The Importance of Science Ethics in Modern Biology
Some time ago, a student asked me: what is the price of a single species? I was stunned. The question reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s quip that cynics are those who know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Amidst the hubbub of modern biology, this criticism feels increasingly sharp.
We live in an era where the human DNA sequence can be read in hours, compared to the Human Genome Project’s 13 years. Through Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, embryos can be screened for specific physical traits, as if life were a restaurant menu to order from. Yet behind this sophistication lies a flawed ledger. At the same time, humanity is spearheading the sixth mass extinction, driven not by meteorites but by our own hands.
UNACCOUNTED EXTERNALITIES
In economics, externalities are costs borne by others but never accounted for by decision-makers. Biotechnological advances are often lauded as triumphs of intellect, yet when scrutinised, their foundations are not always clean.
Recall the HeLa cells. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman, lost ownership of her own cells. Without consent, her cervical cancer cells were taken for their near-immortal ability to divide. These cells became a pharmaceutical goldmine, from polio vaccines to Covid-19 research, yet her family remained untouched by the wealth generated from their bodies.
This is an unrecorded ethical externality. The Tuskegee syphilis study, which withheld treatment from patients for data, serves as a similar warning. Science without bioethics easily shifts from enlightenment to exploitation. Objectivity, when stripped of conscience, readily becomes an excuse.
There is a sharp irony here. We are busy imagining designer babies while simultaneously destroying real genetic diversity. In Sumatra and Kalimantan, rainforests home to orangutans and tigers are converted into palm oil plantations. We treat the human genome as the sole valuable asset while ignoring ecosystem services. The pollination by bees, worth billions of dollars, for example.
In ledger terms, we are liquidating the Earth’s biological assets. We harvest short-term growth while accumulating long-term ecological deficits. The problem is, such deficits cannot be restructured. Extinct species cannot be reissued like bonds. This is where our accounting falls short. The market prices logged timber but remains silent on standing forests.
WHEN NATURE CORRECTS
Our gravest mistake is likely viewing evolution as a slow, past process. In reality, natural selection operates at lightning speed in the microscopic world. Antibiotic misuse has created superbugs like MRSA. Bacteria do not mutate because of antibiotics; they survive because we kill the weak and leave the strongest to reproduce. We have created this selective pressure ourselves. In other words, resistance is not accidental but a price we collectively pay for negligence.
If this pattern continues, we risk returning to the pre-antibiotic era, where simple infections become death sentences. Nature, ultimately, always finds a way to correct our recklessness.
Biology provides us with extraordinary tools, from molecular cloning to gene therapy. Yet knowledge without policy is a recipe for disaster. Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote that humanity’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, and our tendency toward tyranny makes it necessary. This holds true for science too. Our ability to read life’s code makes progress possible, but our tendency to misuse it makes ethics imperative.
Therefore, the question for scientists and policymakers today is no longer ‘what can we do’, but ‘what should we do for the survival of all life’. Without commitment to bioethics and biodiversity, evolutionary history may record humans not as the pinnacle of intelligence, but as an anomaly that destroys itself through arrogance.
It is time we stop viewing nature as a commodity and start treating it as a constitution to be obeyed. Thus, returning to the student’s question: the price of a single species may be zero in the market, but its value, as Wilde said, is infinite.
Will we become guardians of life, or mere fossils for future civilisations to study? The answer is not determined by the sophistication of our laboratories, but by how far today’s policies dare to place life above profit.