Immunology and Cell Biology (1992) 70, 363–368; doi:10.1038/icb.1992.48
Value issues in biomedical science: Public concerns and professional complacency
AJD Bellett1
1Division of Cell Biology, John Curtin School of Medical Research, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Correspondence: A. J. D. Bellett, Division of Cell Biology, John Curtin School of Medical Research, PO Box 334, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
Accepted 30 July 1992.
Top of pageAbstract
Biomedical research was once an unquestioned good, and generous funding for a short time allowed researchers to work on whatever interested them. Two contradictory pressures have changed this. As costs have risen and economic rationalism has become politically dominant, governments, private corporations and granting agencies have increasingly demanded compliance with their own priorities, instrumental values and performance criteria. On the other hand, social and ethical critics have characterized biomedical research as being out of touch with real health needs and community values and as being an agent of social control that entrenches the power of a technocratic hegemony. The profession has largely acquiesced in bureaucratic and corporate intervention in exchange for continued funding, and assumed that social concerns could be allayed by 'top down' paternalistic education of the public. However, this response tends to add weight to the criticism that biomedicine is an agent of social control. What is needed is a spirited defence of the value of independent scholarship and research that is not limited to science but includes the humanities. Equally important is a process of community education in which scientists not only transmit their knowledge and enthusiasm to the public, but themselves become open to the social and ethical concerns of the community.
Keywords:
community relations, ethics, managerialism, radical materialism, technocratic power.
Top of pageReferences
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