The Importance of Ethical Guidance for Scientific Research
Anika Vemulapalli reflects on the conditions for ethical and unethical researchPriding myself on being grounded in practicality, I’ve always seen ethics as an endless conversation bound in perplexing theories inapplicable to the “real world” – that is, until Dr. Nita Farahany explained her work.
According to Dr. Farahany, a bioethicist exploring the implications of emerging technologies on society, ethical guidance starts with an open-ended dialogue but always ends in implementable advice. For the Huang Fellow session, she uses two main examples – the creation of monkey/human chimeric embryos and the restoration of deceased pig heads’ brain function – to outline her process of assessing the ethicality of various biology projects.
First, she and her team gain a strong understanding of the background of the research. For instance, she had to learn all the scientific details of intermixing human cells with monkey embryos. Moreover, within vivo chimeric embryo research being the long-term goal, she had to ask questions such as “at what point would the culture/medium/blood supply limit the scope of scientists’ work?” and “how is this different from existing blastocyst complementation research?” Gaining a strong background understanding allows her to move on to questioning the importance of the research. In the case of chimeric embryos, these scientists hoped to use this foundational research to eventually create more human-like models for cell research, a useful goal for the benefit of society. Having a valid “why” for a research project is critical for preventing unethical and potentially harmful scientific progress.
Digressing slightly, Dr. Farahany asks the crucial question “is knowledge for the sake of knowledge okay to explore?” With this question, she explains that research must have a point and an ethically permissible methodology to be morally sound. It seems obvious: launching a deadly virus on a population or starving animals for the sake of finding answers to interesting questions would be unacceptable. Though these methodologies are extreme, she explains how this applies to any scientific research project.
She then addresses the importance of understanding a research’s context to understand what the next steps are. For example, Yale scientists engaged in a successful experiment with pig brain restoration with their next goal to be using human brains. However, Dr. Farahany recognized how many questions must be answered beforehand, such as whether there’s potential for the pigs to regain brain consciousness, how the addition and removal of different liquid media factors impact brain function, etc. This example highlights the grave importance of Dr. Farahany’s work. Researchers and policymakers might think their projects are obviously ethical and lawful, yet through intermediaries like Dr. Farahany, stakeholders are forced to consider the holistic societal and scientific implications of their research.
Anika Vemulapalli, Huang Fellow ’25
Anika Vemulapalli is a first-year student planning to major in global health and biology with a minor in political science.