Hegeler Institute

Ethics and the Limits of Scientific Freedom

Author(s): Peter Singer
Source: The Monist, Vol. 79, No. 2, Forbidden Knowledge (APRIL 1996), pp. 218-229
Published by: Hegeler Institute
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 Ethics and the Limits of Scientific Freedom

1. Introduction

At least since the Nuremberg trial of Nazi doctors, it has been im

possible to take seriouslythe idea thatfreedomof scientificinquiryshould

be completely unfettered. But even if freedom of scientific inquiry cannot
be absolute, how stronga principle is it?What ethical limitsshouldwe
impose on science?
I shalldiscuss twokinds of limit.The firstkind I shallconsider is that
which applies to the nature of the research itself, that is, to what the
process of research does to others. Here it is relatively straightforward to
show that there are ethical limits to scientific inquiry, and the question is
merely where the boundary is to be drawn. Nevertheless, the wide accep
tance of such limits tells us something about the relationship between
ethics and science. This in turnwill serve as a basis for a discussion of the
second kind of limit,namely limits thatderive from the nature of the
knowledge thatit is sought to gain.Are theresome kinds of knowledge
that it is unethical or to want to possess? This is a much more
to possess,
controversial area, and my views will accordingly be more tentative.

2. Limits to the Research Process

i. Research on Humans

The most obvious limit to the freedomof scientificresearch has

already been mentioned: the rights of the human subject of research mean
that there are things we cannot do to nonconsenting human beings, no
matter how scientificallyvalid or socially useful the researchmay be.
There are many notorious cases inwhich science is generally regarded as

having gone beyond this limit. In the name of research, Nazi doctors
inflicted painful and violent deaths on many human beings.1 These ex

periments were condemned in theNuremberg Code, which emerged from

"Ethics and theLimits of Scientific Freedom" by Peter Singer,

The Monist, vol. 79, no. 2, pp. 218-229. Copyright? 1996, THE MONIST, La Salle, Illinois 61301.

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 ETHICS AND THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM 219

the trial of these doctors, and has formed the basis of subsequent discus
sions of the ethics of research on human beings. The Nuremburg Code
specified that in scientificinquiry,the informedconsent of the human
subject of research is essential. This principle was stated in an unqualified
form, which was perhaps too restrictive. It has subsequently been mod
ified in various other codes and declarations, and might now be better put
as the principle that human beings must not be coerced or deceived into

takingpart in researchthatis not for theirbenefit,and could cause them

harm.

Many further serious breaches of these accepted principles have

Among themwas theTuskegee syphilisstudy,inwhich four
come to light.
hundred poor black American men were diagnosed with syphilis, but were
not told of the diagnosis, or given treatment. Instead, they were merely
observed, over a period from 1932 until themid-1960s.2 More recently, at
the National Women's Hospital inAuckland, New Zealand, patients with
carcinoma in situ, an abnormal development of the cells of cervix

generally regarded as a precursor to cancer, were given no treatment, in

order to test one doctor's view that these cells did not develop into cancer.
They were not told that they were part of an experiment, and several
women subsequently developed cancer and died.3 Such cases show the
need for continuing ethical oversight of scientific research. Nevertheless,
it is not my aim to discuss the central cases, about which we are all agreed
on the need for a limit to how far scientists may go. Rather I want to ask
two questions about this limit: what does our acceptance of it indicate, and

why should the boundary be drawn where it is now drawn?

The answer to thefirstquestion is simplythatto accept this limitis
to recognize that scientific inquiry is not above ethics, but is subject to it.
We value knowledge, but we do not value it so highly thatwe are prepared
to support the acquisition of knowledge at the cost of violating other
ethical principles that we consider important.We seem to be prepared to

delay inacquiring information

accept indefinite about important
diseases,
if the only way to avoid that delay would be to experiment on non-con

senting human subjects. (For example, to inflict the diseases on prisoners,

and then test experimental cures on them.) The protection of fundamental
human rights, in other words, takes precedence over the freedom of
science and over thebenefitsthatpromisingscientificresearchprojects
may bring.

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220 PETER SINGER

Where is theboundarytobe drawn? Inmost developed countriesthis

recognition that scientific researchis subject to ethics has now been insti
tutionalized in the shape of human experimentation ethics committees,
under various titles, to which proposals for research involving human
beings must be submitted. In Australia, where I live, these committees
now regulate all research involving human subjects conducted by any
member of any institution that receives any government research funding.
That includes, of course, all the research done at all the universities and
major research institutions in the country. This is a huge investment of
timeandmoney in theethicaloversightof scientificresearch.4
Nor do the
committees look only at proposed experiments thatcarry the risk of
serious harm to the subjects of research. In my own experience, it is not
unusual for a committee to spend half an hour cross-examining a re
searcher who proposes to do nothing more than mail a questionnaire to a
random sample of citizens, who will of course be free to throw it in the
nearestwaste-paper basket if theyfind it not to their liking.Nor is it
unusual for such questionnaires to be referred back to the researcher for
amendment.
Ethical control over science is therefore not limited tomaking sure
thatwe do not violate themost central rights of research subjects. Ethical
control has now gone considerably further,and this is in itself a source of
ethical controversy. Is there a point at which ethics committees may go too
far? For example, had Stanley Milgram applied to one of today's ethics
committees to do the fascinating and much-quoted experiments he
describes in his book Obedience to Authority, he would have stood

virtually no chance of getting approval, because the experiments involved

deceiving his subjects in a way thatrisked causing thempsychological
harm. (Some of thesesubjectswere led tobelieve that,inobedience to the
instructions of someone in a white coat, they were inflicting extremely
painful electric shockson otherexperimentalsubjectswho failed to give
correct answers to questions.5) For Milgram not to have been able to do
his research would have deprived us of a clear illustration of just how

pervasive obedience to authority can be, even in a supposedly liberal

society like theU.S.A. Maybe thiswas a price thatwe shouldbe prepared
to pay, to ensure that research subjects are not harmed. The Milgram ex

periments seem tome close to the boundary of acceptable research, but on

which side theyfall is not easy to say.

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 ETHICS AND THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM 221

As this example shows, it is not easy to specify in advance when the

boundary of ethically acceptable research with human beings has been
reached. Even a questionnaire may be harmful?for example, one that
asks probingand disturbingquestions of people who are psychologically
vulnerable, or one that seeks sensitive information from patients who
will feel under pressure to give it, and then fails to protect the confiden
tiality of the information obtained. So we cannot simply exempt broad
categories of research, like social science research. A responsible ethics
committee system is time-consuming, and will sometimes reach the
wrong conclusion,but it isdifficultto thinkof a betterway of drawing the
line.6
Building on the recognitionthat scientistsare properly limited in
regard to what they may do to the human subjects of their research, we
must now ask: why should the boundary of the human species also be the
boundary of the sphere of beings who are protected from harmful experi
mentation?

ii. Research on Nonhuman Animals

Some have not only human experimentation ethics com

countries
mittees, but also animal experimentation ethics committees. In some of
these countries there is debate over whether the interests of nonhuman
animals are considered sufficiently important to serve as a limit to scien
tific inquiry. In Australia, as in a number of other countries, Animal

Experimentation Ethics Committees operate on the basis that some forms

of research are ethically unacceptable because of the pain or suffering
they inflict on non-human animals. In some other countries, however, the
committees operate only to ensure that there is no "unnecessary" animal
suffering,the assumptionbeing thatif thereis no way of achieving the
goal of the researchwithout inflictingsuffering,then that sufferingis
"necessary" and the research may go ahead. In the United States, for

example, it is significant that the committees are not referred to as ethics

committees, but as "Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees."
Moreover when the Animal Welfare Act was in Congress, the relevant

Congressional committee specifically stated that the act was passed:

... to
provide protection for the researcher in thismatter by exempting from
regulations all animals during actual research or experimentation_It is not

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222 PETER SINGER

the intention of the committee to interfere in any way with research or ex

perimentation.7

Members of this committee of the U.S. Congress apparently placed

freedom of scientificinquirybelow therights of human subjects,but
above the interests of nonhuman subjects. This is, of course, a possible

position; but is itan ethicallyjustifiableone? Since I have writtenon this

topic at considerable length, I shall here restrict myself to some brief
comments.8

If a being has interests, we are not entitled to disregard the interests

of that being, or give them less weight, merely because the being is not a
member of a group towhich we ourselves belong. In particular, we should
not disregard or discount the interests of a being because that being is not
a member of our own race, gender or species. The logic of opposition to

speciesism is entirely parallel to that of opposition to other forms of dis

crimination. Like racism and sexism, "speciesism" is based on a form of
arbitrary discrimination. If membership of our race is not, in itself,

morally significant, why should membership of our species be, in itself,

any different?
Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Prize winning Jewish author, un
derstood this parallel between the way we treat animals, and the way in
which theNazis treated their victims. In his story "The Letter Writer" one
of his characters addresses a mouse in the following words:

What do they know, all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders
of theworld?about such as you? They have convinced themselves thatman,
theworst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other
creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be
tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the
animals it is an eternal Treblinka.

I do not claim, of course, that all animals, human and nonhuman, have the
same interests, only that interests are not to be discounted merely on the
grounds of species. The interests of beings with different mental capaci
ties will vary, and these variations will be morally significant. If we are
forced to choose between saving the life of a being who understands that
he or she exists over time, has plans for the future and wants to go on

living,and a being who is not capable of having desires for the future
because itsmental capacities do not enable it to grasp that it is a "self," a
mental entityexistingover time,thenit is entirelyjustifiableto choose in

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 ETHICS AND THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM 223

favour of the being who wants to go on living. This is a choice based on

mental capacity, and not on species membership (as we can see by the fact
that the former may be a chimpanzee, and the latter a human with
profound brain damage).
This example shows that itwill not do to say that speciesism is
different from racism because all humans have
powers ofsimilar
reasoning, or abilities to uselanguage, or whatever
it might be, else
whereas members of different species do not. In respect of any mental ca
pacities we care to mention, there is an overlap between members of
differentspecies.Why, then,shouldwe stringently
protectthe interests
of
all humans, while neglecting those of nonhuman animals?
Thus science must be subject to ethical limits that are wider than the

protection of human subjects. The interests of nonhuman animals are also

entitled to equal consideration, and this requires a further set of ethical re
strictions on science. Again, exactly where the line should be drawn is not
easy to specify. At present, because we have so little regard for the
interests of nonhuman animals, we are far too permissive in what we
allow. In the world of experimentation on animals, we are, as Isaac
Bashevis Singer suggests, still at theNazi stage, and atrocities are taking
place on a daily basis in the laboratories of the so-called civilised world.
In that context, it is tempting to say that the correct answer is the total
abolition of experiments on animals. I would prefer to say, that the prin
ciples by which we decide to accept or reject scientific research should not
discriminate between humans or nonhumans at a similar mental level. In
other words, we should not treat nonhuman animals any differently from
theway inwhich we treat human beings incapable of giving their consent.
This will not exclude all research on nonhuman animals, because we do
allow some research on human beings who are not capable of consenting.
But it is only researchthatcarriesvirtuallyno riskof significant
harm to
the research subjects.

3. Limits toScientificKnowledge: Are theresome thingsthatwe should

not know?

I now turnto thequestion ofwhether thereare ethical limitsto the

contentof scientificknowledge, as well as to theprocess by which that
is gained. In contrast to the area we have been considering so
knowledge
far, there are no widely accepted principles here.

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224 PETER SINGER

The most ominous knowledge yet discovered by science is the way

inwhich the forces thatbind togethertheatom can be unleashed in an
explosion of a magnitude that far surpasses any explosive device previ
ously created by human beings. This knowledge was the deliberate
outcome of theManhattan Project, on which many of the leading nuclear
scientists inAmerica collaborated. The very existence of the project owed
much to the fact that these and other scientists, among them Albert
Einstein, urged President Roosevelt to build the atom-bomb. Their reason
for doing so was the fear that Hitler might otherwise get the bomb first.
After the war, itbecame clear that theGerman nuclear research effort had
made slower progress than theAmerican scientists had feared; neverthe
less, at the time, the belief that the Germans would develop nuclear
weapons before the allies could defeat them was not unreasonable. It is
terrible to think what the consequences of thismight have been.
The precise historical circumstances that led to the development
of
the first nuclear weapons were unique, but the underlying factor?inter
national scientific competition, in various forms?is universal. Science is
not the property of any person or nation. The knowledge that science gains
is in principle open to anyone to discover, and if scientists from one nation
eschew an area of research, it is likely that scientists from another nation
will take itup. We have seen this quite recently in the case of research on
human embryos. After the success of Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe
in fertilising a human embryo outside the human body, the United States
government, influenced by religious and anti-abortion groups, placed a
moratorium on any government funding of research on human embryos.
This moratorium remains in effect, and President Clinton has recently
refused to end it.Allthat this has meant, however, is that theUnited States
has not taken as prominent a place in human embryo research as itusually
does in new areas of medical research. The work itself has not stopped.
Instead, a number of other nations, including Britain, Australia, and Italy,
have done the pioneering work in this area.
Some of themost controversial areas of scientific research are those
that relate tominority ethnic groups. Claims about race and IQ have led
to the condemnation of entire areas of research. In 1969 Arthur Jensen

published a longarticle in theHarvard Educational Review entitled"How

Much Can We IQ and Scholastic Achievement?"
Boost One short section
of the article raised the question why, on average, African Americans do

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 ETHICS AND THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM 225

not score as well as most other Americans in standard IQ tests. In this

section Jensen said that:

the preponderance of evidence is, in my opinion, less consistent with a

strictly environmental hypothesis thanwith a genetic hypothesis, which, of
course, does not exclude the influence of environment or its interactionwith
genetic factors.

After this remark was widely publicised, Jensen was accused of racism. His
lectures were shouted down and students demanded that he be dismissed
from his university post. H. J.Eysenck, a British professor of psychology
who supported Jensen's theories received similar treatment. Research on
the topics that Jensen has proposed?the relationship between the various
factors influencing differences between races in standard IQ tests?was
not actively pursued over the next quarter-century.9
The opposition to genetic explanations of alleged racial differences
in intelligence is only one manifestation of a more general opposition to
genetic explanations in other socially sensitive areas. For example, a con
ference on "Genetic Factors in Crime: Findings, Uses and Implications,"
planned tohave been held at theUniversityofMaryland inOctober 1992,
was abruptly cancelled after a storm of criticism which led the National
Institutes of Health to freeze funding for the conference. This was despite
a report from the N.I.H.'s own review group which concluded that the
conference's organisers had done a "superb job of assessing the underly
ing scientific,legal,ethical and public policy issues and organizing them
in a thoughtful fashion."10
It is therefore not surprising that there has been opposition to the

largest-ever inquiry into our genetic constitution, the Human Genome

Project. The undertaking tomap and sequence the entire human genome
has now been underway for several years, and is advancing at a faster pace
than anyone predicted even five years ago. As a result, we are gaining
detailedknowledge about thebasic buildingblocks of human inheritance.
The Project has been referred to as "the biological sciences equivalent of

sending a human being to themoon," but in view of its potentially

explosive social implications,itcouldmore tellinglybe described as the
biological equivalent of building the atom bomb. Like theManhattan
Project, it raises in an acute form the question of whether there is some

knowledge that itwould be betternot to have. This time there is no

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226 PETER SINGER

immediate war-time threat of a Hitler-like enemy getting the information

before we do.
The Human Genome Project will have diverse implications. Itmay
make it possible to use gene therapy to tackle the causes of many diseases
inwhich, so far,we have only been able to try to deal with the symptoms.
In addition, though,itwill also provide thebasis forgenetic screeningof
a much more sophisticated and detailed kind than we have had up to now.
We can alreadyperforma genetic teston entirelyhealthyyoung people,
and be ina position to tell thosewho testpositive thattheywill, inmiddle
age, gradually lose their intellectual capacities, become bedridden, unre
am referring to our
sponding, fail to recognize anyone, and will die. I
ability to test for Huntington^ disease. That is a devastating diagnosis,
one so terriblethatmany people who know thattheyare at risk for the
disease do not want to be tested for it.The existence of the test is certainly
no unmitigated benefit.
Probably more significant than our ability tomake definite diagnoses
for rare diseases, however, is our rapidly increasing ability to make pre
dictions thatyield only a statisticalprobabilitythata personwill develop
a specific disease. Examples of diseases of which this can sometimes now
be said are diabetes, arthritis, and some forms of heart disease. This list
will expand dramatically over the next decade, and will then include
several forms of cancer as well as many other conditions. Is this knowl

edge thatwe want to have?

Some psychological traitswill also be shown to have a genetic basis.
The possibility of a genetic basis for violent crime has already been
mentioned. Genetics presumably only be part of a complex inter
would
action between genes and environmental factors, but it could be a highly
a
significant part. As we have seen, there is already evidence to suggest
linkbetween genes and IQ, althoughexactlywhat IQ measures, beyond
an ability to answer a particular set of questions, remains controversial.
The Human Genome Projectmay give us themeans to settletheextentto
which IQ is under genetic control, and may even identifythe genes
involved.Should we obtain thiskind of information? Is it responsible to
do so,without consideringwhat will be done with it?
Proponents of the Human Genome Project believe, obviously, that
we should obtain the informationthattheProjectwill gain. But it is sig
nificant that they do not argue this case on the simple basis that more

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 ETHICS AND THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM 227

knowledge is always desirable. Instead, they acknowledge their responsi

bility to consider the ethical, legal and social implications of the

knowledge they are gaining. Accordingly, the United States National In

stitutesofHealth have allocated 3% of thefundsthatare provided to the
Human Genome Project specificallyfor the investigationof these impli
cations. Although this is a small fraction of the total budget, because the
Project is so large and costly, even 3% is a considerable sum of money.
The problem is, of course, thatwhile theProject has made very rapid
progress in solving the technical problems of mapping and sequencing
genes, no quick technical fix is going to help us find a sound and univer
sallyacceptableway of resolvingtheethical, legaland social implications
of the new knowledge. Hence allocating a proportion of the budget for
considering ethical, legal and social implications,while the scientific
work continues, may not be enough. It is at least arguable that the only
way to take these ethical, legal and social implications seriously, would
have been toput therestof theHuman Genome Project on hold until the
ethical, legal and social implications have been resolved. But this has not
happened, and is certainly not likely to happen now.

4. Conclusion: Ethics and Science

Science is subject to ethics. We see thismost uncontroversially in the

restrictions we place on the search for knowledge in order to protect both
human and animal subjects of research. The ready acceptance of these re
strictions makes it clear that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is not an
absolute or overriding value.
If this is so?if thepursuitof scientificknowledge can properlybe
restricted in order to protect the interests even of a mouse?it becomes
difficult to argue inprinciple that scientists have an absolute right to seek

knowledge in any field, irrespective of the social consequences that

gaining that knowledge will have. At least, this argument cannot be based

rightof free inquirythattrumpsotherrightor interests

on some inherent
of society or of individuals. Nevertheless, there are very strong pragmatic

arguments against saying that there are some things which we should not
seek to know. I shall mention three.
The first argument has already been mentioned. In a world of many

independentnations, if researchoffersany kind of competitiveedge for

one nation, itwill be verydifficultto stop itbeing pursued somewherein

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228 PETER SINGER

the world. This was, as we saw, the argument for gaining the knowledge
needed to build nuclear weapons. The same can be said for the techniques
that make genetic engineering possible. Here it is not a question of

military uses of this knowledge, although even that could come, but com
petitiveness in biotechnology, with all thatmeans for agriculture and for

biological manufacturing processes, as well as for human health. Any

nation that refuses to take part in these areas of research will be left
behind. Of course, a nation could simply refuse to take part in the in
creasinglyglobal economy fosteredby themajor tradingpowers. There
may be good reasons for taking thisdecision; but itwill not stop the
knowledge emerging somewhere in the world. To do that, an internation
al convention would be required. While thismay be desirable, at this stage
the promised benefits of genetic engineering are so enticing that it is
difficult to imagine that any such convention would attract the unanimous,
or near-unanimous, support that would be required. A second argument
applies especially to attempts to stop research that it is feared may
produce results useful to harmful elements in society, for example, racists.
Research on the genetic basis of IQ scores, or of violent crime, falls into
this category. Here, while the objective of avoiding anything that may
lend support to racism is laudatory, prohibition is not a suitable means of
achieving that end. On the contrary, to prohibit research will only produce
an air of suspicion, and of a conspiracy to cover up the truth.Today, with
the mass media on the look-out
for sensation, and communication
becoming cheaper, quicker and easier, attempts to suppress ideas almost
always backfire. The third and perhaps most important reason why we
should not deliberately eschew knowledge in certain areas is that to do so
is to handicap ourselves in solving problems. For example, we may think
that it is better not to carry out research into a possible genetic basis for
violentcrime, since ifsuch a basis is found,itwill lead to thebrandingof
certain people as potential criminals on the basis of their genes alone?
even though theymay never have committed a violent crime, and perhaps
in a favourable environment, never would do so. That this danger exists is
undeniable. But ifwe suppose that there is some genetic predisposition
that can explain the behaviour of at least some violent criminals, then we
have to ask ourselves whether we stand a better chance of solving the

problem of violent crime while we remain ignorant of this explanation, or

when we are aware of it.The answer must surely be that the better our un

derstanding of the kind of behaviour we are trying to prevent, the better

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 ETHICS AND THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM 229

our chances of success. Otherwise we may

spend huge sums on attempts
to control crime and cannot succeed. (This is, I stress, only a hypothetical
example; we do not at present know whether genetic factors play any role
in violent crime.)
I conclude that scienceis properly regarded as subordinate to ethics,
and the protection of both human and animal subjects of research should
takepriorityover thedesires of scientiststo performparticularkinds of
research. But we should distinguish between preventing scientists from
carrying out particular experiments that harm the subjects of the experi
ment, and blocking whole areas of scientific research on the grounds that
to investigate them?by any means at all?will have harmful social con
sequences. In general, the social consequence of attempting to put some
areas of knowledge beyond reach will be worse than the consequences of

gaining the knowledge, and doing our best to see that it is used responsibly.

Peter Singer

NOTES
1. R. J.Lifton,The Nazi Doctors (NewYork: Basic Books, 1986).
2. J.H. Jones,Bad Blood: The Tuskegee SyphilisExperiment (New York: The Free
Press, 1981).
3. The Report of theCommitteeof Inquiry intoAllegations Concerning theTreatment
of Cervical Cancer at National Women's Hospital and Related Matters (Auckland, New
Zealand: GovernmentPrintingOffice, 1988).
4. See Paul McNeill, The Ethics and Politics ofHuman Experimentation (Cambridge:
Cambridge UniversityPress, 1993).
5. StanleyMilgram, Obedience toAuthority(London: Tavistock, 1974).
6. See also Philip Pettit,"Institutinga Research Ethic: Chilling andCautionaryTales,"
Bioethics, 6:2 (1992) pp. 89-112.
7. U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Alternatives toAnimal Use in
Research, Testing and Education (Washington, DC: GovernmentPrintingOffice, 1986) p.
277.
8. See my Animal Liberation, 2nd ed'n. (NewYork: New YorkReview, 1990).
9. See A. R. Jensen,Genetics and Education (London, 1972) and Educability and
Group Differences (London, 1973); H. J. Eysenck, Race, Intelligence and Education
(London, 1971). For a more recentsurveyof the literature,see Richard J.Herrnsteinand
Charles Murray, The Bell Curve (Free Press, 1994) and for a critique of thiswork, see
Charles Lane, 'The Tainted Sources of 'The Bell Curve'," New YorkReview of Books,
December 1, 1994.
10. Daniel Goleman, "New StormBrews onWhether Crime Has Roots inGenes," New
YorkTimes (September 15, 1992), p. Cl; David Wheeler, "UniversityofMaryland Con
ference thatCriticsChargeMight FosterRacism Loses N.I.H. Support,"The Chronicle of
Higher Education (September2, 1992), p. A7.

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