Ethics for life scientists.
Korthals M, Bogers RJ. eds. 2005.
Berlin: Springer. $59·95 (paperback). 236 pp.
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The book is the published proceedings of a workshop held at Wageningen, Netherlands in May 2003 and indeed is part of the Wageningen UR Frontis series of publications (Frontis—Wageningen International Nucleus for Strategic Expertise, Wageningen University and Research Centre. See http://www.wur.nl/frontis). It is divided into eight sections, namely, Introduction (one chapter), Researchers in Organisations (four chapters), Responsible Authorship and Communication (six chapters), Ethics of Animal Research (two chapters), Ethics for Life Scientists as a Challenge for Ethics (four chapters), Scientists in Society (five chapters), New developments (one chapter) and Conclusions (one chapter). Many of the chapters are in pairs, with the first of the pair (e.g. 7A) being a substantial paper and the second (e.g. 7B) being a reply to and/or comment on the first. Given the number of different authors, it is inevitable that the writing style varies considerably from chapter to chapter, making some chapters very much less accessible than others. Furthermore, it is a dense and intense text. The font size is small so that a lot of material is packed into its pages. Overall, these features do not make for uniformly easy reading. Indeed, on my ‘readability scale’ where 1 is very readable and 4 is very difficult to read, I rated much of the book as 3 or even 4, but with some chapters at 2. Further, there are a few errors of fact, most of which are not misleading even if critical readers notice them. I will mention just one: on page 163, the author writes ‘... the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953 ...’. This is a mistake that often finds its way into newspapers (DNA was actually discovered in 1869) but surely should not have been allowed to appear in a book concerned, albeit tangentially, with the life sciences.
Given my involvement in developing the teaching of ethics to life science students, I expected to find this book both interesting and useful. Leaving aside the question of readability, there are some chapters that do indeed live up to that expectation. However, for me, these chapters were the exception rather than the rule. The statement quoted above suggests that the book is focussed on the area we often call bioethics, namely the ethical issues arising from biomedical science. Although some of these issues are discussed, much of the book deals with wider issues of general professional ethics, with the more generic ethical issues that apply across the sciences and with the relationship between these aspects of ethics and what one author calls ‘common morality’. Certainly there is some interesting and, in places, challenging material here, if one is prepared to search for it. For example, the place of science in 21st century society is a well-worked and worthwhile theme and many of us, subject to frequent external assessment of our work, will recognize the situation described on p65: ‘The new culture of accountability may enforce "trustworthy" behaviour but it does not breed trust—it rather breeds suspicion!’. However, despite such insights, I suggest that this is more a book for professional ethicists and moral philosophers who are interested in the life sciences rather than life scientists who are interested in ethics (as perhaps we all should be). Overall then, this is not a book that will be of general interest to most of our readers, although I shall have occasional reason to dip into my copy.
A declaration of interest: my own book Introduction to bioethics (Bryant et al., 2005; John Wiley and Sons,) was published recently. However, I do not regard it as a rival or competitor to Ethics for life scientists. The two books are of different genres and are aimed at different readerships.
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