Should ethical issues in biotechnology research be decided by physician-scientists or by lawyers?

* Senior Consultant Physician Division of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics Department of Medicine National University Hospital Address for Reprints: Professor Vernon M S Oh, Division of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Department of Medicine, National University Hospital, Singapore119074. E-mail: [email protected] As with clinical practice, the practice of biomedical research is a moral activity. We have to think about what we should do, not just about what we can do, to modify life. We would do well to remember what Peter Medawar called the ‘limits of scientific discovery’. Also, there are distinct limits to the present understanding of the boundary zone between living things and non-living things, although some researchers are unaware of these limits. Actually, some researchers may be as misled by the media-generated hyperbole (‘hype’) as the general public. I believe this is particularly true of the people who work at the interface between experimental biology and industry—the sphere called biotechnology, which includes bioengineering and genetic engineering. Why is this? Chiefly because non-clinical biotechnologists do not see the failures of intervention in living patients; physicians do. The experience of physicians is a crucial counterweight to the unbridled enthusiasm of scientists. As Karl Popper stated, “It must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience ... not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a [scientific] system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation”.