[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I don't want high school dropouts performing surgery, but I also don't want surgeons setting public health policy.
Then who? The public, who has even less understanding? Politicians, who will flat-out ignore facts if it lets them pander to the ignorant masses? Or a new group of experts in public health policy? I'd go with the latter; at least they've got enough information to know what they're doing.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]If electroretinography needs to be done, it needs to be done by expert electroretinographers. But we can't rely on expert electroretinographers to decide whether electroretinography is an ethical thing to do or whether to devote more resources to electroretinography. It's a difficult balancing act.
I fail to see how it is. On the decision about the ethics of a technique, who better to ask than an expert? If you ask non-experts, they'll form snap judgements based on superficial observations, without the knowledge of details needed for *correct* conclusions.
I think you're making self-interest out to be too huge a part of this. While it can play a role, a) that's why we have neutral inspection agencies, both governmental and independent, and b) while people are inherently selfish, people also tend to have ethical standards. Just because they know a useful technique doesn't mean it'll *always* be used and the ethical ramifications waved away.
Take me. I do animal testing for my research, some of which will be terminal. I'm well-acquainted with various techniques for doing my research, some of which is terminal, some not. While I *do* have the self-interest motive of making my reputation as a scientist, I also had to have a *long* *hard* think about it before I even began. Furthermore, while I feel ethically confident in my decision, I do not simply treat animals as disposable; extensive statistical analysis is performed on pre-experiments in order to determine the *minimum* number of animals needed to reach a valid conclusion. Do I have a vested interest and a focus on this that might skew my vision, sure. But there's *no* question that I'm vastly more qualified to make the proper decisions than some PETA loon; I know precisely what's involved, thoroughly understand the techniques involved and the science behind them. Additionally, my techniques and decisions are scrutinized by regulatory agencies and other scientists, who are also familiar with the techniques and situation.
I'll also offer a counter-example: the university's animal regulation system, IACUC. Some IACUCs kick teh butt and are a credit to the system, and ours is pretty good...except that we're one of the 3 labs on campus that deals with non-mammal vertebrates. As a result, all they know is mammals, and our lab has a long history of fighting with them because they focus on useless trivia based on incorrect application of their knowledge of mammals. We've had the beurocratic equivalent of knock-down-drag-out fights over simply getting to use unsealed branches and wood for climbing apparatus. They've been so unfamiliar with the setup and species that they've overlooked two-foot-long fish as thick as my arm in unfurnished tanks (they thought we were keeping goldfish and griped that we only labeled for lungfish until we showed them the lungfish and pointed out that the goldfish was *lunch* for the lungfish). All of these problems and others trace back to people unfamiliar with the system making decisions about it.
Yes, there's the issue of self-interest, but I'd argue that's *much* less of a problem than letting people who are ignorant of a system have a deciding role in managing it.
Mokele