…

This fate is nearly impossible to avoid in any field that remotely touches on abortion or origin-of-life issues. “There [are] no people who are just sitting in a lab, working on their projects,” said O. Carter Snead, a professor of law and political science at Notre Dame who served as general counsel to President George W. Bush’s Council of Bioethics. “Everybody is politicized.” This is true even of researchers like Reid, who was blindsided by the reaction to his findings. “You can’t do this and not get sucked into somebody’s orbit,” said Largent, the Michigan State professor. “Everyone’s going to take your work and use it for their ends. If you’re going to do this, you either decide who’s going to get to use your work, or it’s done to you.”

That can have a chilling effect on scientists who work in sensitive areas related to conception or death. Abortion is “the third-rail of research,” said Debra Mathews, an associate professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins who also has responsibility for science programs at the university’s bioethics institute.* “If you touch it, your research becomes associated with that debate.” Although the abortion debate is important, she said, it can be intimidating for researchers: “It tends to envelop whatever it touches.”

As often as not, scientists dive into the debate, taking funding from pro-life or pro-choice organizations or openly advancing an ideological position. This, too, has consequences: It casts doubt on the validity and integrity of any researcher in bioethics-related fields. “Anybody with money can get a scientist to say what they want them to say,” said Largent. “That’s not because scientists are whores. It’s because the world is a really complex place, and there are ways that you can craft a scientific investigation to lend credence to one side or another.”

… Read More

Image: By University of Toronto Students for Life – November Demonstration Against AbortionUploaded by Night Owl, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23735264

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike