Black sheep of the family

Dolly was supposed to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. Ten years ago, the uproar surrounding the world's first cloned sheep contained dire predictions of runaway science, human cloning and organ harvesting.

Today, the ongoing push-pull of market forces and moral debate around the forward motion of science has polarized around the topic of embryonic stem-cell research. It's a debate that has Canada sitting on the edge of policy decisions that could drive the country towards American- or European-style procedure.

"There's a really interesting paradox in the U.S., where you have a president who's staunchly against embryonic stem-sell research, but it's OK to patent the technology," said Dr. Tim Caulfield, a University of Alberta professor of public health sciences and law.

"In Europe, you have just the opposite situation. Many jurisdictions are very progressive, if you want to use that term. They basically allow any kind of stem cell research, including research cloning, which is a criminal offence in Canada, but they don't allow the patenting of stem-cell lines," said Caulfield, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy.

"Then you have Canada, which always sits in the middle, but hasn't made a decision yet." Those kinds of compromises are always going to be part of medical research, said Dr. Glenn Griener, a U of A professor with the Department of Philosophy and the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre.

"Broadly speaking, the outcome we all agree on is that we want to move research into effective therapy as quickly as possible," he said. "But despite the ethical questions that surround the debate, what accounts for the peculiar and different combinations of views in different countries are different fundamental socio-economic views about the free market."

In fact, there are some commentators who say that these kinds of life patents are the most important form of property and ownership in this century and in the knowledge economy, said Caulfield.

"But, at the same time, there are all these social issues that have been associated with intellectual property and with patents in particular. What impact does the increasingly commercial nature of research have on how research is done, on the direction of research, on how students are trained?" he said. "The discussion around patenting of life in general is fascinating. You really get this sort of intuitive reaction from the public that it's not a good idea, and they're surprised that someone could get a patent on a gene and animals, and even a stem-cell line."

As time and science march on, the opportunity to really examine what drives research is unparalleled, said Caulfield. "This is an ongoing, real-time experiment," he said. "We have the opportunity to see what really impacts the research environment. Is it intellectual property or venture capital? Is it ethics or the drive for discovery?"

The discussion around embryonic stem-cell research is as polarized as the ongoing debate around abortion - for much the same reason. One camp holds strong moral and religions convictions about the status of the embryo, and other advocacy groups hold out that the potential to reduce human suffering outweighs that status.

"It's a very interesting policy debate, because for both camps there is no middle ground. It's very hard to draw compromises," said Caulfield. "There is so much misin-formation and hype on both sides that we tend to lose the rational middle ground." Caulfield and his colleagues have been closely following the Canadian debate around the research - from the very beginning of the discussion right up to the parliamentary debate about the pending legislation.

"We were trying to trace all the rationales behind the debate and it was really fascinating. At the beginning, what we found were all the secular arguments - debate around banning therapeutic cloning, commodification of science and safety," he said. "But as you trace it through the whole process, it becomes very clear that it was really the moral status of the embryo that was driving it, to the point that the topic completely dominated the parliamentary debate."

But even a topic as controversial as embryonic stem-cell research can come down to something as commonplace as vanity, he said. "One example, seriously, is that there's reason to believe that certain stem-cell applications could cure baldness. You can just imagine the money available in that market. Those are the kinds of things that are going to drive industry."

Griener has some doubts around that type of market-driven research.

"One of the concerns I have is about the direction of research and what things get researched," he said. "Patents work by manipulating payoffs to people for doing different research. There are a lot of important health issues in the world that aren't big money-makers. I think it's a really important sociological question to be looking at - is there any interest in finding a cure that can't be sold?"

That's a question that does hold the public interest, said Caulfield.

"There's data out there that shows that people really do trust university researchers. They're amongst the most trusted voices in the public theatre," he said. "But as soon as the information becomes available that a university researcher receives funds from the industry, the same data shows that researcher becomes the least trusted voice in the debate."

Yet the current academic environment is almost as enthusiastic about researchers holding patents as it is about researchers publishing their work.

"Those are the questions you have to answer on your annual report to justify your living - 'How many publications do you have?' and 'How many patents do you hold?' How can you reconcile that with maintaining the public trust?"

The trust issues run so deep that they've managed to merge a rather disparate group of opponents to embryonic stem-cell research - right-wing religious groups and left-wing technophobes.

"There's this strange convergence between the religious right and those on the far left who are suspicious of science and technology, or even the market-driven system," said Caulfield. "You've got both of these groups wanting to put the brakes to this kind of research, or just slow it down until society can catch up to it, in their words."

Griener doesn't necessarily think that society has a lot of catching up to do.

"It's very hard to find points in science where they really are easily identifiable turning points, where we needed to stop and ask if we should take this next step down the road," he said. "People often talk as if science is always running too fast and society is always trying to catch up, but I think there is a lot of discussion that goes on as science is progressing. It's not really a case of saying, let's stop and see if we really want to do this." However, if university researchers want to be in that group of trusted voices, they need to step up and take part in the conversation outside of the university, Griener said.

"One thing we don't do enough of on campus is engaging the public in this sort of dialogue," he said. "These, I think, are incredibly valuable points to open up the discus-sion with the general community."