Dr. Love

Utne Reader discusses the really cool Research in Unlimited Love Institute, in Cleveland, directed by Stephen Post of Case Western. It is a cool idea, but difficult to explain:

IRUL's funding is modest-it has raised about $4 million in the past four years for research, conferences, and publications-but Post hopes to use empirical research to transform the way modern people view themselves and treat others. It's an ambitious goal, considering that the scientific community is focused almost exclusively on the implications of negative, rather than positive, human behavior (over the past 40 years, for example, there have been approximately 100,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies on depression, and just seven on happiness).

"Is being selfless as much a part of being human as selfishness?" asks Post, who is editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of Bioethics and author of The Moral Challenge of Ahheimer Disease. "This question has been debated for centuries, but the perspective shifted in the last century. Freud thought human nature was nothing but a seething, boiling cauldron of self-interest, and [B. R] Skinner concluded from his rat studies that human motivation was based on pleasure stimulation. These viewpoints were based on bad science and jaded pedagogical speculation, but they created a tremendous burden of proof for anyone who wanted to say otherwise."

Bob Novak Did Not Take Science in College

Hurlbut is back again. The science is bad. The ability to 'prove' to a prolifer's complete satisfaction that a disabled embryo is truly disabled is non-existent (they do not believe that now about cloned human embryos or genetically defective embryos that can be identified today through PGD as incapable of development). But, still this sort of pseudoscience is receiving attention. Stranger still, note McCugh's absolutely bizarre argument against Hurlburt:

The only clear criticism on the council came from Dr. Paul McHugh, psychiatry department chairman at Johns Hopkins University. He warned that Hurlbut could be making a "hybrid which would be super-human in some kind of way." Hurlbut responded: "You create an entity that never rises to the level of what can properly be called a living being." McHugh suggested Hurlbut was making "a doomed hybrid" that would not be permitted to become a human being. "Not doomed," responded Hurlbut, "Only doomed if it's alive first."

This whole discussion is straight out of a the Salem witch trials. - Arthur Caplan

A Man in Search of an Audience

Updated 12/5, 12/9 (We just can't slow this story down!): The Culture of Life people reported 12/1 on the news that the stem cell debate will soon be 'solved':

A member of the President's Council on Bioethics believes he may have found a way to obtain stem cells with the same potential as embryonic stem cells without creating or destroying a human embryo.

At last, a brilliant idea for getting around the big problem with embryonic stem cell research. It comes from President's Council on Bioethics member William Hurlbut, who constantly complains that those who favor embryonic stem cell research are - his term - "not morally serious" enough (take a listen). But he's had his idea vetted by "prominent Catholic clerics and other ethicists," to see if the technology he proposes is morally acceptable. The idea? Gushes the prolife newsletter:

in Hurlbut's method the gene responsible for creating the placenta is turned off. Hurlbut contends that this prevents an embryo from ever being created. But like traditional cloning, the egg still generates inner cell mass, or the "blank" cells, that some scientist believe have the greatest research potential. The [Boston] Globe reports that parts of the technique are currently being performed on mice.

Sounds great, right? It even sounds oddly familiar, probably. That is because it has been proposed in several forms by at least a dozen scientists who actually work in the area, and published in (among other places) Nature, although not by Hurlbut. Some of the papers are catching on to the idea that maybe the suggestion isn't so novel. But Hurlbut thinks his solution is important and scientifically significant, and conservatives are everywhere trumpeting the significant scientific breakthrough.

There's just one problem with taking him at face value: He has no publications in stem cell biology, ethics, theology or any part of clinical IVF. Nor is he, an MD, in clinical practice in that or any other area. Stanford faculty who have asked the president of that institution to release him point out that he has allowed and personally encouraged the description of him as a "Stanford scientist."

Hurlbut bases the moral utility of his claim on the fact that he vetted it with priests

The Boston Globe covered his theory, and right to lifers are beside themselves with joy at the morally serious solution. (UPDATE: Actually, some of the pro-life leaders are beginning to see the fix Hurlbut's idea puts them in) But there are many, many problems with Hurlbut's claims that even a visit to the Pope won't fix: 1) he makes assumptions about what counts as an embryo, a matter on which no ten embryo researchers agree, 2) he thus makes assumptions about when the destruction of embryonic material would count as destruction of an embryo, a person, or a human life for either scientists or clerics, 3) he makes no effort whatever to describe why his proposal is somehow less objectionable than other nuclear transfer technologies that he has campaigned against so vigerously.

UPDATE: Washington Post reports that Hurlbut's idea was mocked by a visiting scientist at the council, but that nonetheless the council is trading on the prominence afforded to it by Hurlbut's "big ticket idea," and as a direct result Leon Kass did in fact hold hearings on "solutions" to the stem cell problem, which (surprisingly to me, anyway) were hailed by Kass himself (chair) as important stuff. One might have guessed that Professor Kass would be a bit embarrassed that his handpicked council would advance ideas as potentially repugnant (following his analysis in his own writing) as Hurlbut's, designed to sidestep rather than engage a debate. And Kass does try his best to make the ideas sound thoughtful:

Kass said the ideas raise the possibility that "the partisans of scientific progress and the defenders of the dignity of nascent human life can go forward in partnership without anyone having to violate things they hold dear."

But the idea is neither an artful dodge nor a successful one. - GM

Conflicts of Interest Everywhere

The Lancet is engaged in scandalous destruction and obfuscation of data on the relationship between abortion and breast cancer. So goes the story on Businesswire, in which an editorial by Ed Furton in Ethics and Medics journal is credited with making the charge. The story announces the finding by the ethics journal as though Lancet has been caught in a real moral morass. But ... Ethics and Medics, it turns out, is a publication of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and their editorial was highlighted by the Coalition of Abortion and Breast Cancer. Now who would guess that the charges in the editorial involve the claim that the Lancet and cancer research community in general are deliberately "corrupting scientific research examining the abortion-breast cancer link."

JAMA is running a great set of articles on the relationship between ethics and the bioscience business; Psaty and colleagues review "Potential for Conflict of Interest in the Evaluation of Suspected Adverse Drug Reactions: Use of Cerivastatin and Risk of Rhabdomyolysis," and Brian Strom replies. Fontanarosa, Rennie and DeAngelis discuss drug withdrawals in an accompanying article. Jeremy Sugarman reviews Margaret Eaton's book Ethics and the Business of Bioscience. (subscription required).

Bioethics Journal Charges Lancet, Scientific Community with Cancer Cover Up

So goes the story on Businesswire, in which an editorial by Ed Furton. Ethics and Medics, it turns out, is a publication of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and their editorial was highlighted by the Coalition of Abortion and Breast Cancer. Now who would guess that the charges in the editorial involve the claim that the Lancet and cancer research community in general are deliberately "corrupting scientific research examining the abortion-breast cancer link."

The Ever-Increasing Misuse of Science UPDATED

Chris Mooney's great piece on the role of pseudoscience ideology in the discussion of scientific problems is just out in Columbia Journalism Review. Mooney highlights several particularly eggregious cases in which "moral seriousness" (the new Bush/Kass pseudonym for "neocon-friendliness") trumps rigorous science, e.g. the abortion/breast cancer link. Simultaneously, Art Caplan saw this piece in New York Review of Books on the same book that Mooney is discussing. NYRB also discussed the Union of Concerned Scientists' own manuscript on the same phenomenon.

The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science

Brian Alexander let us know about this San Diego Union-Tribune review of Horace Freeland Judson's new book documenting the incredible increase in fraud in science. The book not only uses some "classic" fraud cases but vividly demonstrates the fraud in many well-known scientific endeavors, and the fraud perpetrated by many well-respected scientists. This book could clearly replace many of the "most scientists are great, and almost all are well-intentioned, but rare bad apples spoil it all" textbooks in research ethics.

Scientists Highlight Bad Science in (Often Bad) Movies

Science news reports that scientists are trying to teach the public about bad science by using the science found in popular movies. The American public is notoriously ill-informed about science and medicine. Why not use their love affair with the movies to try and educate them? That is exactly what some scientists are trying to do, using popular movies as a vehicle to illustrate what science can and cannot do, what is good science and what is bad. While most of the examples in the article are about physics and geology, bioethical issues are commonly portrayed on television and the in cinema, and movies can sometimes be the best vehicle for raising discussion -- as Jurrasic Park did for genetic engineering of endangered and extinct species.