Science & Tech Flashcards
Science for profit exacerbates inequality
In 2014, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca halted research on malaria and tuberculosis upon realising there was little profit to be made catering to the poor. Instead, it redirected funds towards “rich man diseases” like cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure.
• While scientific research could have been a force for good, it instead perpetuated the global rich-poor divide and prolonged the misery of millions
Pfizer’s insulin auto-injector EpiPen and Turing Pharmaceuticals HIV drug Daraprim are priced at $300 and $750 despite costing just $30 and $13.50 to produce.
Science for profit is rushed, and dangerous
The first COVID19 vaccine manufactured by BioNTech and Pfizer was declared to have a 52% success rate in inoculating a person against COVID19 at trials. However, Israel found that its actual effectiveness hovered at an unimpressive 33%. Furthermore, numerous side effects— such as suspiciously high death counts among elderly Norwegians in nursing and homes and a heightened risk of heart inflammation— have emerged, all of which were not observed and addressed during the trials. Similar problems plagued the Janssen vaccine after it was released for public purchase when its patients came down with the Guillain Barré syndrome and Immune Thrombocytopenia.
In 1939, Paul Muller, a scientist working with agrochemical giant Geigy (now Novartis), synthesised the now-banned DDT for use as a quick, powerful insectificde. Though Geigy, which immediately patented the produtc, profited immensely from the sales (and though it did, to its credit, nearly eradicate malaria due to the mosquitoes it murdered), DDT turned out to be carcinogenic and disastrous to wildlife.
Science requires money
Realistically, research requires money, and if funding from other sources is not forthcoming, the funding proffered by private actors must be accepted for science to progress at all.
The US National Science Foundation reports that in 2015 the federal govt provided only 44% of the $86bn spent across the nation on basic research. This reflects a trend that has been in motion since the 1970s, when the federal share sat at 70%: there is just not enough taxpayer money to go around, esp in times of scarcity like the present.
Post-Brexit UK where universities’ budget for Official Development Assistance grants was halved from 245m to 125m in 2021, and where its main public funder, UK Research and Innovation, is now short of 2bn in membership fees to stay in the EU’s Horizon research programme.
The Guardian reports that, due to budget cuts, “hundreds of research projects tackling issues from the COVID pandemic to antimicrobial resistance and the climate crisis are already being axed”, along with “some of the brightest minds moving to other countries”.
The OECD estimates that >60% of research in modern scientific fields is carried out by private organisations.
The advanced state of scientific fields today: It costs 4.75bn to construct CERN’s Large Hadron Collider to smash particles together to detect a Higgs-Boson VS smashing an apple onto Isaac Newton’s head
Corrupt politicians ruin science
The 1932-1972 Tuskegee Study of untreated syphilis in black men, conducted by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Public Health service where they injected African-American men with syphilis to study its natural course when the proven effective treatment penicilin was already available at the time, all the while promising them free healthcare. 128 of the participants perished as a result, and others went blind or insane; the disease was also passed through families and down generations. The expt eroded the faith African-Americans had in the medical establishment in general. Older African-Americans now shun public health services, leading to a decrease in their life expectancy of 1.4 years.
Related: 1946-1948, the US govt also injected 700 prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers in Guatemala with venereal diseases (syphilis, gonorrhea) without their informed consent.
Children with intellectual disabilities at Willowbrook State School were given hepatitis just to test gamma globulin against it.
Elderly patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital were injected with live cancer cells just to see if they caused tumours.
The executive branch of US govt often hampers scientific progress
2001 George Bush banned the use of federal funds for human embryonic stem cell research for the subjective reason of his “deeply held beliefs”, causing research projects on its curative capacity of key autoimmune, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases to grind to a halt
Ethical breaches by private actors
2018 Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world with his designer babies, where he edited the genes of twin girls whilst knowing the potential dangers this could pose to their and the mother’s safety.
122 Chinese scientists condemned his behaviour and urged the authorities to strengthen legislation.
1950s - 1970s Holmesburg prisoners were infected with herpes, ringworm, and staphylococcus. Some were given medicated skin creams, but others toxins and hallucinatory drugs. Kligman, the dermatologist leading the tests, described seeing the inmates as “acres of skin” like “a farmer seeing a field”. It should be noted that at the time, using prison inmates for medical experiments was common (see 1940s malaria experiments in the Stateville Study, Illinois), and reactions were favourable until the Tuskegee experiment, when opinion turned and public outcry forced the researchers to stop.
1939 the Monster study by the University of Iowa, where healthy Iowan orphans were given negative speech therapy, inducing stuttering in normally fluent children and sustained psychological effects for the rest of their lives
Current efforts against ethical breaches
After punishing He with a 3m fine and 3yr prison sentence, the Chinese govt drafted new regulations requiring researchers working with “high-risk” technologies (including the manipulation of gene expression or the transfer of genes, embryonic and stem cell research) to seek approval from China’s highest administrative authority, the State Council.
The EU has banned animal testing for cosmetics since 2009. In September 2021, the European Parliament voted for an EU-wide action plan banning animal testing for medicines. Notably, when their use cannot be avoided, EU laws require that tests be carried out in a way that “minimises pain, distress and suffering”.
Singapore has three govt watchdogs: BAC, GMAC, NACLAR
- Bioethical Advisory Committee, Genetic Modification Advisory Committee, National Advisory Committee on Laboratory Animal Research
Singapore Model AI Governance Framework 2019
Rules that decision-making in AI should be fair, explainable and transparent, and only used to amplify human capabilities and protect human interests, safety and well-being
• Tempers progress of AI’s capability (to expand by leaps and bounds if they did not have to account for its decisions to the public or uphold human centricity in its design) but ensures we will be supported and not subjugated by AI in the future
- Has been adopted by companies worldwide
2015 International Summit on Human Gene Editing
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control publishes regular risk and threat assessment reports using data sourced from European scientists under its remit. Public Health England has likewise assembled a repository of up-to-date genomic definitions for all variants of interest. Such consolidated info assists national, regional and even intl governing bodies in formulating effective countermeasures.
Good projects funded by govts
China makes liberal use of state funds for scientists. Its ratio of R&D expenditure to GDP recently reached 2.4% and in 2019 this was reciprocated: scientific and technological progress contributed to 59.5% of economic growth. In 2020, China ranked 14th in the Global Innovation Index
- Breakthrough in treating Alzhemier’s, the first drug of its kind in 17 years
- Treating mantle cell lymphoma
Good projects funded by private actors
In Singapore, multiple projects are jointly backed by govt agency A*STAR AND various firms like GlaxoSmithKline, Nestle and Roche Diagnostics. This inter-sector collaboration is how Biopolis, a biomedical research centre next to the NUS Faculty of Science, came to be.
- SARS detection kit
- 2020 Duke-NUS developed world’s first antibody test for COVID19 after a patient’s immune system has overcome the virus
- 2021 NTU researchers developed a diagnostic test VaNGuard using CRISPR gene-editing tech that works even for mutated variants, and is 10x more accurate than traditional ART
In the Japanese Centre of Innovation Programme, academia-industry teams conduct inter-disciplinary R&D projects over 10yr periods into socially-salient issues
Norway’s Centres for Environment-friendly Energy Research scheme similarly aids research institutions investigating efficient renewable energy resources and CO2 capture and storage.
Govt work together with science = good
COVID19 data collaboration
• COVID19 Yokohama City University study that found out Pfizer’s effectiveness against Mu variant was 76% down from 96% against original variant, results that would affect govt vaccine-centered national strategies
• Imperial College London found that must inoculate 67% of a population to reach herd immunity. Researchers suggested in nations with limited supply, target vulnerable elderly first, and in nations with larger supply target key transmitters children first.
