Abstract
The article examines the role played by policy advice institutions in the governance of ethically controversial new and emerging science and technology in Europe. The empirical analysis, which aims to help close a gap in the literature, focuses on the evolution, role and functioning of national ethics advisory bodies (EABs) in Europe. EABs are expert bodies whose remit is to issue recommendations regarding ethical aspects of new and emerging science and technology. Negative experiences with the impacts of science and technology in the past have resulted in calls for increased transparency and broader participation and pluralism in expert advice and policy decision-making. Do national EABs function as inclusive, anticipatory “hybrid forums”? Or do they resemble more “classical” expert-oriented bodies, inspired by technocratic or decisionist approaches? As part of the empirical analysis of the role and functioning of institutional ethical advisory structures in 32 European countries, an extensive analysis of EAB websites and the content of publicly available documents on such institutions has been carried out, supplemented by an online survey of representatives of the EABs. One major finding of the empirical analysis is the very uneven distribution of “hybrid forum” features of EABs across Europe.
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Three types of risks can be differentiated in this context: simple, complex and uncertain risks. In the case of simple risks, all necessary knowledge is available in principle. Risk management can be based on well-established routines. In the case of complex risks, the basic scientific knowledge is also available in principle, but the relations between the relevant variables of research, development and innovation are so complex that there is dissent within the scientific community about the potential effects of the new and emerging science and technology in question. Uncertain risks are risks whose relevance or very existence are in question, for example on normative or epistemological grounds; this can also involve value conflicts. Even in Europe, disagreements can be observed with regard to important societal and cultural values, for example concerning the topic of human enhancement: “[s]ome may applaud the possibilities of memory improvement through brain implants, while others will see that as blasphemous tinkering with God’s creation” ([5]: 161) or as irresponsible tampering with (human) nature.
The intellectual origin of this model can be traced back to the sociological work of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and others. Weber, for example, recognised that the idea of assigning full responsibility for all aspects of policy-making to bureaucrats and technocrats is attractive at first glance, but argued that this approach was unrealistic because political decisions could never be made solely on the basis of facts and objective knowledge since, although the choice between “means” may take place in a rational way, the choice between the “ends” and objectives of policy and the underlying values remain irredeemably subjective [82].
Its intellectual roots can be traced back to Auguste Comte and Henri de Saint-Simon. The case of Merton’s model of disinterested scientific elite is also illustrative.
In this context, Felt and Wynne [25] also point out that the EGE insisted on the non-public character of much of their work; its sessions are closed, and the participation of a limited public is allowed only during roundtables (one for each opinion delivered).
According to Bijker et.al [5], there are three aspects closely related to robustness of knowledge: (1) its validity is tested both inside the laboratory and outside in the world where innovations are shaped by social, economic and cultural factors; (2) it needs to be achieved by including in the group of scientific experts other relevant social groups with experience as users, patients or other stakeholders; (3) society is no longer merely the addressee of science, but an active partner participating in the production of social knowledge ([5]: 157).
Other EABs can perform more specialised tasks such as addressing only one narrow domain of science, technology or medicine, or can be charged with examining ethical aspects of research projects and proposals such as in the case of research ethics committees.
Only half of the 32 selected countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) has well-organised websites.
EABs in five countries (Bulgaria, Latvia, Malta, Romania and Slovakia) have no website at all. The website of one country (Ireland) was closed because the EAB had been discontinued due to a lack of funding. EABs in four countries (Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia and Serbia) have websites that contain only very basic information and make no policy advice or other opinion documents available, while the EABs in six countries (Hungary, Iceland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland and Slovenia) have websites that offer basic information and a few opinion documents. None of these documents deal with new and emerging science and technology.
The questionnaire was installed in the Bristol Online Survey system. The invitations to take part in the survey were sent out between July and November 2011 to representatives of all 50 selected EABs using a variety of communication channels, including e-mail, telephone and fax. For this purpose, we also used our existing personal and institutional contacts.
It should be noted that some authors argue that public participation often serves merely to legitimise political decisions rather than genuinely increasing the role of stakeholders and the public in science and technology governance. One instance of such tactical use of public participation would be the promotion of forms of public engagement that are oriented towards strengthening consumer society within a framework of post-Fordist politics ([76]; [77]).
Before 2000, legal aspects played a role mainly with regard to the harmonisation of the markets of the member states. This privileged position of legal rule-making was reinforced when the European Economic Community, which was based primarily on the free movement of goods, labour, capital and services in a common market,became the European Union, a political entity framed by a Constitution and a corpus of fundamental human rights [55] .
The European Commission encourages the EU member states to use code of conducts as instruments to encourage productive dialogue amongst “policy makers, researchers, industry, ethics committees, civil society organisations and society at large” [12].
Kelly argues that the emergence of EABs, seen as “an intuitional forum for authoritative judgments about difficult areas in science that require explicit consideration of societal values as well as technical evidence” ([46]:340), is a result of the confluence of interest in public participation in science and technology decision-making and moral framing of life sciences disputes.
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Acknowledgments
This article was written with the support of the European Commission FP7 Science in Society funded project, Ethics in Public Policy Making: The Case of Human Enhancement (EPOCH), grant number SIS-CT-2010-266660 (http://epochproject.com). We warmly thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and all our partners in the EPOCH project for their constructive cooperation.
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Mali, F., Pustovrh, T., Groboljsek, B. et al. National Ethics Advisory Bodies in the Emerging Landscape of Responsible Research and Innovation. Nanoethics 6, 167–184 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-012-0157-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-012-0157-z