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Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities

Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.

Public Policy and Research Support

Center
for
Science
in
Society

General Resources:

Research and Development Budget and Public Policy Program, a resource and current alerting resource from the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Current Discussion:

Genetically Modified Foods, a resource assembly from Northern Lights (organized by Xenia Morin

Transgenic Crops: An Introduction and Resource Guide, from Colorado State University

Previous Discussions:

18 September - Biotechnology/Clinical Research and Universities
Organized and summarized by Xenia Morin

Our discussion of the op-ed piece "Biotech and the Watchdog Role of Universities" by Fred Bookstein generated a great deal of discussion within our Science in Society Seminar held last Tuesday. Briefly, this op-ed piece (described below in Part 1) warns against the changes Bookstein sees in his own academic institution in response to a shift in the role of the life sciences to creating proprietary craft knowledge. Dr. Bookstein wrote this piece in response to the lack of discussion around the creation of the Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan to speed up the application of biotech research entering the market place.

Our discussion went on from there. We discussed issues of profit-making by faculty and whether profiting through research was any different than writing a textbook or writing software. We discussed how patents could influence what we could, or could not, use in the lab or in writing software and we discussed how research secrets had changed scientific meetings. I shared anecdotes of young faculty who felt that their bid for tenure was tied to being entrepreneurial. I also introduced the idea that government sponsored research had a great influence over how research was being conducted at universities. We also started to evaluate our own use of industrial money to support summer research projects. Although the discussion resulting from Bookstein’s piece had most relevance to the life sciences, faculty from our Chemistry and Computer Sciences departments felt that there were parallels in their own fields to be explored.

Besides Bookstein’s op-ed piece, we explored the recent announcement, on September 10, 2001, that eleven major medical journals had created new publication rules for drug trials (see Part 2, below). I described how this editorial policy change was related to the Nancy Olivieri case in Toronto. This, of course, led to a discussion of legally binding agreements between faculty and industry as well as ownership of data.

Part 1

Suggested Reading: Watchdog’s of Biotech are in the Universities

From The News Journal (Wilmington DE), August 3, 2001; re-run from the Washington Post, July 30, 2001 originally entitled: "Biotech and the Watchdog Role of Universities"

This article is an opinion editorial written by Fred Bookstein, a distinguished senior research scientist at University of Michigan’s Institute of Gerontology.

"Fred Bookstein is a statistician and methodologist whose work spans the natural and social sciences."

Why did Bookstein write this?

"I wrote for the Post after becoming frustrated with my inability as a senior researcher to incite a useful discussion of the corresponding matters here on my campus. Decisions about our own massive investments in this area seemed to have been made corporately, without faculty involvement, and public discussions by those who shared my views were just that — discussions by those who shared my views, without any serious engagement of attention on the part of the other side, the moniedside. It seemed to me that the only remaining choice was to sidestep the academic domain of governance and raise the issue in the larger civil forum." from E-mail to Xenia Morin, Sept. 17, 2001

Main Points of the Op-Ed Piece:

1. The role of the university is changing

need for collaborations with corporations, especially multinational pharmaceutical firms, "to speed up applications of biotech research"

here he uses the word "biotech" as a catch-all for the applied genomic sciences

root of the change is spurred on by our increasing knowledge of how genes and proteins work and that this knowledge soon could lead to better drugs or therapies
Bookstein contends historically, that the "universities’ primary job has been to organize this knowledge (in disciplines) and to preeserve it (in libraries)"
Bookstein suggests that "the new role of the life sciences would change the focus to proprietory craft knowledge–knowledge that can be owned and held confidentially. He contends that this kind of knowledge has no proper role within the academy, an institution centered on the permanent curriculum of arts and sciences and traditionally unconcerned with secrecy–or with capitial gains."
He questions whether we will let the "market decide what is honorable scholarship"?

2. Life Sciences Institute of U of Michigan

Established to speed up application of biotech research entering marketplace
Mission of institute, Bookstein contends, "emphasizes manipulation and control" and he believes the "universities are unlikely to be competent in generating and spreading market-oriented molecular knowledge"
Bookstein suggests that "the cost of sacrificing familiar norms of scientific openness and disinterest to the "commodification of knowledge’ hugely outweighs any scholarly benefit

3. A larger issue for Bookstein is the "medicalization" of aging and the false expectations of perfect health

He questions whether we should use our financial resource to develop better drugs to "perpetuate our overinvestment in an unending, unproductive extension of severley damaged lives"

Part 2:

Recent Changes in Editorial Practices at Eleven Major Journals announced September 10, 2001:

Include journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the medical journals of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and Norway
New rules to safe guard publication of drug trial results, these include:

researchers submitting a paper for publication will have to tell the journal in question what their role was
researchers must fully disclose what parte the sponsoring drug company played in the research
many journals will require authors to sign statements saying they accept full responsibility for how the trail was conducted, and attesting the had full access to data and controlled the decision to publish
some journals reserve the right to see the contract between the research and drug company

References: various newspaper articles September 10, 2001

Major Medical Journal Announces New ³Truth -In-Research² Editorial Policy, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, 1999
Sponsorship, Authorship, and Accountability, Journal of the American Medical Association editorial, September, 2001 (may be restricted web access),

The Case of Nancy Olivieri versus Apotex

a hematologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto who was contracted by Apotex to perform a drug trial on a potential oral drug for thalassemia,
She believes she found evidence in 1995 that the drug was ineffective in some patients and wanted to tell them
She claims that Apotex threated with a lawsuit if she breached the confidentiality clause in her contract by publishing her negative findings

References: various newspaper articles 1998- present

Corporate Collaborations: Scientists Can Face Publishing Constraint, from The Scientist, 1999
Independent Review Adds to Controversy at Sick Kids, from the Canadian Medical Association Journal, 1999
Euro Ruling Leaves Olivieri Optimistic, from Varsity News, University of Toronto, July, 2001