Biotech companies face backlash if no ethical debate
RTw 30.11.98 10:52
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By Marie McInerney
ADELAIDE, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Scientists and biotechnology
companies pursuing genetic research should promote full and open
debate on their work or risk public backlash which could halt
their studies, a leading bioethicist said on Monday.
Senior Australian judge Michael Kirby told Reuters the debate on
the cloning of human cells, sparked by the cloning of Dolly the
sheep in Scotland in 1996, highlighted the risks when science
outstrips debate on ethics.
"Unless there is a proper, thorough explanation to the
community of the scientific arguments for cloning, the natural
response of a community ignorant of the potential benefits is to
simply say 'this is unnatural...we should ban it'," he said.
Kirby is a member of the bioethics committees of the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO) and the Human Genome Project, an international effort to
map and sequence all human genes.
Public fears sparked by the cloning of Dolly were heightened this
month with the cloning in the United States of an adult human
cell.
Scientists at the Massachusetts-based biotech company Advanced
Cell Technology said they had fused human cells into cow eggs to
grow stem cells for tissue transplants, not to grow an embryo
that would essentially be a human clone.
Speaking at GeneCom '98, a privately organised international
conference on gene technology, Kirby said efforts to address the
ethical dilemmas posed by genetic research were being hampered by
lack of funds.
He said multinational corporations which stood to make
significant commercial gains from that research should contribute
more to debate, both financially and intellectually - if only out
of self-protection.
"Unless you engage the community in debate about these
issues, the result will be that instinctive, intuitive responses
will rule the science and that may not be for the benefit of
either humanity as a whole or science in a particular
community," he said.
Kirby also blamed the media for a lack of serious public debate,
saying its approach to many issues led scientists to remain
silent about their research out of fear of being
"trivialised, sensationalised or demonised."
"We have to develop media reporting of this issue which will
ensure the scientists do not simply retreat into their
laboratories," he said.