Biological Ethics
Table of contents
Chapter 5. The Biology Professional
L. Montuenga
a) Introduction
After having explored the value staff and social value of any subject of work and the specific aspects of a university degree, we will dedicate this chapter to the specific characteristics of the biologist's work ; we will briefly outline their professional prospects and see the links between biology and today's society.
The reality of the biologist's profession is widely unknown in our society. There is, for example, a widespread view of the biologist with the characteristic profiles of the naturalist of the last century: explorer, adventurer, passionate about finding and description of new species of plants or animals. Others, influenced by the incomparable mentality-shaping force of television, have reduced the image of the biologist to that of the protagonist of nature documentaries knowledge dissemination , the specialist in "recreational biology". article Sometimes, even, a stereotype of the scientist has been consolidated that is completely removed from the reality of the modern biology professional: "scientists still have a comic book image", was the headline of one of the articles in a Madrid newspaper1 , which analysed the data results of surveys carried out in several countries on the image that society has of the figure and activity of scientists. Interestingly, it was found in these programs of study that, "at street level", the profile of the scientist is mainly constructed on the basis of the scientist patron saint , which is often presented in "comics" or television scripts. In fact, the results of these surveys gave the impression that men of science were portrayed as solitary and passionate, untidy, dirty, doing dangerous jobs, never having fun, not taking care of their families, extravagant, a little bit cranky, etc.
Although man's relationship with nature dates back to the very origin of the human species, it was not until the 16th century that a specific dedication to the study of the living world as such emerged. It was at that time that great progress was made in the knowledge of Natural History as a further manifestation of the Renaissance spirit. However, it was not until 1802 that the term Biology was used, coined by Jean Baptiste de Monet, better known to all by the appellation of his noble degree scroll : Lamarck. Earlier, in the 17th and 18th centuries, names such as Harvey (1578-1657), Malpighi (1628-1694), Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), Linnaeus (1707-1778) and Wolf (1738-1794), along with many others, laid the foundations instructions of what would become the body of doctrine of this new scientific discipline . The real development of the life sciences did not take place, as is well known, until the last decades of the 20th century. Biology is therefore a very young science. It is logical that its young age should cause it some difficulties in adapting to the social framework and even "generational conflicts" with the branches of knowledge that can be considered its progenitors. When assessing this problem of the social framework of biology, it should be borne in mind that other professions, at first sight better conceptualised or more socially recognised, have existed for a longer time, as is the case, for example, with medicine, jurisprudence, teaching, etc. However, progress in the discoveries of the life sciences, and in the applications of these new discoveries, give Biology a special topicality.
Science "wisely used can dispel bleak horizons and provide the appropriate response to the most pressing requirements of our biological substratum: hunger and disease. Avoiding or alleviating these perennial challenges to human imagination and knowledge is the great task of science for the future. "2 The life sciences still have some way to go to provide a full and satisfactory answer to these questions. As biology is a recent science, it still has areas where knowledge is still in its infancy. And this fact must be taken into account especially when, as now, society's incentive to applied science is high; it is necessary to bear in mind that basic science is the driving force and support for applied science, and should not be neglected by those who truly wish to promote the scientific and economic development ; as Bernard Houssay warned, "there are no applied sciences but applications of science. What is relevant is knowledge. It is the basic research that provides the knowledge and that allows for a wide range of possible applications"3.
Scope of work of the biologist: present and future
The research and the teaching are the two major domains of work for a very considerable proportion of biologists worldwide. However, it can be argued that what might be called the "ecological niche" of the biologist is not exclusively limited to being a teacher or researcher. In recent years, new roles have emerged within the "work ecosystem" carried out by "different species of biologists", with their own specific characteristics, which are also included within the "population" of biology professionals, enriching it and giving it "variability".
It is to these new functions of the biologist that we will devote our attention. association The European Communities Biologist Association (ECBA), in its report "Biologists in European Society"4, distinguishes between the work of biologists in the strict sense of the term and occupations that are not purely biological, in which, in the broad sense of the term, a biologist can work, mainly using the characteristics of his or her university degree training .
As mentioned above, the future projection of the life sciences is important. And at present, biologists are already working in a wide variety of fields.
Government-funded agencies, in order to meet various societal needs, require a large number of biologists. Examples of this sector include work related to air pollution, environmental conservation, water purification, environmental health in urban or rural areas, landscape architecture, epidemiological control, food control, waste treatment, museums, nature parks or zoos, etc.
On the other hand, some of the problems facing modern society are more or less closely related to biology. Think, for example, of the problem of food production and distribution, environmental policy, health, or certain questions of biomedical ethics, which necessarily require biological knowledge for their resolution. Without this scientific basis, it is impossible to make decisions with a minimum of guarantee. Society's organisational bodies therefore need to be able to use more and more issue and a greater variety of scientific data , which is why the decision-making bodies increasingly require the help of scientists partnership to clarify for legislators or judges the data they need for their work and to advise the various levels of government. "The growing social complexity created by science means that political questions require, in their formulation and decision-making, more and more issue of data and scientific-technical assumptions. As a consequence, the area of objective possibilities for political decision-making is narrowing. The issue of advisors and technocrats in the organs of state administration is constantly increasing4.
Health services are areas of work for graduates in Biological Sciences from very diverse backgrounds: Microbiology, Haematology, Genetics, Dietetics, Parasitology, Cytology, Biochemistry Clinical, Immunology, etc. Another point of meeting between biology and health is in the field of professor. In this sense, the ECBA has suggested that Education Health at the level of Primary and Secondary teaching should be carried out at framework of the Natural Sciences subjects5.
Industry welcomes biologists in a wide variety of areas. Within the food sector, we can highlight dairy or meat products, brewery, fermentation technology, canning, food microbiology, etc. They are also present in the pharmaceutical business , working especially in fields such as animal physiology, animal or clinical pharmacology, metabolism, drug production and toxicology, quality control, bioassay, etc. Other industries working with biological materials are, for example, wool, cotton, leather, paper and wood, oil derivatives, etc. Finally, the sector that also needs experts in life sciences is the agrochemical and livestock sector: animal or plant breeding, animal pathology, greenhouse crops, tropical plant biology, plant and crop physiology, soil science, biodegradation, pest control, agrochemical toxicology, fisheries research, aquaculture, etc.
There are also some specific tasks of biologists that are currently arousing enormous interest. Fields such as Environmental Biology, aquaculture and biotechnology have recently experienced a progressively accelerated expansion, to such an extent that people are beginning to speak of a "revolution" in biology6. Perhaps the most spectacular case is that of Biotechnology, i.e. the industrial exploitation of recent advances in molecular biology; not only the manipulation of recombinant DNA for industrial purposes is currently included, but also other processes that use living organisms to obtain commercial products (in a broad sense, even the manufacture of bread or beer would also be Biotechnology). Private investment in this subject of companies is already starting to reach very high levels, especially in countries such as the United States7 . Most of them focus their attention on the production of pharmaceutical products. The next most interesting products are substances related to animal husbandry and agriculture.
b) Contributions of the biologist
Despite being a young science, biology has shown itself capable of influencing the configuration of modern society B . Its participation in the construction of what can be called today's "collective mentality" is more than decisive. This is not only true if we consider it from the point of view of a new profession and scientific discipline that influences civilisation and the culture in which it is born and develops; also the work of each biologist in the social environment - more concrete and reduced - in which he or she moves can have great repercussions and influence.
Let us now address a question we raised at the beginning of this chapter: what is specific to the biologist's work in the construction of the social fabric? It could be said that the life professional develops and concretises his shaping capacity in two directions, the one determined by his special knowledge of the natural world and the one that manifests itself in his technical skill to master biological processes.
The knowledge that this science contributes to cultural heritage is as broad, complex and diverse as its object, the world of living beings, and the multiple approaches from which the object is approached. Biologists study living organisms from the molecular, cellular or tissue level, to the level of populations, ecosystems, and even the entire biosphere. This makes the biology professional one of the most "versatile" of experimental scientists.
But biology does not only contribute knowledge to society. Biologists also play a leading role in bringing people closer to the living world, to what constitutes their natural environment. On the other hand, their contribution to the understanding of the human condition is also important. Finally, society must have recourse to the biologist to ensure that its relations with nature run smoothly, so that its control over living beings is rational. In the following, we will briefly develop these three peculiar consequences of the biologist's work . We will look in more detail at the way in which they are realised in the task professor, since this is precisely one of the areas where the biologist's capacity to shape is most clearly manifested.
knowledge of the living world: contemplative attitude
The biologist is first and foremost a professional of wonder and contemplation of the natural world. For him, a living being, as well as material for work and a means of subsistence, is a real treasure, a unique work of art that he admires and delights in.
Many natural phenomena that do not attract the attention of the layman, who sees in them nothing more than something trivial, or something curious, are for the biologist real "exhibitions" full of meaning, full of a profound message: he feels called to know, or at least to enter into the mystery of life. A fermentation process, the moulting or metamorphosis of an insect, the training of an egg, the different phases of the life cycle of a plant, the careful elaboration of a spider's web, or the aquatic ballet observed through the eyepiece when microscopically analysing a drop of pond water, are some of the prodigies that, day by day, develop in the biology professional a peculiar capacity for admiration. It can be said that the biologist is inclined to "contemplate" the living world.
Biology also provides those who study it with the frequent experience of facing complex situations in which multiple variables interact within a whole. The biologist approaches reality aware that, with his own experimental method, he will not be able to encompass and control all the factors involved in the phenomenon he is studying. This makes it easier to understand the importance of unity, of the whole, which - in the living world - is not merely the sum of its parts. Before and after approaching a problem, an organism, through the experimental protocol , he knows how to situate himself, "contemplate", the higher level unit in which the object of his study is framed, and he tries to relate and integrate his data, looking for relations with other problems, organisms or parallel processes.
In this sense, it can be affirmed that the biologist, in a way, is better protected than other scientists against the risk of scientism, which - as will be seen later - distances the scientist from the real world due to the enthronement of the method itself and the distrust of the knowledge that falls outside its borders.
This attitude, close to the world of life, gives teaching Biology a great formative capacity. Indeed, natural realities exercise an authentic magisterium: "nothing can replace contact with reality.... The universal is very valuable, but it should not serve to distance us from the local, to form men who are always generalising, "but to form men who better understand what surrounds them". It is symptomatic that the word utopia means that which is nowhere, that which is a-local"8.
Field trips are a magnificent instrument for the Natural Science teacher to communicate and awaken the love of the immediate environment and the desire to know it; nature is the main laboratory of the biologist, his most complete and interesting book, the true object of his work. The activity in the field is a real professional task. Usually, the field trip has been thoroughly prepared. The necessary theoretical knowledge has been studied in depth: the conditions of the area to be studied, the topic that will be the subject of the work, the most suitable pathway .... The place chosen will not be the most pleasant, the most agreeable or the best statement, but the one that best suits the needs of protocol. In some works, the "excursion" leads, week after week, for months, to the same 20 square metres of forest or the same pond, which we end up knowing inch by inch. The outing often requires a good dose of stamina, endurance and good humour, as the weather conditions are not always as favourable and sampling may be necessary at certain intervals. Rigour and precision in the collection of the material and of all the data observed are inherent requirements of this work. A mistake, an oversight, a concession to laziness can ruin days of work or lead to inaccurate interpretations of data.
As in other experimental sciences, the work at laboratory is also the domain of the biologist and the practices of laboratory - with its demand for order, cleanliness, attention to small details, skill guide , constancy, etc. - is of great formative potential.
At the same time, living beings, with their characteristic unity of functions, their capacity for homeostasis, adaptation, etc., and their manifest completion towards the conservation and transmission of life..., offer the teacher who tries to teach them an excellent basis for encouraging pupils to be open-minded towards other methods of knowledge other than those of Science itself. The Biology teacher must teach them to integrate the data, notions and ideas that he/she presents in his/her subject, with those that they learn simultaneously in very distant subjects, trying to avoid at all costs approaches that could lead young students to think that reality is different depending on the science that studies it; or that the truth is divided into different watertight compartments that are incompatible with each other. On the contrary, it should help students to incorporate the data provided by Biology into the harmonious conception of culture, man and the world that they normally receive in the humanities subjects at Study program. Reductionist approaches, the attempt to give a complete account of a living being from an exclusive and partial perspective, encourage students to adopt sceptical attitudes towards the truth which, in the long run, prove to be very harmful - because they are erroneous - both at the level of staff and at the social level. The ability to look at reality - living nature - is the best antidote to scepticism in a fast-paced, technological society.
This attentive look at the world of the living does not leave out man himself. It is true that biology does not give - cannot give - an image, nor a global and full description of what man is; but human biology, the study of a body like the body of man, offers the testimony that there are human dimensions irreducible to mere materiality. Man as such escapes its own method, which is only capable of providing partial data . The biology of man sample also testifies to the pre-eminent position that man, by his very nature, has among all other living beings. Certainly, this testimony is not a positive affirmation of the value, nor of the meaning of what is properly human, but it has in itself the capacity to demystify that set of ideologies - ecologisms in a broad sense - where the "lordship" proper to man is dissolved in an amorphous exaltation of nature that has lost the capacity to distinguish a grass from a leopard.
Knowing how to show that biology does not explain the "humanity" of man, in the same way that the physical descriptionChemistry of an animal omits the "animality" of the animal, is a great task; the lack of ability to look at the world and see it in its totality, to realise what is contained in everything, causes the disorientation that is so widely observable in our culture.
Mastery and conservation of nature: attitude of respect
It can be said that the biologist is professionally qualified - by knowing the dynamics of nature - to be the ideal "interlocutor" in the relations of humans with their natural environment; he knows how to deal with nature, knows its language, its secrets, its whims, its habits. He can, and must, inform his fellow citizens about the best way to establish links - for example, of exploitation - with the living world. Thanks to his training he can respond to the problems of maintaining the use of a threatened living world9. He is usually prepared to propose solutions to prevent abuse or damage. Thus, for example, the "assessment environmental impact assessment", which is a protocol aimed at assessing the foreseeable impact on the environment of programmes, projects or initiatives of various kinds subject: buildings, factories, field experiments, urban waste treatment processes, repopulation, etc. In some countries, this assessment is an essential administrative requirement for authorising these initiatives, and its implementation is currently being studied at EEC level.
For all that we have said, it is logical that the biologist has become the greatest disseminator of the attitude of respect and conservation of nature. He should be an example and guide of the responsibility to protect the great treasure that every human being has received, which is the living world. The mentality of admiration, care and contemplation of living nature and the environment must be passed on to the rest of society, which is beginning to discover in the biologist the bulwark and the guarantee that the natural environment will continue to be an authentic environment for human life.
We return to accredited specialization for the task professor; this is not only due to the recognition that a very high percentage of biologists are dedicated to it, but also to the fact that, like all teachers, it forms intelligences, engenders ways of thinking. His function is not limited to "giving a class", nobody obliges him - nor does his duty authorise him - to cut out the content of his work, to transmit this content. The teacher of biology, of the sciences of living nature, is responsible for teaching how to understand the world of life with the respectful gaze of one who knows that he has received it as a gift, and who knows that, to a certain extent, it depends on its conservation and improvement that the world he inhabits and will inhabit for generations to come can continue to be a world for mankind. The realities he tries to make known are not human artifices, they are not "machines" with no other value than utilitarian. In a consumer society in which even the most sophisticated artefacts are designed to be "used and thrown away", it has a special educational value to know how to show, and at the right value, a seed or an ant... that man is not capable of manufacturing.
c) bibliography
(1) YAGUE, A.M. "Scientists still have a comic book image". Ya. Madrid, 24.II.1986.
(2) MAYOR ZARAGOZA, F. "Shaping the future". ABC. Madrid, 28.V.85, p. 53.
(3) Quoted in "Shaping the future". F. MAYOR ZARAGOZA. ABC. Madrid, 28.V.85, p. 53.
(4) EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES BIOLOGIST ASSOCIATION. "Biologists in European Society. Ed. ALBE. Madrid, 1979.
(5) EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES BIOLOGIST ASSOCIATION "Education sanitaria y biología escolar". high school Oficial de Biólogos, n. 4. Madrid, 1986.
(6) TANGLEY, L. "New Biology enters a new Era". Bioscience, 35, 270-275, 1985.
(7) PEARSON, R. "Biotechnology manpower in the UK". Nature, 309, 654, 1984.
(8) GUTIERREZ RIOS, E. "La Ciencia en la Vida del Hombre". EUNSA. Pamplona, 1975.
(9) ECBA. "Biologists and the Environment." report of a seminar organized by ECBA. London, September 1983. Edited by: high school Oficial de Biólogos. Madrid, 1985, p. 20.