Private biotechnology firms appear in the news more and more as the debates over stem cell research and human cloning rage on. But one of Penn's own has emerged from the fray with a unique voice.
As an assistant professor of bioethics at Penn, Glenn McGee is obviously an expert in the field, and as such, was tapped by Advanced Cell Technology -- a private biotech firms based out of Worchester, Mass. But last year, McGee decided to resign from the company's ethics board.
McGee was asked by a reporter to comment on an unnamed firm's decision to clone a wild guar, an endangered species, and his response was that the the firm was going beyond their boundaries. The unnamed firm happened to be ACT.
"What is an ethics advisory board for if the company keeps it out of the loop while secretly starting Jurassic Park?" McGee said about his decision to leave ACT. "The fact that the company kept the gaur experiment secret, patented the cloning of endangered animals, and misled the public about the success of the experiment -- all of these screamed `warning, warning' to me."
McGee was left wondering about the company's commitment to ethics.
"The gaur died within 24 hours, and half its DNA was from a cow. This wasn't just bad conservation, it was bad business and bad ethics. ACT is a very important company that keeps virtually everything it does secret until the last possible moment, and I found that out the hard way," he said.
McGee's concerns extended beyond the cloning of one endangered species, however. He was concerned that the ethics advisory board be able "to function with proper academic freedom and integrity," which in the end he feels it did not.
"Since the time of my resignation, the board has been used as a [public relations] mechanism for stem cells and ethics boards, without responding to any of the concerns that have been raised about the company," McGee said.
For McGee and many others, the problems at ACT are indicative of a growing problem concerning private biotech firms and their ethics advisory boards.
"ACT represents a new generation of small biotechnology companies who do difficult work in controversial areas. They need to think about ethics, but we have to make sure that they don't confuse research about ethics with a rubber stamp from Socrates," McGee said.
While bioethics needs to maintain a close relationship with private firms, McGee feels that relationship needs to be closely watched.
"I think that the future of bioethics will involve bioethics interacting with companies, but the key is that it has to be on our terms," he said. "What we want to avoid are so-called `ethics' boards, because there the temptation is just too great for the company to hold out the board to say, `see, we've been approved.'"
But the thing that can make some bioethicists wary of private firms is the issue of money. For some, money ties them too closely to the firms, and tips the balances in favor of the companies.
"Money for these boards is piddly, and frankly, I think it gives those who serve on ethics boards an all-too-easy excuse to pretend that the power and excitement of being close to the fray isn't a reward in itself," McGee said.
But he admitted that the money can cause problems in the relationship between firms and boards. "If I can't be honest about company practices because I am scared that the company will chase me down and slander me, that means I was too close to the company," he said.
"I think that companies want to use philosophy and bioethics to make good decisions. The key is that the relationship is unusual and requires a great deal of subtle negotiation so that everyone's interests are protected, including the philosopher," he added.
For McGee, the issue is about focusing on what is important, and that's not the money. "We have to keep reminding ourselves that what we love is wisdom, not power," he said.
