Amazing as last century’s technologies were, the 21st century promises even greater wonders as engineering intersects more intimately with the processes of nature. Featured in this issue, biosciences and engineering is one of five clusters around which the college is centering faculty recruitment and many of its frontline research initiatives.
In the following pages we revisit four senior researchers whose work is bearing fruit and building bridges, meet three new faces hired specifically for their interest in bioscience research, and check out three young ECpE faculty whose recent acquisition of advanced facilities and equipment has energized their labors in the field.
We’ll also look at the college’s new bioengineering minor for undergraduates and some exciting developments on the IT front, as well as the subject of our Profile 2050. But first, bioethicist Clark Wolf examines some critical questions for all of us as we delve more deeply into nature’s secrets.
When Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was first performed in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913, it inspired a famous riot. The audience was not prepared for this new music and heard as violent and chaotic what we now recognize as a masterpiece. Yet over time, we have become comfortable with Stravinsky’s musical language and have grown to love what once seemed strange and even dangerous to a Paris audience almost a century ago.
New technology often inspires a similar reaction. Still, what we initially encounter with apprehension and alarm may come to seem ordinary as we incorporate it into our daily lives and as we come to rely on complex tools (and toys) that would have seemed like magic only a few years ago.
For example, when in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques were first developed, critics worried that this new technology would break the bond between parent and child. Children conceived with this new method might be subtly “different” from “normal” children, they cautioned, and the technique would impose unacceptable risks on mother and child. And today? IVF is a standard fertility treatment available worldwide, used by many thousands of people every year.
Americans rely on technology in every aspect of our lives. We consume food that contains or is derived from transgenic organisms. We rely on innovative chemical compounds in a wide variety of different contexts. But many of the same people who use and consume these products every day express concern about “genetically modified” foods and equate “chemicals” with toxic pollutants.
It sometimes seems as if resistance to unfamiliar technologies were almost instinctive, as if people were somehow psychologically disposed to reject, at least at first, whatever seems unfamiliar and new. What explains our love-hate relationship with technology? And what should we do about it?
A vehicle for informed decisions
The 20th century brought an unparalleled rate of technological and scientific progress that we have only begun to absorb and accommodate. Together with the identification of genetic markers, today in vitro fertilization makes it possible for parents to select some of the characteristics they might wish their children to possess. Computer technology makes it possible for us to gather information with unprecedented speed, but also brings complicated issues of personal privacy and information security.
Advances in knowledge of the human genome make it possible to predict, diagnose, and treat disease and disability, but also raise important concerns about genetic privacy and the possibility of unjust discrimination. And while the development of genetically modified and transgenic crop varieties has made it possible to reduce the use of agricultural inputs while increasing crop yields, it has raised public concerns about safety and the possibility of unintended environmental effects.
As we move through this era of unprecedented technological change, it is crucial that we create opportunities to step back and consider the implications in order to make informed decisions about the choices these new technologies present. For more than twenty years, the Iowa State University Bioethics Program has worked to ensure that these opportunities will continue to be available both on the Iowa State campus and across the state of Iowa, providing faculty, students, and members of the larger Iowa State community with opportunities to engage the ethical and policy implications of scientific research.
Through workshops, classes, lecture series, institutes, and faculty retreats, the program has pursued innovative ways to inspire reflection and discussion of science, ethics, and public policy. Every year, the Bioethics Program works with other campus organizations to sponsor a lecture series that brings a variety of different speakers from around the world to the Iowa State campus in Ames. Recent speakers have discussed biotechnology, environmental restoration, evolutionary theory, intellectual property, sustainable agriculture, and a wide variety of other important topics.
Differing opinions welcome
The Bioethics Program also hosts an annual faculty retreat to provide Iowa State faculty members with an opportunity to address crucial issues involving ethics, values, and public policy. The retreat is a daylong event that includes presentations by leading experts, with time for discussion and dialogue. And though designed primarily as a faculty development service, the retreat is regularly attended by students and other members of the Iowa State University community as well.
In selecting topics for the retreat, there has been no reluctance to address “hot button” issues that generate heated debate. Past retreats have included “Science and Politics,” “Do Iowa Farm Subsidies Export Poverty to Poor Farmers in the Developing World?,” “Who Owns Life? Intellectual Property and Biotechnology,” “The Precautionary Principle,” “Is Iowa Agriculture Sustainable?,” and “The Ethics of International Aid and Trade.”
For each of these topics, an effort was made to include speakers who would take different and perhaps opposing stands on the issue under consideration. For example, this year’s retreat was titled “Food vs. Fuel? Energy Alternatives for Iowa and the World.” The presentations addressed popular concerns that ethanol production shifts resources from a more basic need (food) to a less basic need (transportation), and that the production of ethanol from corn might be morally problematic in a world where people are hungry. Presenters included Iowa State faculty members, speakers from the Iowa Office of Energy Independence, and well-known proponents and opponents of corn ethanol production.
In addition, the program organizes occasional seminars and symposia. These events typically include between two and four speakers and are open to all members of the Iowa State community. Recent symposia have covered “The Ethics of Environmental Restoration,” “Coexistence of Organic and Biotech Agriculture,” “Sustainability in Philosophy, Environmental Science, and Economics,” “Climate Science, Climate Politics,” and “The Ethical Treatment of Animals in Teaching and Research.”
Education for a new century
The Bioethics Program also offers regular workshops on ethics in the practice of scientific research. These workshops focus on ethical issues that arise in research contexts and focus on responsible research conduct. While these workshops are aimed at Iowa State graduate students, they are open to anyone who wishes to attend.
Bioethics, however, are not just the province of academic elites in the universities, but instead the concern of all citizens. The program therefore offers special workshops for Iowa K-12 teachers that provide them with resources that can be used to incorporate the discussion of ethics in the school science curriculum.
It is important for students to reflect upon ethical issues as they arise, but it is also important that ethical discussion should be free, open, and respectful toward students who may have different values and views. In the teacher training courses offered through the Bioethics Program, teachers are introduced to a “case study” method for encouraging the discussion of controversial ethical issues. This method invites students to investigate and reflect on ethical aspects of science and technology and to think about issues of ethics and public policy.
In addition to these regular activities, the Bioethics Program also supports other campus events. Most recently, the program worked with the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities to bring a photography exhibit, “Imaging a Shattering Earth,” to Iowa State’s Brunnier Art Gallery. The exhibit, which includes paradoxically beautiful photographs of environmental disaster, was accompanied by lectures; a film screening; a campus visit by David Hanson, one of the photographers featured in the show; and a talk by curator Claude Baillargeon.
Reflection and response to change
Just as the audience at the premier of The Rite of Spring felt shock and dismay at Stravinsky’s new musical language, we may feel similar dismay as the next wave of technological innovation—some of it previewed on the pages of this magazine—promises to change such fundamental and intimate aspects of our lives as sex and reproduction, health and medical care, agriculture and food.
The Bioethics Program is always looking for new ways to inspire reflection on ethical issues that inevitably accompanies scientific research and technological change. As a major driver of bioengineering research in Iowa and the nation, the College of Engineering at Iowa State has a critical role to play in setting ethical standards across a wide variety of new technologies, and we welcome the participation of the engineering community in this important work.
The Iowa State University Bioethics Program receives substantial support from the Office of Biotechnology, which is now celebrating its 25th anniversary on the Iowa State campus. The Office of Biotechnology has continued to promote discussion and evaluation of the ethical implications of biotechnology research. Additional support for the program comes from the Iowa State Colleges of Agriculture, Arts and Sciences, and Engineering. The program has been fortunate to partner with many campus organizations and groups, including the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities, the Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture, the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, the Iowa State University Biotechnology Council, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Wildness Symposium, and others.