Opinions about scientific advances blur party-political lines
By Matthew Nisbet and Ezra Markowitz,
The Conversation
| 02. 19. 2014
Reading about the rapid pace of advances in biomedicine, you may have wondered why more politically liberal countries like Germany and Canada have stronger restrictions on embryonic stem cell research than the politically conservative US.
History and happenstance play a role, but these differences also reflect public concerns that do not conform to traditional left or right political ideologies.
As debates over stem cell research continue and as conflicts over other biomedical advances emerge, a recurring set of questions is likely to be seen. Do scientific breakthroughs promote or undermine social progress? Is research being pursued too cautiously or too quickly? Do scientists respect or cross moral boundaries?
In a study, just published in PLOS ONE, we analysed a series of surveys collected between 2002 and 2010 to better understand what the US public thinks about stem cell research and how they formed these opinions. We were able to distinguish between the different factors influencing their beliefs. At play were factors such as traditional loyalties to political parties and more fundamental beliefs about science and society.
Our results indicate...
Related Articles
By Smriti Mallapaty, Nature | 09.11.2024
Under his microscope, Jun Wu could see several tiny spheres, each less than 1 millimetre wide. They looked just like human embryos: a dark cluster of cells surrounded by a cavity, and then another ring of cells.
But Wu, a...
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 08.22.2024
In 2016, I attended a large meeting of journalists in Washington, DC. The keynote speaker was Jennifer Doudna, who just a few years before had co-invented CRISPR, a revolutionary method of changing genes that was sweeping across biology labs because...
By Priyanka Runwal, Chemical and Engineering News | 08.05.2024
Saritee Sanodiya, 26, has spent countless days wondering if she’ll ever live a “normal” life. Growing up, Sanodiya often missed school, frequenting the hospital for sudden, life-threatening drops in her hemoglobin levels and excruciating pain in her joints. High fever...
It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on Mars. Time for a brief roundup.
• • •
Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...