[HN Gopher] Ethical, societal implications of genome-wide behavi...
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Ethical, societal implications of genome-wide behavioral, brain-
related traits
Author : wglb
Score : 27 points
Date : 2023-05-22 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| chromatin wrote:
| In Box 3, "Guidance for best practices for researchers in the
| context of GWAS", the authors propose 6 actions to mitigate
| "misuse and misappropriation of GWAS results".
| ("Misappropriation" is AFAICT defined as when findings are used
| to support opinions contrary to the academic mainstream, and I
| think this is implicitly supposed to mean use by racists). While
| item 4 does not explicitly call out an end to open science (said
| another way, permitting only use that is in accordance with the
| prevailing zeitgeist), it and the introductory text in Box 3 does
| hint that this is a possibility in the future.
|
| " Ethical issues in research projects are overseen by IRBs, which
| mandate that a full research proposal must be submitted,
| evaluated and approved before the start of any project. Such a
| research proposal typically contains both scientific and ethical
| components. But these protocols rarely consider possible negative
| impacts on society and how these can be mitigated, and we argue
| that this should be added. Such a mitigation plan can include how
| researchers plan to translate research findings to a lay
| audience, how they plan to prevent or discourage commercial
| companies from misusing results, and how to aim to decrease the
| likelihood of misappropriation of results.
|
| We propose six practical action items that can be included in
| such a mitigation plan:
|
| 1. Include a bioethical expert in all stages of a GWAS study: ...
|
| 2. Include relevant patient groups or social communities: ...
|
| 3. Explicitly state how the results should not be used or
| interpreted: ...
|
| 4. Prevent unethical usage without explicit permission: Most GWAS
| researchers strongly advocate the public sharing and direct
| download of GWAS results without going through a committee for
| approval. This stimulates scientific advancement and is in line
| with an open science policy. However, the downside of this is
| that uses of GWAS results are not registered and therefore
| possible unintended uses are not easily detected. The only way to
| prevent unethical use of GWAS results by other researchers or
| commercial parties is to only allow access after approval from
| the principal investigator, or a data access committee. As long
| as summary statistics are directly downloadable it is difficult
| to prevent misuse by other researchers or non-commercial parties.
| However, misuse by commercial companies can be discouraged by
| adding a so-called Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
| International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Such a license can be
| accompanied by a statement that mentions that commercial use may
| be possible after obtaining permission from the principal
| investigator. This would still allow for ethical commercial uses,
| such as the development of novel drugs based on GWAS results.
|
| 5. Disseminate GWAS findings to the general public: ...
|
| 6. Track online discussion of results: Keep track of where
| results are being discussed. ... "
| Zak wrote:
| In short, the author seems to be saying that knowledge of how
| humans work should be restricted because it can be used for
| harm.
|
| I don't think I like that take. Attempts to restrict the spread
| of knowledge usually don't work long-term, and often result in
| bad actors working in secret. Some proposals relating to AI
| recently have had similar traits.
| justrealist wrote:
| > 1. Include a bioethical expert in all stages of a GWAS study:
| ...
|
| Bio-ethics job-security strokes again. Provide literally 0
| value or solutions other than spitting verbage over the
| research and increasing the barrier to entry for small labs, so
| only the giant labs can afford the bureaucracy.
|
| No thanks!
| tejtm wrote:
| didn't find a non paywall link but here is some of one of the
| authors other papers
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22posthuma+d%22
|
| As someone familiar with the the mechanics I have to say I have
| no satisfactory answers.
| Animats wrote:
| Is "Danielle Posthuma" a pseudonym for a large language model?
| jlg23 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Posthuma
| NHQ wrote:
| Worse than that, a real Platform Muppet. The stooge name
| signals "researching how to control post-sapien organ-
| machines". The article signals conclusive evidence for
| applications of the research.
| beckingz wrote:
| It's time to walk the line between targeted curative and
| preventative therapies that reduce or mitigate severe suffering
| and the dystopian gattica world where companies can reject you
| based on genomics.
|
| As per usual, we'll do it in that beautifully painful messy human
| way.
| haircomiccard wrote:
| Missing an address of the methodological conceits. Well,
| whitewashing them altogether via statements like "Robust
| statistical associations". Heavy correlation can seem to suggest
| a causal relationship which is actually masking a complex driver
| which defies our (current) intuitive or even critical
| understanding. If you can't explain the physiological state or
| process which connects particular "genetic variants" with
| particular "brain-related traits", there might not be a
| connection.
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