that killing another human being for research purposes has its moral violations.
It’s commonly thought that ethics is actually hindering innovation.
It’s not surprising why one would think this. Ethics encloses the mind’s expression in one or another. It sets an ambiguous boundary that prevents you from exploring options that may actually yield result for the sake of morality.
Human experimentation is a perfect example. Testing prototypes (like drugs) on humans can yield much more accurate results than that tested on other animals, but is usually met with disagreement. People don’t like the idea that their human peers are being injected with unknown substances and told, “Everything will be fine. You can rely on us to keep you safe.” Like in the case of He Jiankui, he indeed misled the patients into thinking they were only to receive an AIDS vaccine, not genetically modified embryos!
But whether you like it or not, he indeed created the world’s first genetically modified baby, a very, very significant accomplishment.
It is fair to say: if scientists paid no attention to ethics, they may potentially get results faster. However, this doesn’t mean their results will be legitimized or congratulated.
On the other hand, trustworthiness and reputation will fall.
He Jiankui’s case actually encompasses both scenarios at the beginning of this article. His genetically edited babies caused an uproar around the globe for his research. He was sentenced to 3 years of prison as a result of this. One of the worst things that could happen to a scientist is for their trustworthiness to cripple. Science is a practice based off of trustworthiness and reputation. It is a collaborative process. Without trust, who knows how another will carry out an experiment, or if their findings are even legit?
L. Song Richardson wrote in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology:
“The individuals escaping punishment are no ordinary individuals; rather, they are medical researchers whose exalted social status combined with the social benefits of their research appear to immunize them from punishment.”
This is a very broad generalization, but is true. When researchers are debunked of their ethical misconduct, damaged reputation is unavoidable.
It is hard to picture a world with no ethics.
You don’t learn ethics. It’s something that is innate, something you are born with. Morality cannot be learnt or taught. While It can be corrupted, on a fundamental level it is impossible to remove morality from human beings. In most cases, practicing anything without ethics will always end in a bad way.