Bioethics Institute To Be Held in Ames

The Bioethics Institute, hosted by the Iowa State University Bioethics Program, will be held at Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa, on June 5 to 9, 2006.  It will provide faculty and extension personnel with the background they need to incorporate bioethics into their courses and extension activities, at no cost to participants.  The Bioethics Institute will be of interest to individuals who address issues related to life science ethics in a wide range of disciplines.

Plenary speakers include Temple Grandin, Animal Science, Colorado State University and Paul Thompson,  Philosophy,  Michigan State University.  Professor Grandin is among the best known animal welfare specialists in the world.  Her written work has influenced the treatment of animals throughout the United States and the world.  Her efforts to insure proper and humane stockmanship, and her work designing humane slaughter facilities have changed the circumstances of life and death for millions of animals.  Professor Thompson is one of the nation's leading scholar in agricultural ethics, and is well known for philosophical work dealing with agriculture and international trade, biotechnology, animal agriculture and animal welfare. 

Admittance to the Institute is limited to 40 participants chosen through a competitive application process. The deadline for application is April 30, 2006. Information and application

Risk, Regulation and Biotechnology:  The Sum of All Our Fears

Clark Wolf, Director of Bioethics

The Perception of Risk
People are often afraid of things that aren't dangerous.  This may make it less surprising that we also fail to fear some things that really are dangerous.  What we fear appears to vary systematically depending on our familiarity with various hazards, our interests, our social situation and a variety of other factors.  Risk analysis seeks to quantify and compare the dangers we face, but it is more difficult to quantify the dangers we believe ourselves to face.  In a famous paper titled "Perception of Risk," published in the journal Science, Paul Slovic (1987) developed a method for mapping and quantifying people's fears by plotting them in two dimensions.

On one dimension, Slovic included factors that contribute to the "known-ness" or "unknown-ness" of the thing feared.  Risks were classified as "unknown" when they involved causal processes that were unobservable or unknown to those who were exposed to them, when the effects were delayed over time, associated with new technology or involved dangers that were "unknown to science."  For example, Slovic found that people regard automobile accidents as dangerous and risky but feel that they understand these risks pretty well.  Fears associated with radioactive waste and microwave ovens, on the other hand, were based in part on people's sense that they did not understand the potential dangers that might be involved.  Fears associated with these technologies were, at least in part, fears of the unknown.

On the second dimension, Slovic asked people to rank their fears according to the extent to which they involved outcomes associated with an emotional reaction of "dread."   Risks inspired feelings of "dread" when they were regarded as uncontrollable, globally catastrophic, had fatal consequences, involved inequitable distributions of danger and benefit, involved risks for future generations, increased over time or were involuntary.

Next, Slovic tested the extent to which people desired strict regulation to control or reduce various different risks.  Not surprisingly, he found that people had a stronger desire for regulation where risks were both "unknown" and "dreaded."

Unfortunately, the extent of our fears and the strength of our desire for regulation are frequently disproportionate.  They may have very little to do with the actual dangers we face.  Slovic's data indicate that the people involved in his study regarded the hazards associated with "satellite crashes" as both "unknown" and as associated with a high degree of "dread."  People reported a relatively strong interest in strict regulation aimed at reducing the risks associated with satellite crashes.  But considered objectively, the risks associated with crashing satellites are infinitesimal.

Setting Regulatory Priorities: Democratic vs. Technocratic Regulation
Should we set regulatory priorities by finding out what people most fear?  Or should we set our priorities by trying to quantify the amount of real risk involved in different activities?  When they work properly, democratic institutions are responsive to the desires and preferences, as well as the fears, of those they are intended to serve.  If our regulatory institutions are democratic, they will give us what we think we want.  Since democracy is a very good thing, this may be the right thing for our institutions to do.  But in 1987, democratic regulatory institutions might have moved to spend more to protect people from hazards associated with satellite crashes.  This regulation might have comforted people by addressing the hazards they fear, but they would not have made people much safer.  If the aim is to protect people, then such regulation would simply be a waste of money.

But if our fears are misplaced, then democratic regulatory institutions won't protect us as well as they might.  An alternative model of regulation would place regulatory decisions in the hands of experts who are in a position to evaluate hazards from a more objective (or, at least, somewhat less subjective) perspective.  Expert risk analysts would not shunt public funds toward satellite crash regulation unless such regulation was likely to be an effective way to protect people from real risks.

Unfortunately, expert risk analysts cannot claim to be fully objective in their evaluation of different hazards.  Studies show that different expert risk analysts systematically vary in their evaluations.  Analysts employed in an industry typically evaluate the risks associated with that industry to be lower than these same risks are evaluated by analysts employed by regulatory agencies.  The evaluations of risk analysts employed in academia fall in between those of the regulators and those of the regulated.  We may conclude that the judgments of expert risk analysts are not impartial and objective but reflect their own form of positional bias.

Which would be preferable:  democratic regulation to comfort our false fears or technocratic regulation by unaccountable experts whose judgments are known to be imperfect?  Neither solution seems ideal.  Surely, we want public regulatory institutions to be accountable and responsive to those they serve.  But we also want such institutions to protect people from real hazards.  We don't want public money wasted on regulatory measures that provide false comfort for our misplaced fears.  In the United States, we have adopted an uneasy compromise.  Like our courts, our regulatory institutions are somewhat independent of the democratic process.  But these institutions are ultimately accountable to our elected officials and cannot cut themselves off from public evaluation.  The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators don't need to respond directly to people's fears but cannot entirely escape democratic accountability.

Fears, Hazards, and Regulation of Food Biotechnology
How should we regulate food and agricultural biotechnology?  To the extent that our regulatory institutions are democratic, they will respond to people's fears.  In his 1987 article, Slovic found that people regarded "DNA technology" as both "unknown" and "dreaded."  They expressed a strong desire for strict regulation to control the risk associated with this technology.   It would seem that food biotechnology is associated with a significant degree of fear, so if our regulatory institutions respond to fear, they will regulate the associated hazards, whether real or imagined.  As in the satellite crash case, professional risk analysts quite uniformly rate the risks associated with food biotechnology to be minute.  It is unlikely that we face any significant hazards when we consume so-called "genetically engineered" or "GE" foods.  How should our regulatory institutions respond to the fact that GE foods are associated with a significant degree of fear and mistrust even though they appear to be safe?

I can think of three general strategies we might adopt in response:  placation, bamboozlement, or education.

The first strategy to consider is placation.  We would placate people by implementing the regulation they think they want.  In this interest, we might impose heavy regulations on GE foods in spite of the fact that these regulations are unlikely to reduce the real risks that people face.  For example, some surveys indicate that a majority of people are in favor of labels for GE foods.  Providing such labels would be a way to placate them.  Even if there is no risk associated with the consumption of GE foods, we might label them simply because people want labels.  There is concern, however, that this strategy would involve the abandonment of the central aim of regulatory institutions to protect people from real risks, not to protect them from perceived risks.  Just as we shouldn't commit public funds to control non-existent risks associated with satellite crashes (simply because people want such regulation), we shouldn't regulate GE foods simply because people reportedly want such regulation.

The second strategy is bamboozlement.  We would bamboozle people by confusing them so that they can't act on their fears.  We might do this by concealing from them their involvement with the things they fear.  But there is good reason to believe that the strategy of bamboozlement is likely to amplify consumers' fears rather than attenuating them. There is evidence that consumers' fears grow when they have the sense that those responsible for managing and controlling the risks involved are trying to conceal information (Kasperson et al, 1988). By adopting a strategy of bamboozlement, we sacrifice the trust of those whose fears we might hope to address.

The third strategy, education, is obviously the most difficult.  We educate people by providing them with the best information available.  In this strategy, our regulatory institutions should protect people from real hazards and not from false fears.  But beyond this legitimate regulatory function, our institutions would leave people free to make their own consumer choices.  Over time, educated choices will come to reflect a better understanding of the hazards people really face, but choices will also reflect a wide array of other values that consumers bring to the marketplace.  If we adopt the strategy of education, we must simply accept and respect the choices people make, even if we believe that they're (still!) responding to unfounded fears.

When I consider these three alternatives, it seems clear that education is the best strategy because it is more likely to succeed, and it essentially involves respect for those who are provided with information.  But our legislators and regulatory institutions have not consistently adopted this strategy. In the spirit of bamboozlement, the FDA has actively discouraged producers from labeling their foods "GE Free" even when the foods in question really are effectively free of GE ingredients.  Various reasons are cited in defense of this interesting policy, but the aim and effect is to deny people the information they would need to act on their presumed "irrational fear" of GE foods.  There are several serious problems with this strategy. Consumers' desire to avoid GE foods may have nothing to do with an unfounded fear that these foods are dangerous.  But more importantly, there is the issue of trust. We should be deeply concerned that such a strategy of bamboozlement is likely to amplify consumers' fears rather than attenuating them. As Kasperson (et al, 1988) has urged, one factor that systematically has the effect of amplifying otherwise unfounded fears is the sense that those responsible for managing and controlling the risks involved are trying to conceal the relevant information.  By adopting a strategy of bamboozlement, the FDA risks losing the trust of those whose fears they hope to address.

If the appropriate strategy to adopt is the third strategy, education, then the FDA is right to resist efforts to implement the positive labeling of GE foods. Regulatory institutions should control real risks, not placate unfounded fears.  But it would also follow that the FDA is wrong to discourage people from truthfully labeling their product "GE Free."

Sources:
Kasperson, R.E.; Ortwin, R.; Slovic, P.; Brown, H.; Emel, J.; Goble, R.L.; Kasperson, J.X.; and Ratick, S.J.  1988.  "The Social Amplification of Risk: A Conceptual Framework.  Risk Analysis. 8(2) 177-187.

Slovic, P. 1987.  "Perception of Risk."  Science. 236:280-285.

June 5-9, 2006
2006 Bioethics Institute, an intensive course in ethical issues relating to agriculture, life science research and the environment.  Sponsored by the Iowa State University Bioethics Program.  Information above or online.

July 10-28, 2006
On-line course: Teaching Bioethics.  Information

July 17-19, 2006
Bioethics Workshop I.  Information