Biotechnology and the biotech industry span multiple sectors, ranging from the agricultural and food industries to the healthcare sector. In the past two years, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, biotechnology and its uses in the healthcare sector have seen explosive growth in the market, with COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers such as BioNTech and Moderna in tow. These same companies are currently foraying into AI, Big Data, and gene editing (e.g., CRISPR, mRNA technology) [1–3].

In such a growing, impactful industry, it is inevitable that there may be ethically salient problems, problems that require attention and examination. With this in mind, let’s take a look at 5 of the most ethically salient problems facing the biotech industry today.

Those most affected by these ethical problems are consumers and patients.

1. Human Life vs. Scientific Progress
(or What is the value of human life relative to the value of biotechnological progress?)
The biotech industry faces a delicate dilemma. When pursuing advances in biotechnology, the industry must respect human dignity, ensure human safety, and satisfy the needs of its consumers — from clinical trials to commercial production and distribution. But often human dignity, safety, and needs are sacrificed in pursuit of scientific “progress”, resulting in what is termed the “Innovator’s Dilemma” [4]. The Innovator’s Dilemma is “the decision that businesses must make between catering to their customers’ current needs, or adopting new innovations and technologies which will answer their future needs” [5]. As such, the industry continuously makes judgments regarding the value of human life relative to the value of scientific progress as it is confronted with the question: Which has greater value?
2. Rights vs. State Debate
(or What role do biotech companies play in the rights versus state debate?)
Rights (e.g., right to life, privacy, freedom of ____) versus state is an age-old question. When it comes to biotechnology and the biotech industry, however, the debate particularly centers on concerns about personal genetic data collection and privacy violation in the name of protecting public health to ensure national security, whether the threat be internal (e.g., consequences of a poor institutional response to a pandemic) or external (e.g., acts of bioterrorism by another country) [6–8]. Implicit in this debate is the question: What should the industry give priority to — its individual consumers or the well-being of the state? Do policies and practices within biotech companies treat humans (and their well-being) as an end, or as a means to an end? Is it possible for the industry to protect both its consumers and the state simultaneously?
3. Therapy-Enhancement Debate
(or Should biotech be about therapy or enhancement?)
A prominent issue in bioethics, the therapy-enhancement debate particularly raises ethical questions for biotechnology. First, the debate addresses a moral difference between therapy (i.e., correcting a problem) and enhancement (i.e., changing a feature that is not a problem or improving a feature to a state that one might define as better than well) [9–10]. It is important to ask which direction the biotech industry is increasingly taking — namely, is the industry heading more towards a therapy-orientation or more towards an enhancement-orientation when conducting research and manufacturing its products? The choice that biotech companies ultimately take has profound implications for the utility of biotechnology relative to human clients or patients, bringing into question the meaning of ‘natural’, ‘human’, and human dignity [11]. Is biotechnology a corrective force or an augmentative force? Are these mutually exclusive?
4. Loss of Sustainable, Just, People- Centered Solutions in Favor of Technocracy
(or Are biotech companies taking into account issues of justice and listening to all their stakeholders?)
On a broader level, the ideological and systemic character of the biotech industry needs to be assessed as it is the character of the industry’s pursuits that substantially drives the industry [12]. The “Innovator’s Dilemma” is now observable in the biotech industry and may be indicative of a larger problem: by seeking out disruptive technologies at the expense of consumer needs, the industry is increasingly adopting a technocratic framework that glamorizes the potential capabilities of biotechnology, and prioritizes innovation over sustainable, just, people-centered solutions. For instance, see how the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit was met with heavy pushback from a global countermobilization initiative spearheaded by farmers, scientists, and civil society groups allied with Indigenous communities and small-scale food producers [13].

TECHNOCRACY

Definition. A social system or system of government in which people with scientific or technical knowledge have a lot of power and influence.

Source: Cambridge Dictionary

If the biotech industry is indeed increasingly adopting a technocratic framework and key players within the industry are able to recognize the ethical risks of retaining its technocratic character, then it is highly advisable that the industry work with relevant actors and stakeholders on self- correction.
5. Corporate Capture and Ethics (or Should biotech companies address corporate capture? Why or why not?)
Corporate capture (also known as regulatory capture) is pervasive in the private sector and encroaches on democratic decision-making processes, thus diminishing regulatory and enforcement power — a power that exists to ensure ethical conduct by corporations within the private sector. Businesses in the biotechnology industry are not immune from engaging in this practice.

CORPORATE CAPTURE

Definition. A phenomenon where private industry uses its political influence to take control of the decision-making apparatus of the state, such as regulatory agencies, law enforcement entities, and legislatures.

Source: Center for Constitutional Rights [14]

When corporate or regulatory capture takes a hold of institutions responsible for regulation, policy- making, and enforcement for the public good, how do we ascertain whether or not the biotech industry is appropriately and ethically testing, producing, and distributing its services and goods?

While the outlook for biotech companies will foreseeably continue to be bright from an economic perspective, they must also work to understand their impact on the world beyond profit-and-loss. To stay ahead of the industry curve, leaders and investors in the biotech field would do well to start asking the above questions sooner rather than later.

NOTE: The original Medium post can be found HERE.

References

[1] Tammy Lovell. 2022. BioNTech and InstaDeep join forces to predict high-risk COVID variants. (January 2022). Retrieved February 17, 2022 from https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/biontech-and-instadeep-join-forces-predict-high- risk-covid-variants

[2] Anjalee Khemlani. 2022. Pfizer to make foray into gene editing, expand mRNA tech in 2022. (January 2022). Retrieved February 17, 2022 from https://news.yahoo.com/pfizer-to-make-foray- into-gene-editing-expand-m-rna-in-2022–144902650–153110783.html

[3] Carnegie Mellon University. 2019. Moderna Launches AI Academy in Partnership with CMU. (December 2021). Retrieved February 17, 2022 from https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2021/december/moderna-ai-academy.html

[4] Mark Hammond. 2018. Pharma is entering classic Innovator’s dilemma. And that’s an opportunity for a much more equitable model. (April 2018). Retrieved February 15, 2022 from https://medium.com/deepscience/pharma-is-entering-classic-innovators-dilemma-cff9b776912

[5] Rob Prevett. 2017. At a glance — the innovator’s dilemma. (September 2017). Retrieved February 17, 2022 from https://foundry4.com/at-a-glance-the-innovators-dilemma

[6] Ed Silverman. 2004. The 5 Most Pressing Ethical Issues in Biotech Medicine. Biotechnol Healthc 1, 6 (Dec. 2004), 41–46. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3570985/

[7] Alda Yuan. 2018. Derived Data: A Novel Privacy Concern in the Age of Advanced Biotechnology and Genome Sequencing. Yale Law & Policy Review (Spring 2018). https://ylpr.yale.edu/inter_alia/derived-data-novel-privacy-concern-age-advanced-biotechnology- and-genome-sequencing

[8] Eman Ahmed and Mahsa Shabani. 2019. DNA Data Marketplace: An Analysis of the Ethical Concerns Regarding the Participation of the Individuals. Front. Genet. 10 (Nov. 2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2019.01107

[9] Patrick Lin. 2009. Therapy and Enhancement: Is There a Moral Difference? (July 2009). Retrieved February 23, 2022 from https://www.genengnews.com/magazine/116/therapy-and- enhancement-is-there-a-moral-difference/

[10] The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. 2022. Therapy vs. Enhancement. Retrieved February 25, 2022 from https://www.cbc-network.org/issues/faking-life/therapy-vs-enhancement/

[11] David Plunkett. 2017. Conceptual Ethics and the Methodology of Normative Inquiry. (October 2017). Retrieved February 9, 2022 from https://philosophy.ceu.edu/events/2017-10-17/conceptual- ethics-and-methodology-normative-inquiry

[12] Daniel Broudy and Makoto Arakaki. 2020. Who Wants to Be a Slave? The Technocratic Convergence of Humans and Data. Front. Commun. 5 (Jun. 2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00037

[13] Aniket Aga and Maywa Montenegro de Wit. 2021. How Biotech Crops Can Crash — and Still Never Fail. (December 2021). Retrieved February 21, 2022 from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-biotech-crops-can-crash-and-still-never-fail/

[14] Center for Constitutional Rights. 2022. Corporate Capture. Retrieved February 21, 2022 from https://ccrjustice.org/corporate-capture