{"title":"The Question of the Origins of COVID-19 and the Ends of Science.","authors":"Paul A Komesaroff, Dominic E Dwyer","doi":"10.1007/s11673-023-10303-1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Intense public interest in scientific claims about COVID-19, concerning its origins, modes of spread, evolution, and preventive and therapeutic strategies, has focused attention on the values to which scientists are assumed to be committed and the relationship between science and other public discourses. A much discussed claim, which has stimulated several inquiries and generated far-reaching political and economic consequences, has been that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and then, either inadvertently or otherwise, released to the public by a laboratory worker. This has been pursued despite a clear refutation, through comprehensive genomic analysis, of the hypothesis that the virus was deliberately engineered and the failure of detailed investigations to identify any evidence in support of a laboratory leak. At the same time a substantial, established body of knowledge about the many factors underlying the emergence of novel zoonotic diseases has been largely ignored-including climate change and other mechanisms of environmental destruction, tourism, patterns of trade, and cultural influences. The existence and conduct of these debates have raised questions about the vulnerability of science to manipulation for political purposes. Scientific discourses are vulnerable because: (i) claims can be made with no more than probabilistic force; (ii) alleged \"facts\" are always subject to interpretation, which depends on social, ethical, and epistemological assumptions; and (iii) science and scientists are not inherently committed to any single set of values and historically have served diverse, and sometimes perverse, social and political interests. In the face of this complexity, the COVID-19 experience highlights the need for processes of ethical scrutiny of the scientific enterprise and its strategic deployment. To ensure reliability of truth claims and protection from corrupting influences robust ethical discourses are required that are independent of, and at times even contrary to, those of science itself.</p>","PeriodicalId":50252,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10942872/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Bioethical Inquiry","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-023-10303-1","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/9/11 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Intense public interest in scientific claims about COVID-19, concerning its origins, modes of spread, evolution, and preventive and therapeutic strategies, has focused attention on the values to which scientists are assumed to be committed and the relationship between science and other public discourses. A much discussed claim, which has stimulated several inquiries and generated far-reaching political and economic consequences, has been that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and then, either inadvertently or otherwise, released to the public by a laboratory worker. This has been pursued despite a clear refutation, through comprehensive genomic analysis, of the hypothesis that the virus was deliberately engineered and the failure of detailed investigations to identify any evidence in support of a laboratory leak. At the same time a substantial, established body of knowledge about the many factors underlying the emergence of novel zoonotic diseases has been largely ignored-including climate change and other mechanisms of environmental destruction, tourism, patterns of trade, and cultural influences. The existence and conduct of these debates have raised questions about the vulnerability of science to manipulation for political purposes. Scientific discourses are vulnerable because: (i) claims can be made with no more than probabilistic force; (ii) alleged "facts" are always subject to interpretation, which depends on social, ethical, and epistemological assumptions; and (iii) science and scientists are not inherently committed to any single set of values and historically have served diverse, and sometimes perverse, social and political interests. In the face of this complexity, the COVID-19 experience highlights the need for processes of ethical scrutiny of the scientific enterprise and its strategic deployment. To ensure reliability of truth claims and protection from corrupting influences robust ethical discourses are required that are independent of, and at times even contrary to, those of science itself.
期刊介绍:
The JBI welcomes both reports of empirical research and articles that increase theoretical understanding of medicine and health care, the health professions and the biological sciences. The JBI is also open to critical reflections on medicine and conventional bioethics, the nature of health, illness and disability, the sources of ethics, the nature of ethical communities, and possible implications of new developments in science and technology for social and cultural life and human identity. We welcome contributions from perspectives that are less commonly published in existing journals in the field and reports of empirical research studies using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
The JBI accepts contributions from authors working in or across disciplines including – but not limited to – the following:
-philosophy-
bioethics-
economics-
social theory-
law-
public health and epidemiology-
anthropology-
psychology-
feminism-
gay and lesbian studies-
linguistics and discourse analysis-
cultural studies-
disability studies-
history-
literature and literary studies-
environmental sciences-
theology and religious studies