Political Economy Presentation: Responding to Old and New Paradigms

Even though this is a Working Group and we're supposed to be providing some answers or at least attempts at action and strategy, I'm afraid I want to take this opportunity to ask even more questions….We've had lots of discussions during this meeting invoking the notions of the public…so perhaps it might be interesting to discuss the idea in light of The Political Economy of Science. However, I would also like to present a new notion of the public which was described by my colleague Professor Chris Kelty at UCLA, in an article accompanying a symposium he designed entitled "outlaw" biology. Considering or juxtaposing differing scenarios regarding the public and emerging biotechnologies suggests that our thinking and decision-making might be furthered complicated.

So what and who are the public in relation to the political economy of human biotechnology. For the most part they have been described as providers of necessary resources, their tissue and blood and information, the desired biocapital necessary for new biotechnologies to succeed. In this regard, they might be described as an exploited public. In my legal work, assisting Professor Lori Andrews, some have responded to this exploitation, and have attempted to become stakeholders in these endeavors as well, either by demanding to control their unique biological and genetic material, or at least, by demanding public access to medical and technological services which had been developed because of their own biological materials and information. The gene patent Canavan case and the recent suit against Myriad had extraordinary plaintiffs willing to defeat the status quo, where corporate forces were exposed as violating the long held public trust in science.

But those instances are rare and we are more familiar with Ms. Jasanoff's descriptions of the deficit and obfuscated public, who, uninformed and faced with a barrage of celebrity backing, and advertising with medical miracles and the white-coated gods who would bring them, approved the $3 billion CA stem cell experiment; vivid for its legislative history, the writing, and funding of the proposition by venture capitalists and interested and wealthy private parties…and a public who bought it, hook, line and sinker…

Certainly the public can become aware of the corporate culture and its attendant conflicts of interest and betrayal of the enormous, public trust in scientific institutions. As the world of corporate synthetic biology emerges, we only wish some clever journalist would find the footage of Stephen Chu commenting upon BP's $500 million partnership with UC Berkeley when he was head of the Lawrence lab, "BP will save the world." That type of recognition, the connections between the promise of science and the conflicts of interest that emerge in the political economy could be invaluable in making an uninformed, ambivalent or again, deficit public become engaged.

Synthetic biology however, does not solely exist within the confines of Big Bio or the corporate culture, but rather has crossed over into the newly described, DIY Bio movement, and it is here where Professor Kelty describes the changing nature of public participation in the life sciences. Examples include not just the DIY Bio movement, but bioart, at home clinical genetics, recreational genetics and patient advocacies, all of which call for a new set of concepts.

Professor Kelty discusses the DIY movement with metaphors of outlaws and hackers. Outlaws, such as Robin Hood fall outside the system and are happy to poach resources; they like to demystify science, living beyond the frontiers of science their innovations may never be recognized by Big Bio. Hackers want to make science do something it wasn't meant to do…like engineering a strain of strawberries, cheaply and cleverly, delighting their friends……it is innovation as reconfiguration, a different kind which doesn't count in Big Bio, but it can impress or frighten the elites.

So the media grabs hold of someone like Melodie Patterson when she proposed to engineer a bacterium to sense melamine in food, and almost succeeded in her home laboratory. But as Dr. Kelty asserts, "the anxiety provoked by "outlaw" biology has less to do with biology or engineering per se, but with what it means to do science. Who is a real scientist today and what does that mean….who sets the agenda? Who gets to innovate and tinker with what and who gets to regulate and oversee the activity?"

These questions are implicit when you read a document authored by Ms. Patterson, her Biopunk Manifesto, where she rails against any attempts at regulation or oversight and urges fellow DIY Bio practitioners to practice and live, outside and beyond the law….similar responses from within the DIY movement include a rewriting of the Precautionary Principle as the Proactionary Principle…

Dr. Kelty acknowledges the state of "Big Bio," in elite institutions today. But he explains it is exactly this culture which while it doesn't invite public participation it enables it as the source of materials and resources. He states that "Big Bio has built an incomparably sophisticated infrastructure within which we, you, all of us can pursue science…thus DTC genetics, bioartists, and finally the DIY movement represents the creative expansion of forms of public participation in biology."

So, he suggests, a new public emerges, one in which DIY, patient advocates, recreational genetics, Open Source software and participating in clinical trials renders the passive , or uninformed, or deficit public a thing of the past ….instead they are aggressively active, and all about knowledge, access, experiment and involvement. Professor Kelty notes, "So little attention is paid to what really counts when it comes to being a member of the public that maybe it is time to ask whether the real dangers facing us are not unregulated uses of biology but unregulated uses of public power? Who do Outlaw biologists speak for and how? What innovations do they pursue and for whom? What kinds of publics are they making, exactly out there in their garages and home labs?

I find these fascinating questions and believe they provide a new dimension for the already complex questions posed by the political economy of science.