Scientific Monastics?

[Kai]

It seems kindof dumb.  There are a lot of drugs out there that are really really nasty, shit that wouldn't ever go into human trials except it treats something lethal (see pretty much any cancer treatment).  There are other drugs that have nasty side effects if and only if you lack the right disease.  Oh, and if you don't actually have the condition, the test won't tell you anything about how effective it is.

I think you are missing the point.

[Reginald Ret]

It seems to me like he was implying that putting monastic people together creates a fucked up culture. Or that all culture in general has fucked up bits. Or he was just putting in something bad so he wouldn't be called Utopian.

[Kai]

It seems to me like he was trying to stretch the analogy, and it tore a little.

It seems to me like it was an interesting fiction story where researchers actually take ethical responsibility for their research. Wouldn't it be wonderful if researchers in this day and time actually did that?

Lets think of it this way. It used to be that people would test their plants medicinal properties on themselves, in small amounts. More recently we've used animal test subjects for initial research, but human medication still requires a human test subject. Why is it that we think its ethically okay to try it out on someone else if we wouldn't try it on ourselves? What makes our life that much more precious if what we are doing is a selfless development of medicine? The truth is, it's not, and we aren't, and the whole thing today is about money. So this is a different take on it, a proverbial "what if".

As for the guilt, the monastics in the story joined the order out of selflessness. If they didn't want to do it, there was no one forcing.

[Kai]

It seems to me like he was implying that putting monastic people together creates a fucked up culture. Or that all culture in general has fucked up bits. Or he was just putting in something bad so he wouldn't be called Utopian.

Show me a culture that is not "fucked up" in some way.

[Requia ☣]

It seems to me like he was implying that putting monastic people together creates a fucked up culture. Or that all culture in general has fucked up bits. Or he was just putting in something bad so he wouldn't be called Utopian.

I was only commenting on the penance sessions.  The rest of it... I can see all sorts of ways that could go horribly wrong, but not any worse than they already have.

[LMNO]

It seems to me like he was trying to stretch the analogy, and it tore a little.

It seems to me like it was an interesting fiction story where researchers actually take ethical responsibility for their research. Wouldn't it be wonderful if researchers in this day and time actually did that?

Yes, but why call it "penance", other than to fit the Monastary theme?

[Richter]

It seems to me like he was trying to stretch the analogy, and it tore a little.

It seems to me like it was an interesting fiction story where researchers actually take ethical responsibility for their research. Wouldn't it be wonderful if researchers in this day and time actually did that?

Yes, but why call it "penance", other than to fit the Monastary theme?

"I hypothesize that I have selectively bred some REALLY good kine.  At penance session I'll be testing some on myself."

[LMNO]

wut

[Richter]

Supporting your earlier comment about an over - stretched metaphor.

Kind of reminiscent of "A Canticle for Leibowitz", except for the dogmatic approach monks in that book applied to science.

[LMNO]

Oh, ok.  I get it now.

[Kai]

It seems to me like he was trying to stretch the analogy, and it tore a little.

It seems to me like it was an interesting fiction story where researchers actually take ethical responsibility for their research. Wouldn't it be wonderful if researchers in this day and time actually did that?

Yes, but why call it "penance", other than to fit the Monastery theme?

It wasn't just a theme of a monastery. The author made it explicit that the scientific monastic movement is closely related to catholic monastics in the story. "Benedictine Order of Oncology". Perhaps the author came from a catholic background and decided to go with sort of monasticism. Or perhaps the author wanted to make a point and example of the level of self sacrifice involved in this particular ethical pursuit of medical materials and knowledge, or that the monks were doing literal penance for the "sins" of their past in pharm corps.

Either way it makes a good story.

[Triple Zero]

First off, this is not to diss the story. I think it's a cool story, and indeed an interesting what-if scenario. Some of your observations about the story however are perhaps interesting to check out a bit closer:

Lets think of it this way. It used to be that people would test their plants medicinal properties on themselves, in small amounts. More recently we've used animal test subjects for initial research, but human medication still requires a human test subject. Why is it that we think its ethically okay to try it out on someone else if we wouldn't try it on ourselves?

well one reason I can think of is that when testing something on a subject rather than oneself, in a lot of cases, you can make more accurate and objective observations. for example what if the drug has psychoactive properties.

however, in that case still a group of researchers could test it on researchers within the same group. which helps a lot for making observations, but I still get the idea that if everybody gets a turn, objectivity would suffer.

in addition to that, what if the drug has side effects, let's assume something innocent, it heals you, but it will also make you drowsy and very sleepy for the course of several weeks. in that case you will have one less scientist being able to do research and apply their knowledge. which leads to one possible answer to your question,

What makes our life that much more precious if what we are doing is a selfless development of medicine?

In the case of disabling side effects, the extra worth of the researcher compared to the non-researcher test subject is that of very specific and unique knowledge. If the researcher is working on this medicine, and tests it on himself, and the medicine is dangerous, he jeopardizes the entire project if things go wrong.

Getting back to the story, if you have an entire monastry, filled to the brim with scientists monks, which are somewhat expendable, and they all keep perfect lab notes and keep their collegues informed of any kinds of thoughts, musings and intuitions they might have about the project, then yes, I could see the scenario of researchers testing their medicines on themselves kind of working. Because in that case, a test gone wrong would not mean a loss of valuable unique knowledge.

This is of course assuming that, morally, losing a scientist that was just on the verge of discovering the cure for terrible disease X, is worse than losing a random test subject, in the very experiment that is part of the search for the cure for X. Losing the scientist would both doom the project and lose a life, where losing random test subject would "just" lose a life. Depends on the kind of ethics you subscribe to whether you think both situations are equal or not.

Also, if you'd switch "losing a life" with "incapacitating for a few weeks", the comparison changes again. In the case of the random test subject, nobody dies, whereas in the case of the researcher incapacitating themselves, the project gets delayed by a couple of weeks, while people are dying of terrible disease X. Of course again this doesn't matter if you've got a large or infinite supply of expendable scientists that do not individually get unique flashes of insights before they can fully explain them to their collegues.

[Requia ☣]

It seems to me like he was trying to stretch the analogy, and it tore a little.

Why is it that we think its ethically okay to try it out on someone else if we wouldn't try it on ourselves?

For the same reason its ethically OK to give somebody who is sick a medication that has nasty side effects, but not somebody who is healthy.

If you're trying to replace Rogaine, then yeah, trying it out on researchers is ok.

[Kai]

For the same reason its ethically OK to give somebody who is sick a medication that has nasty side effects, but not somebody who is healthy.

Explain to me how that's ethically okay.

[Requia ☣]

For something obvious, chemotherapy is really nasty, nausea, hair loss, depressed immune system function to name a few.  To apply it to somebody healthy would be cruel in the extreme.  But it saves lives when done to the right people.