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November 14, 2002
A: FROM MENTOR SUZANNE FRANKS
IN KS
Alexis, I am going to leave the question about why the cells
don't
always cause disease to a bacteriologist or a cell biologist
to answer!
However, I do want to talk a little about "why science
gets poltiical."
Science gets political because it is political! What I mean
by that, is
that science is a set of activities and actions and decisions
and
investigations and projects, all of which are undertaken by
human
beings, for the purpose of doing something to affect or change
the way
we live and how we understand things. All of that makes it
a political act.
Some would argue that there is nothing any human being can
do that is
not, in some sense, political. But science is all about understanding
and
improving our lives, and that is political work. I think,
however, that you
are asking "why do people let their political beliefs
get in the way of
science?" Well, political beliefs and ideas are part
of what human
beings use to figure out what kind of action should be taken.
One can
never really decide "just" on the basis of science
because what we
learn from science must always be interpreted in the context
of
a particular society and state of affairs. And we must consider
what
the impact will be of any decision for action that we take.
Science, for
example, was able to tell us that spraying DDT on crops would
kill
pests that were destroying the crops. It was also able to
tell us that
DDT was making the shells of eggs of bald eagles and many
other
birds so fragile that the eggs could not last until birds
were hatched,
and that other kinds of environmental impacts were taking
place.
But science could not tell us whether we should then stop
using DDT,
and who should be responsible to repair the damage that was
caused,
and what kind of rules about pollution and insecticides we
should have.
Those decisions all require political input. Science can inform
our
decision making process, but it cannot substitute for that
process.
So when it looks sometimes like politics are getting in the
way of
science, it may actually be the case that science cannot substitute
for politics, but can only guide it. We are responsible for
being
scientifically literate enough to make good informed decsions
but we
can't escape politics or the fact that the decisions we make,
aren't made
in a vacuum, but are made in a particular societal context
and have
implications far beyond what the scientific data can say.
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A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN
RI
I don't know, but since the disease is caused by a toxin,
perhaps the
Pfiesteria only makes the toxin under certain conditions.
(How would
you test this?)
In the case of diphtheria,
http://www.bact.wisc.edu/Bact330/lecturediphth
the bacterium has the gene to make the diphtheriotoxin but,
to quote
from the URL:
"Two factors have great influence on the ability of Corynebacterium
diphtheriae to produce the diphtheria toxin: (1) low extracellular
concentrations of iron and (2) the presence of a lysogenic
prophage in the bacterial
chromosome. The gene for toxin production occurs on the chromosome
of
the prophage, but a bacterial repressor protein controls the
expression
of this gene. The repressor is activated by iron, and it is
in this
way that iron influences toxin production. High yields of
toxin are
synthesized only by lysogenic bacteria under conditions of
iron
deficiency. "
I knew about this, so by analogy I would investigate what
controls
toxin production by Pfiesteria - it might be something quite
different, of course. And I could be totally off-base! Toxin
production might not be the variable. What other variables
can you
think of that could explain different responses to the same
rate of
toxin production?
As for the second part of your question:
Science may be purely rational in theory, but it is only carried
out
by human beings - who are by nature political. Politics has
to do
with the division of responsibilities, rights, wealth and
power, and
no one is immune from having her self-interest color the way
she sees
the world. Scientists worthy of the name try to avoid letting
their
biases affect their results and interpretation of results,
but
scientist are only human and can be blind to the fact that
what they
expect and want to observe can influence what they think they
do
observe. Self-interest can also influence how we interpret
what we
see. This is why we have to disclose potential conflicts of
interest. Readers of our scientific paper on the beneficial
effects
of smoking should know that the work was funded by a cigarette
company.
There are also political struggles for power between scientists
in
laboratories, where the struggle is less concerned with the
science
itself than simply with who's to be boss.
Politics _can_ be fair - the free exchange of ideas, "may
the best
man (or woman) win," but fairness has nothing to do with
disease and
death. So I think we just need to leave the nastiness to the
disease
itself and try to keep our political struggles clean and separate
from our science as much as possible!
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