Lishia Erza, a recent Chevening alumnus from Indonesia, shares the findings of her dissertation. Lishia will write again shortly about next steps, and she will ask for your help;
My project was about how genetic science promotes (or threatens) social justice in Britain. To give you a bit of a background, let’s start with a question: What if everyone can be super? What if genetic screening and engineering have now allowed us to design what we (and our future generation) would be like? Would these technological advances generate wealth? Would the same technology generate welfare?
On one side, there’s the commercial promise of cutting edge technology but on the flip side, there are social issues that potentially threaten social life as we know it. These are the issues explored in my dissertation with a specific context: Britain.
Britain faces social, economic and political pressures amidst the fragmented society it is comprised of. In 1994, the Commission of Social Justice put out a British conception of social justice, which is a balance between wealth and welfare. This principle of social justice was a result of socio-political developments in post-war Britain. The problem British society faced was persistent health inequalities combined with limited state capacity to provide insatiable health demands from cradle to grave. This is a different notion of redistributive social justice as generally discussed in development discourses. Britain sees social justice as a spring-board of opportunities instead of a safety net for vulnerabilities.
Developments in life science have resulted in technologies for better diagnostic and therapeutic means. As the UK is a global leader in biotech second only to the US, intuitively the UK has more than enough reason to capitalise on this strength. Fortunately, UK’s lead in biotechnology is a result of a long legacy of academic excellence. Biotech revolution promise solutions to health and economic problems, thereby hypothetically promoting social justice. However, biotech’s role in the promotion of social justice is not autonomous of the socio-political context. Expecting biotech to be a cure-all panacea on its own is naïve because biotech operates in the nexus of political, economic and social systems.
Where genes have commercial value, it is unethical to capitalise on genes due to a generally unacceptable reductionist approach to human tissue. In addition, surprisingly the amount of effort and funding poured into the commercialisation of biotech is yet to yield a desired outcome. Strategic policy recommendations have been produced but implementation meets political roadblocks due to uneven distribution of power and arrangements between devolved regions and Whitehall. For biotech to be able to promote the wealth generation aspect of social justice, it needs an entourage of policy adjustments ranging from clustering policies to re-organising the political structure between central and local government.
Capacity building is required at individual and institutional level to promote social justice through biotech. Publics need to be educated as to what biotech can offer in order to help people form realistic expectations towards biotechnology. This education will help the public make informed decisions with regard to their welfare and the welfare of their offspring. At institutional level, public policy needs capacity building to catch up with scientific developments so that the role of the state is not sparse to reacting to public demands, dissent, or submitting to market pressure. State capacity has to be built so that public policy operate at the same platform as the ideals it sets out to promote: to be a provider of opportunities, not to be weavers of safety nets.
As a concept, social justice is prone to changes influenced by various systemic developments. On the other hand, biotechnology is shaped by social contexts that surround it. This implies the existence of a controlling actor that directs the vision of social justice and the agenda set for biotechnology. Governance of political ideals and technological progression needs critical reflection if social justice were to be the goal. Who runs the show?
On the welfare aspect of social justice, biotech was tested against four principles of justice set out by David Miller as a continuation to CSJ’s 1994 principles of justice. Biotech came out with mixed results.
1. For equal citizenship, in theory biotech opens an alternative to socio-political citizenship that could break social/political barriers: citizenship based on biology. In practice, this could sway the other way and become a threat to equal citizenship, as genetic identity could be a base for biological segregation.
2. For social minimum, biotech serves as an extender of what is included as minimum, not as promoter or challenger to the principle.
3. For equality of opportunity, biotech is more a threat than a promoter of equal opportunity. This is given the history of social order creation in biotech research agenda.
4. For fair distribution, biotech enables fair distribution of human capabilities by eliminating and/or reducing limitations.
Whether or not biotech promotes social justice, either from wealth creation or welfare springboard, there are two groups of people involved: winners and losers. This is where my PhD comes in.