CCEPA Blog

By Pam Gill and Sam Chown

He who pays the piper calls the tune. If true, then the public should start investing more in its health care research.

At least that’s what a group of academics argued at the University of King’s College on Monday, February 15th, 2010. The group of four panelists assembled in Alumni Hall to discuss the implications of pharmaceutical industry influence from the laboratory to the marketplace. The debate entitled “Just in Time: Healthy Research?” was jointly organized by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs and Situating Science.

The panel arguing for government investment and public regulation of medical research was Jocelyn Downie, from Dalhousie University, Faculties of Law and Medicine; Chris MacDonald of Saint Mary’s University, Department of Philosophy and Francoise Baylis of Novel Tech Ethics and Dalhousie University’s Department of Bioethics.

Rounding out the panel was crowd favorite, Don Weaver, of Dalhousie University’s Department of Chemistry and School of Biomedical Engineering who indulged in his role as “the industry villain”.

Baylis opened up the debate by airing her distrust in the industry, which she says is rightfully warranted because often their sole objective is to please shareholders and generate a profit. She says the public should be more concerned with how “our” tax dollars are being spent. “What we’re really talking about is something that has been a concern to academics for ten years,” she says.

Downie agreed saying that universities have to respond to the need of the public, especially for the vulnerable and pursue those needs through their research.

“We’re a public institution, we should be serving the public interest,” she says.

MacDonald followed, saying universities researching or developing a particular drug may have their mission corrupted by pharmaceutical companies eager to intrude with funding, and private interests.  But he adds that banning pharmaceutical money altogether would be unreasonable.

Industry is good at fulfilling the public interest’s “wants” such as producing drugs like Viagra, but not necessarily their “needs” such as drugs for Malaria, said MacDonald. But that research isn’t extended to the “orphan” community unless a profit is somehow involved.

Weaver rebutted saying heath care is dependant on industry. “All drugs out there come from industry,” he said.

He reminded the audience that industry is ever growing, changing and improving.  He says it is patient and not expecting to make an immediate profit.  In a perverse way, this is best for public interest because shareholders want pharmaceutical companies to be around for a long time.  In order for that to happen, companies need to produce products that are both safe and effective and will eventually turn a profit.

Downie acknowledged that the blame doesn’t rest on the scientists themselves but rather the companies funding and deciding their research.  A hazard of this is that attention is diverted away from breakthrough medical advances and towards more commercial successes.

A solution brought up by Baylis is that the government start regulating research dollars. She said about $172 billion is spent on Canadian health care annually, but less than 1 per cent of that total goes towards research and development.  It’s an issue of reorganizing our priorities. Baylis says at least 3 per cent of the annual budget should be reinvested into R&D and this would have astronomical benefits.

By the time the floor opened to questions, many members of the audience took the opportunity to express their own concerns and discontent towards the industry.  But the debate is far from achieving any concrete solutions. Market-led development has too many strings attached to truly benefit the public interest.  At the moment it is worth considering the potential that the public has to reform industry’s influence on research.

The debate now is how to make this happen…

Go ahead and make fun of religion

By Mark Mercer

Published in the Ottawa Citizen Jan. 15, 2010

Mocking religion has been good sport among artists, intellectuals, and comedians for thousands of years. That means that the sport as currently practiced has the weight of custom or tradition behind it.

Now relativists about value think that an action that has the weight of custom or tradition behind it cannot be criticised as ethically unsound and, so, should be protected from those who disapprove of it. Relativists, then, should be happy to insist that mockers of religion be allowed to have their fun. Those of us who are not relativists but who value freedom of expression should be equally happy to insist on this.

There’s much to be said against making fun of religion and religious believers, and certainly some instances of mockery are puerile, intemperate, or obnoxious. But what can’t be said against it is that it is cruel. It’s not, at least not in the way making fun of the lame or the dim is cruel. Neither the lame nor the dim chose their condition, and they cannot choose to escape it. That’s not true of the religious.

Making fun of religion is like making fun of bad taste. It’s making fun of something that’s up to individuals themselves, something for which individuals are willing to take responsibility. It’s open to the religious believer, just as it is to the connoisseur of felt paintings, to disabuse her critics of their false evaluation of her attitudes.

Mockery of religion can have a serious point, though good mockery needn’t and often doesn’t. It can be an attempt to rid people of religion, or of the need they feel to have a religion. It can be a rallying call to defend secularity or to oppose the deference authorities often show to religious sensibilities. More than a few teenagers, I suspect, owe a debt of gratitude to the likes of Sarah Silverman or Sam Harris, for enabling them to acknowledge their doubts about their religious heritage and to reject that heritage.

For a long time, mocking religion was a fairly safe pastime. One who publicly ridiculed religion wasn’t risking much.

That hasn’t always been so. Consider Diagoras of Melos, the late fifth-century BCE philosopher also known as Diagoras the Atheist.

On a ship during a rough crossing, Diagoras heard the conjecture that it was God’s displeasure with him that had caused the storm. Diagoras wondered aloud whether Diagoras was also on each of the other ships out that night.

Diagoras wasn’t always content to wait for a straight man. Throwing a small wooden statue of Heracles on the fire, he commanded “Perform your thirteenth miracle! Cook my turnips!”

Diagoras lived in Athens as a resident alien, as many artists, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs from throughout the Greek world did. But he fled Athens, with the price of a silver coin on his head. Diagoras had told the Athenians that the fact that a particular act of injustice went unpunished showed that the gods do not exist. The unjust act he had in mind was the murder by the Athenians of the people of Melos.

We are again living in a time when making fun of religion or the religious is dangerous. Perhaps this time began on 14 February 1989, the day a price was put on Salman Rushdie’s head. In fact, we should set the date a little later, when the weak response by Western governments to this call for murder gave the violent impetus and unnerved the fun loving.

Things have not let up, as the recent attack on a Jyllands-Posten cartoonist shows us. The violent got their way when governments, newspapers, and even universities, including my own, sided with those who demanded solace for their hurt feelings, or else. (Sadly, my university caved without even requiring the “or else.”) Nowadays, political leaders in Ireland and other European countries are busy rehabilitating laws against blasphemy. We’re kidding ourselves if we expect better from our own leaders.

Probably the best way to decrease the danger would be to meet it head on. That would be to take up mocking religion and the religious in earnest.

As part of this effort, I’ll make a small snow Mohammed and set him next to some waist-high drift that’s been causing pedestrians grief. “C’mon, Mohammed,” I’ll say, “you were able to multiply the waters. Surely you can divide this mound.”

No, I won’t. Too dangerous. Diagoras would have, though.

Mark Mercer
Department of Philosophy
Saint Mary’s University
Halifax, NS B3H 3C3
(902) 420-5825
mark.mercer@smu.ca

—30—

The Cranky Professor can be seen in The Journal, the student newspaper at Saint Mary’s University, Vol. 75, No. 12, November 25th, 2009

We manifest disrespect for others when we manipulate them, humiliate them, or unfairly burden them. It’s pretty clear what manipulation and humiliation con

Dr. Mark Mercer is a professor of Philosophy at Saint Mary's University, in Halifax. You can contact him at mark.mercer@smu.ca.

sist in. And it’s pretty clear what it is to burden someone. But what is it to burden someone unfairly?

We continually burden people. We burden others over and over again in the course of every ordinary day. Roger wants to watch the news, but you’re watching Law and Order. Sally needs to get to class on time, but you’re standing around talking with your friends, clogging up the halls. Martin is offended by the sight of a breast, but your baby’s hungry. You’ve burdened Roger, Sally, and Martin, and yet you’ve not manifested disrespect toward any of them. You’ve not manifested disrespect because you did not impose the burden unfairly.

What makes a burden imposed on another a burden imposed unfairly is that it is imposed in violation of a rule or norm or custom in place at the time of the burdening. This is a necessary condition, perhaps not always sufficient. That is to say, any instance of a burden imposed unfairly is simultaneously an instance of a norm being violated, but maybe not every instance of a norm being violated is also an instance of a burden being imposed unfairly.

The rules, norms, and customs by which burdening can be disrespectful are often explicitly formulated and set down in words, but not always. Few, though, are codified in law, and that’s how it should be, for law ought to deal with serious harms only, and not all burdens are harms, let alone serious harms. Often enough, a rule, norm, or custom will consist in tacit understandings of how things are done around here, who has the right of way. Waiting in line, turn taking, first-come, first-served-one or another is the custom in this area of interpersonal life, another in a different area. By violating a rule, norm, or custom that’s in place, the burden one imposes on another becomes a burden imposed unfairly, and to impose a burden on another unfairly is to treat that other disrespectfully.

Since rules, norms, and customs change over time, so over time do the forms disrespectful treatment can take change. And since rules, norms, and customs differ society to society, so, too, differ the forms disrespectful treatment can take society to society.

Rules, norms, and customs are themselves, of course, sometimes burdensome, and sometimes we have reason to try to change them. One way that sometimes works to change them is to violate them. Violating a rule, norm, or custom can show people what it is like to live with different rules, norms, or customs; people, seeing the attractions of living with the different ones, will begin to violate the old ones, perhaps thereby bringing new ways to the common life.
Though we find we have reason to violate a norm, we should not think that whatever burdens we impose on others when we violate it we do not impose unfairly. The burden we impose is one we impose unfairly. Our actions manifest some degree of disrespect for the other. That we judge it all things considered better to pursue our end at the cost of treating some person disrespectfully than to surrender our end does not mean we should deny that our pursuit involves treating that person disrespectfully.

One thing to prize in open, democratic, individualistic societies is our custom of distinguishing offence and hurt feelings from harm. This is something to prize as it gains for us much freedom in how we live our lives. Martin, remember, was deeply offended by your breastfeeding your baby in the restaurant. But because the custom in place around here is to distinguish offence from harm, his being offended is his problem, not yours. He cannot legitimately expect you not to bare your breast in his presence to feed your baby. And so you did not burden him unfairly, though burden him you did.

Martin may, without thereby treating you disrespectfully, ask you to go elsewhere to feed your baby. (If you take offense at his mere request, that’s your problem, not his.) And you may decline his request, again without thereby treating him disrespectfully. Now, if Martin continues to ask you to cease-or, worse, makes a fuss about your breastfeeding-, Martin has begun to treat you badly, for Martin is burdening you in violation of a custom in place. It’s Martin’s sensitivities that are at fault here, not your insensitivity to his sensitivities.

Doing something that offends another can be to treat that other disrespectfully. And making a big deal about one’s being offended can also be to treat another disrespectfully.

The Cranky Professor can also be seen in the The Journal, the student newspaper at Saint Mary’s University, Vol. 75, No. 11, November 18th, 2009.

Dr. Mark Mercer is a professor of Philosophy at Saint Mary's University, in Halifax. You can contact him at mark.mercer@smu.ca.

There are three ways in which we treat other people disrespectfully. We manipulate them, we humiliate them, and we burden them. Whenever we treat a person disrespectfully, we express some degree of contempt for her.

Treating people disrespectfully consists in failing to acknowledge through one’s actions that other people’s projects are as significant to them as one’s own are to oneself. We treat others disrespectfully when we don’t care that they are living lives that matter to them.

We manipulate another when we get that person to assist us in our own projects independently of her will to help to us. That is, we manipulate another when we trick her into giving us assistance, when we arrange things so that her consenting to help us is not free or informed. Manipulating another is disrespectful and contemptuous because in manipulating that other, one gives scant regard to her existence as a person in her own right.

Lying is always manipulative and, thereby, always disrespectful-even when it is done benevolently, even when it succeeds in making things better for the person lied to, and even when it does this at some cost to the liar. A liar uses another person to attain her ends independently of the other person’s free and informed consent to be used toward those ends. That is contempt, no matter what good results from it.

Notice here that manifesting disrespect for a person doesn’t require that the other be aware of our contempt, of our failure to appreciate her personhood. We can treat another disrespectfully though neither she nor anyone else ever notices. And, as we’ve seen, manifesting disrespect for another need not harm her, nor harm anyone else.

Those of us who wish never to treat others disrespectfully as well as to help make things better sometimes find ourselves unable to fulfil both wishes. To keep peace among our colleagues, we must lie to Sally; to treat Sally with respect we must speak honestly to her, though doing so will produce bad feelings and hostility all around.

No argument can show that we should value good consequences over respect or respect over good consequences, and no argument can establish at which degree of badness one should put respect aside. (We can’t imagine what it would be to make a mistake about these things, so we have no idea what getting them right could consist in.) For my own part, I prefer respect over producing good outcomes, and even over avoiding bad ones-except when the bad outcome threatens to be really bad. (Or so at least I say. My actions, I fear, might speak differently. I might choose being nice over being respectful more often than I imagine.)

We humiliate another when we make her feel small in her own eyes. We humiliate her when we cause her to find her projects and feelings insignificant or foolish-in comparison, that is, to our own. We certainly have our reasons for humiliating others, just as we do for manipulating them. Humiliating others can be an enjoyable expression of one’s power, or an effective means of elevating oneself above the other.

We burden others when we force them to deal with us, to look after us, to clean up the mess we have left behind. Of the three forms of disrespect, burdening is perhaps the least studied, the least understood. Philosophers who prefer good consequences to respectful treatment are right to note that burdening usually creates bad consequences, but the bad consequences are incidental to the contempt it expresses.

Some simple examples of burdening: littering; walking slowly three abreast on a public sidewalk; talking while the movie’s playing; playing music loudly in your apartment. These are examples of someone depriving others of an enjoyment or getting in their way. They also illustrate the fact that one need not intend to treat others disrespectfully to burden them. Burdening, that is, can result simply from insensitivity, indifference, or inattention. This is a way in which burdening differs from both manipulating and humiliating.

But of course we live among others and so we are always getting in each other’s way. Getting in someone’s way, then, cannot, all by itself, be disrespectful. Moreover, it’s often because of your temperament or prejudices that you charge me with having got in your way. It’s just as easy in such cases for me to say that it’s you who is burdening me, you being so delicate and all, and to deny that I’m burdening you.

No, getting in another person’s way is not in itself disrespectful. What matters is whether the burden is imposed fairly. One treats another contemptuously when one burdens that other unfairly. Our task now is to think hard about in what fairness and lack of fairness could consist here.

STORY, PHOTOS, and SLIDESHOW by GEOFF DAVIES

SLIDESHOW - Hear Dr. Nik Rose on new views of humanity

A half-packed hall heard Dr. Nik Rose reveal the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. For free.

And just like in the Hitchhiker’s Guide, it’s 42.

But as Dr. Rose explains, it’s four AND two, four being the number of bases in DNA, and two referring to the 1s and 0s of binary code.

Not only do these numbers shape lifeforms, says Dr. Rose, but also our new understanding of how these numbers work has reshaped how we view lifeforms.

Ourselves included.

Dr. Rose presented this idea - borrowed from Yang Huanming at the Beijing Genomics Institute - and others in his lecture Engineering Selfhood in the 21^st Century on Oct. 13, 2009 at the University of King’s College. It was the first in the Trust in the New Sciences: Remaking the Human lecture series, put on jointly by CCEPA and the Situating Science Cluster.

“We’re in the middle of a transformation and we don’t know how it will end,” says Dr. Rose, an expert in bioscience at the London School of Economics. “Some new image of the human is beginning to emerge.”

There was a time when a person’s ability to change their body only went skin-deep, says Dr. Rose. Back then we could tattoo each other, or change our appearances with plastic surgery.

Now, with advancements in genetic science, we understand how our bodies work at a molecular level, and we’re starting to figure out how to retool ourselves at that level, says Dr. Rose.

Dr. Rose argues that this new power is having a profound impact on both the bodies and souls of humanity. We can’t simply see ourselves as just a brain or just a body anymore, because we can now intervene and manipulate both. We can no longer cordon off the realm of selfhood as sacred and untouchable. Instead, we now see ourselves as a bundle of genetic factors, each helping to create the self. Whether it’s my blue eyes, my predisposition to the piano, or how I’m prone to Celiac disease, I can now pin responsibility on my genes. And I can change my genes.

In this way, Dr. Rose says, scientific understanding has led to humanity adopting a new responsibility and a new control over humans. A barrier has been broken, and now the question we face is where to build the next one.

As our ability to intervene on ourselves grows, so does the urgency of the ethical questions at hand. Genetic science has shattered many tenets of traditional humanism, causing lots of philosophical grief, says Dr. Rose. One of the many questions we must now ask is How far is too far?

But we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves just yet. Despite the fact that there are even little businesses popping up built around mapping one’s personal genetic code – Scan Me, Decode Me, and others – we’re closer to the beginning of this scientific revolution than the end, says Dr. Rose. Cloning Dolly didn’t give us divine power, and to think otherwise is scientific hubris, he says.

But the bottom line is we can now pop the hood of the human being. We’d better do some thinking before we throw a wrench in the works.

Dr. Nik Rose’s lecture was the first in the five-part series Trust in the New Sciences: Remaking the Human. Between October and April, CCEPA and the Situating Science Cluster will be taking this show on the road, with lectures in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, and Halifax. Check out the next one in Vancouver on Jan. 26: Science Friction: Personalised Genomics and the Future of Medicine, with Drs. Michael Hayden and Anita Ho.