Emerging biotechnologies: full report - Nuffield Council on Bioethics

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E m e r g i n g b i o t e c h n o l o g i e s 1.22 The selection of contingent conditions can be highly decisive, particularly where there is significant uncertainty about the technology’s potential to deliver effective applications. One might think here of the reasons that different approaches to human stem cell research were pursued in the UK, where research has concentrated on licensed use of human embryonic stem cells (hESC), and in Germany, where destructive human embryo research is unlawful. 36 1.23 Contingent conditions need not be ‘all or nothing’: they can exert selective pressures that simply favour or deter, to varying degrees, certain pathways in relation to possible alternatives. 37 Their effects are likely to be aggregate, and within this aggregate, one condition may counteract another. Being multiple, they are often determined by a range of different actors (firms, governments, researchers and others) rather than being controlled by a single, well-informed actor following a consistent strategy. These different actors (or networks or groups of actors) will sometimes have significantly different objectives, and different beliefs and understandings of the technological options. A lack of coordination – or outright opposition – can create strong and sometimes counterproductive pressures. 38 Some important conditions may not therefore be the result of active ‘decisions’ at all, either because they are not the intentional outcome of a single decision (but the unintended consequences of a set of discrete interventions taken without a view to their collective effect) or because they are the result of omissions. 39 Technological ‘lock-in’ 1.24 Although some decisions in the global pathway of technology development may be contingent upon sometimes very minor influences, once a pathway is established, technologies can easily become entrenched or ‘locked in’. Central to the explanation of technological ‘lock-in’ is the idea that specific technological pathways, once embarked upon, become progressively difficult and costly to escape. In economic terms, this is generally attributed to the mutual adaptation of the technology itself and market conditions, learning effects and increasing returns to scale, etc. 40 Technologies may also acquire ‘momentum’ from the feedback between technology and society through, for example, lifestyle adaptations to particular products. 41 1.25 The adaptations and accommodations that ‘lock-in’ technologies also, of course, bring gains in terms of efficiency and utility. However, this may mean that the innovation conditions faced by new technologies are most likely to be conservative, since it is probable that they will have been aligned so as to make the most effective use of incumbent technologies. Even where – rather than competing with existing technologies, new technologies open up an entirely new market or 36 37 38 39 40 41 Research in the UK has focused primarily on deriving hESC subject to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (as amended); in Germany, owing to the interpretation of constitutional prohibitions in the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) and s.2 of the Embryo Protection Act 1991 (Embryonenschutzgesetz) it has focused on imported lines (pursuant to the Stem Cell Act 2002 (Stammzellgesetz) (as amended)), somatic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. Notwithstanding the permissive legal environment in the UK, research may nevertheless come to be affected by the possibilities of patenting, and therefore success<strong>full</strong>y commercialising, products in the light of the European Court of Justice’s finding in Brüstle v. Greenpeace eV (Case C-34/10), 18 October 2011. For example, tax incentives might be used to encourage particular activities in specific places: scientific and technological endeavour generally might be encouraged (as under the UK Government’s research and development relief for corporation tax) or specific disciplines might be given favourable terms (such as New York City’s biotechnology tax credit). See: HMRC (2012) Research and development (R&D) relief for corporation tax, available at: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ct/formsrates/claims/randd.htm; NYC Government (2012) Answers to the most frequently asked questions about biotechnology credit against the general corporation tax and the unincorporated business tax, available at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/pdf/10pdf/biotech_faq.pdf. See paragraph 7.11 below, for an example whereby government investment intended to leverage private sector R&D investment apparently had the opposite effect. For example, human reproductive cloning research was allegedly pursued for some time in Italy, owing to that country’s reticence in legislating for reproductive technologies; see: BioNews (2004) Antinori restates clone claims, available at: http://www.bionews.org.uk/page_11939.asp. See: Boas TC (2007) Conceptualizing continuity and change: the composite-standard model of path dependence Journal of Theoretical Politics 19: 33–54). The theory of ‘technological momentum’ was developed by Thomas Hughes in the late 1960s. See: Hughes TP (1969) Technological momentum in history: hydrogenation in Germany 1898-1933 Past & Present 44: 106-32. 16
E m e r g i n g b i o t e c h n o l o g i e s range of possibilities – they may still suffer disadvantage through a lack of conducive environmental conditions. 42 1.26 Conditions in the innovation environment may even ensure that there may only be space for one technological ‘winner’ that may come to dominate a field of practice to the extent that potential alternatives are ‘crowded out’. 43 This winner, however, need not be the ‘best’ overall candidate from all perspectives, 44 if successive rounds of selection operate according to different criteria (technical, political, social, economic, etc.). An innovation dilemma C H A P T E R 1 1.27 A dilemma facing a society that seeks to govern innovation is that often the consequences of introducing new technologies can only be <strong>full</strong>y understood once the technology is in use; by that time, however, it may be too late to change course. This difficulty was expressed by the British social philosopher David Collingridge in the form of a ‘technology control dilemma’. Box 1.2: Collingridge’s technology control dilemma Efforts to control technology face the following dilemma: 1 Limited predictability: “understanding of the interactions between technology and society is so poor that the harmful social consequences of the <strong>full</strong>y developed technology cannot be predicted with sufficient confidence to justify the imposition of controls.” 2 Limited power: “by the time a technology is sufficiently well developed and diffused for its unwanted social consequences to become apparent, it is no longer easily controlled. Control may still be possible, to some degree but it has become very difficult, expensive and slow.” 45 1.28 As presented, the dilemma focuses on avoiding undesirable but unforeseen social consequences of technology, but it might equally apply to the problem of securing the most desirable benefits. The power of the dilemma arises from the fact that the consequences of decisions about what technological trajectories to pursue potentially ‘lock in’ a given technology and simultaneously ‘crowd out’ alternatives in a context in which switching paths may set back the achievement of a benefit by decades. 46 Of course, biotechnology innovation has its own special features that are different from the military and industrial technologies considered by Collingridge but the essential point about the need to make commitments in the absence of relevant evidence remains pertinent. 1.29 It is important not to overstate the implications of the Collingridge dilemma. It does not imply that rigorous social appraisal of alternative technological trajectories is impossible at an early stage. (Collingridge’s own argument explicitly highlighted the need for greater efforts in this direction.) It does, however, serve to emphasise the sobering predictive challenges that accompany 42 43 44 45 46 This may account for the ‘productivity paradox’ when computers first became widely available, i.e. the seeming disconnection between advances in computing power (and implementation of computing power) and the concurrent slow growth in productivity. (See: David PA (1989) Computer and dynamo – the modern productivity paradox in a not-too-distant mirror, in Technology and productivity: the challenge for economic policy OECD (Editor) (Paris: OECD, 1991)). As we suggest in Chapter 8, the absence of a regulatory system for novel <strong>biotechnologies</strong> does not necessarily give them an advantage over regulated technologies, and adapting an existing system can be difficult. However, potential alternatives need not always be entirely ‘crowded out’, as evidenced by the example of electricity generation. Here, strategic vision can deliberately act against technically or economically dominant technologies crowding out alternatives. See: Stirling A (2010) Multicriteria diversity analysis: a novel heuristic framework for appraising energy portfolios Energy Policy 38: 1622-34. For a biotechnological example, one might consider the use of ‘primer walking’ and ‘shotgun’ DNA sequencing (two techniques used concurrently for (broadly) the same purposes, which are now being replaced with ‘next generation’ high-throughput sequencing.) There is some dispute in the economics literature about how far the concept of lock-in can explain apparent market failure to select the best alternative. See, for example: Liebowitz S and Margolis SE (2010) The troubled path of the lock-in movement, available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1698486. Collingridge D (1980) The social control of technology (Milton Keynes: The Open University Press), pp17-8. “What happens is that society and the rest of its technology gradually adjust to the new technology, so that when it is <strong>full</strong>y developed any major change in the new technology requires changes in many other technologies and social and economic institutions, making its control very disruptive and expensive”. Ibid. 17
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Chapter 9 Commercialisation
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Chapter 10 Conclusions: emerging <s
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Appendices
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Emerging biotechnologies: full report - Nuffield Council on Bioethics

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