Unique Ethical Issues in Chemistry

What makes chemistry unique? And how does this uniqueness reflect on chemistry’s unique concerns with ethics? As Roald Hoffmann (1995) argues, it is because chemistry is in the “tense middle,” occupying a space between several pairs of extremes. Perhaps most important, chemistry has always inhabited a frontier between science and technology, the pure and the applied, the theoretical and the practical (Bensaude-Vincent and Simon 2008). Unlike the other natural sciences, chemistry traces its origins both to philosophy and the craft tradition. Chemists are discoverers of knowledge and creators of new substances. The objects of study in chemistry, molecules and the macroscopic systems made up of molecules, are intermediate between the very small, the elementary particles, and the very large, the cosmos. Chemical systems are the right size to affect humans directly, for better or worse. They are the building blocks of biological organisms, they are the substances we eat and drink, they are the drugs that have improved human health dramatically over the past century, they comprise the materials we use to construct the products we use daily, but they are also the environmental pollutants that can plague our world. Chemicals can also be used as weapons. Being in the middle means that chemists face a unique set of ethical issues that I try to explicate in this chapter. These issues derive, in part, from the nature of chemistry as a science, a science that does not fit the neat picture drawn in the first chapter of textbooks. They also derive from the fact that ethics is an inquiry into right human conduct: What is a good life? Chemistry has perhaps contributed more to the betterment of human life than any other science, but at the same time has also contributed significantly to the deterioration of the environment. As explained in Chapter 3, much of chemistry is conducted in Pasteur’s quadrant, where both the search for fundamental knowledge and considerations of use are important. Chemical synthesis is perhaps the central activity of chemistry.

Professionalism and Ethics in Chemistry

Common morality and ethical theory are universal. Not only do they provide the standards of conduct that we expect all rational persons to follow, but also they provide the basis for professional ethics, the special rules of conduct adhered to by those engaged in pursuits ordinarily called professions, such as law, medicine, engineering, and science. Although common morality and ethical theory are general, professional ethics is specific. Legal ethics applies only to lawyers (and no one else); scientific ethics applies only to scientists. Professional ethics is consistent with common morality, but goes beyond it. Professional ethics governs the interactions among professionals, and between professionals and society (Callahan 1988). In many cases, it requires a higher standard of conduct than is expected of those outside the profession, but the norms of professional ethics must be consistent with common morality. To understand professional ethics, it is necessary to understand the concept of a profession (Davis 1998). A profession is more than a group of people engaged in a common occupation for which they are paid. While there are a variety of ways to define a profession, I use a social contract approach, which I have found to be most useful in my thinking about professional ethics. In this view, a profession derives from two bargains or contracts: one internal and one external. The internal bargain governs the interactions among members of the profession while the external bargain defines the relationship of the profession to society. Both, however, are based on a moral ideal of service around which the profession is organized (Davis 1987). For lawyers, the ideal is justice under law. For physicians, the ideal is curing the sick, protecting patients from disease, and easing the pain of the dying. As Michael Davis has argued, these moral ideals go beyond the demands of ordinary morality, the requirements of law, and the pressures of the market. Using a moral ideal as the fundamental basis of the profession comes from the old- fashioned idea of a profession as a calling.

Cases and Commentaries

Just as in chemistry, the best way to learn ethical problem solving is to confront context-rich, real-life problems (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988; Davis 1999, 143–175). The broad variety of ethical problems, or cases, presented here are hypothetical situations, but represent the kinds of problems working chemists and students face. Cases raising similar ethical questions are grouped together. To reach a diverse audience, I sometimes write several variations of the same situation. For example, a question might be posed from the perspective of the graduate student in one version and from the perspective of the research di­rector in another. For important issues I provide cases that are accessible to undergraduates who have very little research experience, usually in the context of laboratory courses. For advanced undergraduates, some cases involve undergraduate research projects. Most of the cases involve situations encountered in graduate research in universities, but some also concern industrial chemistry. Finally, a few cases present ethical problems that arise in cooperative learning, a pedagogical technique that is becoming increasingly important in undergraduate education. Each case, or related set of cases, is followed by a commentary that outlines the important issues and discusses possible solutions. Some of the commentaries are quite extensive and actually present and defend my preferred course of action; others are brief and merely raise questions that should be considered in designing a solution. The commentaries model the ethical problem-solving method presented in Chapter 6. As I have emphasized repeatedly, most ethical problems do not have clean solutions. While some courses of action are clearly wrong, there may be several morally acceptable and defensible ways to proceed. Consequently, readers might disagree with my proposed solutions for good reasons. For example, if I use a consequentialist approach, my assessment of the relative positive and negative weights of the consequences might be challenged, or I simply might have forgotten to consider some factor. Where I have made a definite recommendation, I give the reasons for my choice and contrast it with other alternatives.

Reverence and Ethics in Science

The previous chapter developed the professional code of ethics for science based on a three-part moral ideal. An important question that was left unanswered is: Why should professionals obey this code? Although moral rules set standards, there is nothing about rules that makes you feel like following them. To the contrary, the existence of a rule makes many people feel like bending or breaking it (Woodruff 2014, 3). This raises the questions: Are there advantages either for the individual or for the profession to adhere to a code that restricts behavior? Is there some compelling reason to behave responsibly even in circumstances when disobeying a rule might lead to an immediate gain? A good answer lies in virtue ethics—particularly, the virtue of reverence (Hursthouse 2012). From the perspective of virtue ethics, people do the right thing because they feel like doing (have a disposition to do) the right thing and emotions are stronger motivators of action than beliefs. The other major approaches to ethics, deontology (Alexander and Moore 2007) and consequentialism (Sinnott- Armstrong 2011), provide ways to decide whether an action is right or wrong, but are not concerned directly with motivation, assuming tacitly that people will do the right thing when they recognize what it is. Prior to developing the advantages of a virtue ethics perspective, however, it is important to discuss other kinds of reasons for obeying a professional code and its limitations. For some professions, such as law, medicine, and engineering, following the code is one of the requirements of licensing, so breaking the rules can result in losing the right to practice the profession. Still, legal requirements are a kind of rule that some people will do their best to get around if they can. Furthermore, a legal requirement is not a moral requirement, and one would expect that a moral code should have a moral basis for following it. Finally, even if the legal requirement was an adequate reason, it does not apply to scientists who are not licensed by the government.

Ethics, Morals, and Ethical Theory

In ordinary language, the words ethics and morals are used interchangeably to refer to standards of conduct or social norms that guide proper behavior. The English ethics derives from the Greek ethika, meaning character or custom, and is related to the Latin mores, also meaning custom, which gave us the word moral. Some philosophers, however, distinguish between the two. Morals is often taken to refer to universal norms of human behavior—the distinction between good and evil—whereas ethics is used as a generic term for all the different ways scholars use to understand and examine our moral lives (Beauchamp and Childress 2001). Some approaches to ethics are normative while others are nonnormative. Normative approaches seek to discover and justify the general standards of be­havior we should accept, and to apply them to specific situations. Nonnormative approaches can be descriptive—that is, factual investigations of moral con­duct and belief—or what is called meta-ethics, the analysis of ethical language, concepts, and methods of reasoning. Morality generally refers to norms for right and wrong human conduct that are so widely shared they form a stable social consensus. Here it is important to distinguish between what many philosophers call the common morality, the norms that all serious persons share, and communal norms that are shared only by a specific community. Common morality, although it cannot be specified precisely, is universal. Communal norms are similar to the common morality but are specific to a particular group, like a religious or cultural community. Common morality also includes moral ideals and extraordinary virtues, which call us to exhibit morally exemplary behavior. Common morality seems to spring from human nature as shaped by living together in community. Successful communal life requires that people adhere to certain standards of behavior. For example, a principle of promise keeping seems essential to any society, whatever its specific organization. Similarly, the arbitrary harming or killing of other people cannot be tolerated in a civilized society. A principle of truth telling seems essential to all human relationships.

Ethical Problem Solving

An ethical problem is not like a mathematics problem or most science problems that have unique solutions that are either right or wrong. Instead, ethics problems are more like design problems for which several acceptable solutions can be found. Design problems are problems of making or repairing things or processes that satisfy human desires or needs (Whitbeck 1996). The most familiar example in chemistry is design of a synthesis, an example of process design. There is usually more than one way to make a particular molecule. Deciding on which method is “best” involves a large number of considerations, including cost of materials, yield, quantity and purity of product, safety, purification methods, and reaction conditions, among others. Two different chemists might choose two different routes based on individual considerations. For example, while one route might provide a higher yield but require an expensive piece of equipment, the second route has a lower yield but can be done less expensively. The chemist who already owns the specialized equipment will probably choose the first alternative, but a colleague whose research budget is limited might accept the lower yield to save money. In a second kind of synthesis design problem, the end use is known, but several molecules or materials might actually accomplish this goal. Drug design is a good example. A chemist might take on (or be assigned) the task of developing a compound that controls blood pressure by blocking an enzyme that constricts blood vessels. A number of compounds might work, and the “best” solution to the problem will depend on factors such as ease of synthesis and purification, cost, medical side effects, and safety and environmental considerations involved in the manufacture of the drug. In general, the design’s success depends on whether it achieves the desired end within the imposed criteria and constraints. There is a close analogy between design problems and real-life ethical problems. In an ethical problem, a chemist or chemistry student must devise possible courses of action, evaluate them, and then decide what to do.

Introduction

The chemist is “both a craftsman and a philosopher” (Knight 1992, 13). Chemistry traces its origins to such ancient crafts as metalworking, dyeing, tanning, and ceramics, and also to the ancient philosophers’ speculations about the nature of matter. As a unique combination of the theoretical and the practical, the practice of chemistry raises interesting ethical questions. Chemistry has transformed the modern world with amazing new materials, powerful drugs, agricultural products that have increased farm productivity, new and better explosives that can be used for both construction and destruction, synthetic textile fibers, brilliantly colored dyes, and countless others. With these advances have come unfortunate effects like environmental pollution. As a result, moral questions concerning the relationship between chemistry and society have become increasingly urgent (Hoffmann 1997). The remarkable scientific successes during World War II, such as the Manhattan Project and the development of radar, changed the practice of science. Science, including chemistry, was no longer a leisurely activity conducted primarily by university faculty with the assistance of a few graduate students and minimal financial support. Government funding, epitomized by the founding of the National Science Foundation, along with increased private foundation and industry support stimulated the growth of research programs in universities, national laboratories, and private research institutions. Scientific research has become high profile and high pressure; the rewards for success can be significant in both prestige and money. Although scientists have always been competitive, the culture of the community has changed in recent years, straining the bonds of collegiality and bringing questions of professional ethics to the forefront. Over the past few decades, the number of working scientists has increased significantly. Research groups have become larger and research has become more collaborative, more interdisciplinary, and more international. The Internet makes communication and collaborations between research groups at different universities or in different countries easy. As a result, researchers are able to address increasingly complex problems in large interdisciplinary teams. The single-author article is disappearing; instead, author lists of five to ten are quite common. Although these changes have led to important scientific advances, they have also made it harder to ensure research integrity.