Ethics and innovation essay

1. Introduction

This week our focus is on development and innovation. Technology for development is a 'live' political issue and as Leech and Scoones explain 'behind the breathless enthusiasm for linking science, technology and development lie some contrasting views of what this might involve.' By the end of this week's session you will be able to:

· Understand competing theories surrounding technology and development.

· Develop your own critical stance on what constitutes 'responsible' innovation in a low and middle income country context.

· Recognise the factors shaping the release of GM mosquitoes in Brazil.

Do work through the compulsory readings of the week before continuing with the asynchronous materials. The first is 'The slow race: making science and technology work for the poor' by Leach and Scoones and the second is 'Responsible Innovation in Developing Countries: An Enlarged Agenda' by Vasen.  Here  you can also read a blog by Patrick Backhouse - a student on this module last year who turned his essay into a guest post on the website 'Making Science Public.' Patrick was addressing essay question 4 - 'How can technology be developed responsibly in a Low or Middle Income Country?'

1.1. 'An Economy for the 99%'

Inequality is driving political change. Since 2015, the richest 1% has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet. In 2017 Oxfam reported that 8 men held the same wealth as the world’s poorest 3.6 billion. Over the last 30 years the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50% has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1% have grown 300% (European Commission; Thomas Piketty co-director of the  World Inequality Lab ).  I'd like you take 5 minutes to read  this  brief online article which points to the destructive consequences of inequality. Think back also to the core readings from weeks 1 and 3 of the module (in particular Stiloge et al and Sarewtiz and Woodhouse) which critically examined the role of science and technology policy in intersecting with global inequalities.

2. Responding to Inequality

An awareness of growing inequality has contributed to the emergence of a number of governance frameworks and policy endeavors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates 'Grand challenges' initiative which seeks to 'develop solutions to health problems in the developing world' and the the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UK Global Challenges Research Fund emerged as a means to address the UN SDGs by strengthening capacity for research, innovation and knowledge exchange in the UK and developing countries through partnership with excellent UK research and researchers. These initiatives have placed science and technology firmly back on the international development agenda. If you are answering essay question number 4 you may wish to examine these initiatives in detail and consider how you might interweave them into your essay.

2.1. Grand challenges

You can read more about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation  here  and see some of their live funding calls to attempt to solve key development problems  here . The goal of the BMGF is to 'reduce inequalities and improve lives around the world.' Below is a timeline which documents the progression of the Grand Challenges funding scheme.

•2003 - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation fund the Grand Challenges in Global Health

•2004 - Official development assistance (ODA) grew from US$8.5 billion in 2000 to US$13.5 billion (McCoy et al, 2009)

•2006 – Gates awards US$2.25bn on health

•2014 – Gates fund relaunched as Grand Challenges

The Grand Challenges Global Health Board agreed on the below core goals to impact on health in the developed world. The Chair of the Board emphasised that "if we could solve any one of these grand challenges, the impact on health in the developing world could be dramatic, and we hope to solve several in the course of this new initiative.”

While the BMGF has invested significant funds into tackling key challenges such as malaria, HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis and malaria there have also been a range of critical questions surrounding the development of the scheme. Private funding for global health constitutes a quarter of all development aid for health and there is a need to think critically about the role of private sources of finance in  global health  (McCoy et al, 2009).  You can access a critical review of the scheme  here  which points to a need to focus on the broader determinants of health (i.e. adequate infrastructure and basic sanitation) in addition to technological discovery.

2.2. UN Sustainable Development Goals

The UN Sustainable Development Goals were established in 2015 as a 'blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.' You can access the SDGs here. They are intended to be achieved by 2030.

2.3. UK Global Challenges Research Fund

The UK's Global Challenge Research Fund is a 5-year, £1.5 billion fund established in 2015. It delivers the UK aid strategy by tackling global challenges in the national interest and is led by Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It is part of the UK's Official Development Assistance commitment. You can find out more about the UK GCRF  here . The UK GCRF addresses the United Nations sustainable development goals. It aims to maximise the impact of research and innovation to improve lives and opportunity in the developing world through engagement with UK researchers and innovators.

You can access a critical take on the UK's GCRF here authored by Prof Clive Barnett, based in the geography department at the University.

3. Innovation and technology in a development context

There are innumerable examples of externally imposed, top-down and locally insensitive approaches to development (Escobar, 1995). For example, the ‘modernisation’ of Rwanda’s agricultural network has been implicated in disruption to local livelihoods (Dawson et al, 2016), whilst the introduction of GM crops in India has been linked to approximately 300,000 rural farmer suicides (Thomas and De Travernier, 2017). From the 1970s, socio-environmental problems in developing countries have been linked to these forms of development more generally. Schumacher’s 'Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered' is a key theoretical contribution which called for a shift towards 'appropriate technology' in a development context. Appropriate technology embodies the following qualities and characteristics:

People-centred - valuing indigenous knowledge, local contexts, cultures and practices

Decentralized, labour-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and locally autonomous.

Low-technology

Open-source

and is a precursor to sustainable development

Unequal outcomes associated with science and technology are usually interpreted as emerging from patterns of distribution, access, and affordability, not from the structure of the research and development (R&D) enterprise itself (Woodhouse and Sarewitz, 2007). Inequity is seen as a problem of access to resources so it’s an ‘output’ not an input problem. Yet, it is increasingly recognized that science and technology innovation systems themselves can be implicated in the perpetuation of inequality. The privatisation of scientific knowledge through patent systems serves wealthy customers and where technology is regarded as a cornerstone of economic growth this can feed into development approaches more concerned with the extension of Western markets than the development of bottom up solutions to developmental agendas. You can learn more about this  here . Similarly,  this  short blog post provides a useful account of the need for 'appropriate technology' to be 'accessible' technology.

3.1. The 3 'races' (Leach and Scoones, 2006)

One of this week's compulsory readings is the article by Leach and Scoones (image below). Notice how the title of the paper intersects with the hallmarks of responsible innovation (i.e. it is calling for citizen engagement as a key feature of utilising technology to respond to development challenges).

Leach and Scoones's paper describes how 'Behind the breathless enthusiasm for linking science, technology and development lie some contrasting views of what this might involve. Policy debates are dominated by two global science races, each of which is said to be pushing the international community down a particular path. This pamphlet explores the pros and cons of these two races and suggests that a third, less glamorous, but ultimately more important race is being overlooked.' The three races identified by Leach and Scoones can be characterised as follows. The full paper provides a number of illustrative examples of these races in practice. For example, in relation to the challenge of soil fertility focusing on the development of chemical fertilisers, Leach and Scoones explain that '[i]t is not just a lack of nitrogen or phosphorous that is the issue. There is a wider set of market, institutional and policy matters that need to be addressed.' 

•The race to the top in the global economy

�development as modernisation

�poverty will be reduced by the trickle down of economic benefits to the poor

�growth and poverty reduction go hand in hand

•The race to the universal fix

�science and technology will impact on poverty (e.g. GM crops)

�development as a matter of common interest and global responsibility; magic bullets

�Gates Foundation

•The slow race to citizens’ solutions

�science and technology, but are specific to local contexts

�Technological fixes are not enough, and that social, cultural and institutional dimensions are also key

�participatory process of development, where citizens themselves take centre stage

This  link  provides a number of case studies detailing how the company IBM is looking to expand its market in Africa.

3.2. Policies to reduce inequality

The slow race to citizens solutions is advocated by Leach and Scoones as an essential means of making technology work in a development context. This means acknowledging that technological fixes are not enough, and that social, cultural and institutional dimensions are also key. The 'slow race' also foregrounds the importance of participatory processes of development, where citizens themselves take centre stage. There are a number of emergent policies attempting to help support these principles in practice. One of these is the emergence of a 'co-production' framework when engaging in research and technology projects. A 'co-production' approach can help to bring the voices of multiple publics and stakeholders into upstream decision making processes. 

Co-production has become a buzzword in technology and development innovation systems. You can access the Nature Editorial on co-production  here . Yet, there are a number of questions surrounding the extent to which co-production is a genuine attempt at responsible innovation or whether  in practice  it reinforces unequal power relations.

In order to reduce inequality innovation should include:

· R&D focused on people’s problems 

· Broader participation in policy decisions

· Focusing R&D on creation of public goods rather than private goods (i.e. environment)

· Greater honesty about (in)equity (reflection)

Innovation should also:

· Value alternative forms of knowledge

· Be inclusive and participatory

· Be sensitive to local contexts

· Provide low-technology solutions

· Consider new approaches to inclusive regulation

· Focus not only on the technology, but also on the social, cultural and institutional relationships that will enable the technology to work

3.3. Responsible innovation in development

So far, the concept of Responsible Innovation has been theorized primarily in relation to scientific research or technological development projects sponsored by institutions in the Global North and with intended to beneficiaries also in the Global North. This is a key point emphasised by Vasen in this weeks core readings. When thinking about the potential role of RI in a development context it is important to adopt a critical perspective. 

· Ravesteijn et al, 2014 highlight that it can be difficult to identify civil society groups for inclusion.

· Parkhill et al., 2013 point to fears that wealthier nations take control.

· Brom et al., 2015 points to opportunities for mutual learning.

· Mink et al., 2014 highlight the challenges of ‘transporting’ technologies from wealthy countries into developing countries.

· Mink et al., 2014 also highlights dangers of paternalism.

4. GM mosquitoes to combat disease (Dengue fever in Brazil)

Much of what the world knows today about the use of GM mosquitoes as a method of disease control is based on the experience of Oxitec in Brazil. Responsible Innovation has been theorisied primarily in relation to technology and innovation projects in the global North. Brazil is a country situated in the global South and the Oxitec case study provides an insight into the conditions that shape the applicability of the framework in a global South context. In particular, the case makes visible the importance of political power in impacting on technology trajectories (a key factor that remains under theorized in the RI literatures).   This  article 'Responsible Innovation and political accountability: genetically modified mosquitoes in Brazil' by de Campos, Hartley and others provides a full exploration of the case. 

Degnue fever is a mosqutio-borne viral disease that has exerted a significant public health burden. In Brazil in 2014 there were 590 000 reported cases of dengue and nearly 400 deaths attributed to the virus. Due to the absence of effective medications against the virus attempts to manage the disease are focused on the ability to suppress the mosquito.

It was in this context that Moscamed a not-for-profit organisation funded by Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture launched Projeto Aedes Transgênico (PAT) in 2009 - a collaboration with Oxitec and researchers from the Universidade de São Paulo. The collaboration was sponsored by UK Trade and Industry (now BEIS) and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As de Campos et al explain:

'PAT would bring to Brazil Oxitec’s patented RIDL method for the genetic modification of insects. RIDL stands for ‘release of insects carrying dominant lethals,’ and encompasses a series of techniques for inserting into insect genomes mutations that cause the death of the organism’s offspring. The lethal mutation incorporated into the OX513A strain is conditional, or repressible, because the expression of the transgenic construct can be neutralised by feeding the mosquito the antibiotic tetracycline. The ability to repress the activation of the transgenic element allows the large-scale manufacture of modified insects in the laboratory and ensures that GM specimens will not survive long after their release, provided they cannot find tetracycline in the environment.2 '

The PAT programme generated some unprecedented challenges. There was no obvious reg pathway to pursue. In September 2009 the National Biosecurity Technical Commission authroised the importation of 3 batches of eggs from Oxitec’s UK production facility - these eggs were transported to Brazil.  Around the same time Oxitec also conducted the first ever experimental release of GM mosquitoes in Cayman Islands which took place with minimal media coverage. 

The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory which isn't bound by certain international protocols such as the UK;s ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The releases were made public by Oxitec in November 2010, once the trial had been completed. The international scientic press coverage of the news from Grand Cayman was often critical of the secrecy:

'the releases had ‘taken aback opponents of GM mosquitoes and surprised many researchers in the field of genetic control of insect vectors’ (Enserink  2010 ).'

“GM mosquitoes and other insects have largely flown beneath the radar. That will change sooner or later. It is surely better that the scientists involved bring them to the public’s attention, rather than have that attention thrust upon them by others” (Nature Editorial)

Nature also criticised Oxitec for conducting the trials in a country known for its minimialist approach to environmental regulation and the local authorities for conducting the experiments without proper public consultation:

“Efforts by the Cayman Island authorities [to inform the public about the nature of the releases] seem to have amounted to not much more than producing little-reported leaflets and a video, posted on YouTube and broadcast on television, which failed to say that the mosquitoes were genetically modified – the main concern of critics” (Nature Editorial)

Amidst the ongoing controversy surroundings the first outdoor release of GM mosquitoes, partners in Projeto Aedes Transgênico were planning an initial open field trial in the state of Bahia.  Contrary to existing advice on this matter site selection was not preceded by any public consultation. It was a decision made in conjunction with state level health authorities and the trial would assess the capacity of the mosquitoes to survive in the local environment. Only once the site had been decided to PAT lauch a community engagement campaign. Media coverage at the time in Brazil was cautiously positive: 

Oxitec described its outreach programme as follows:

'Community engagement remains a key component of the programme. This cuts across all levels of the community from national, regional and local stakeholders, public health and vector control agencies, and the resident community. Engagement with media via radio, TV and press at local and national level has been vital for communication to as many people as possible. In a country that suffers hugely from dengue, media interest remains high with continued, overwhelmingly positive support for the project from all sectors. In addition to working with the national regulatory system, numerous meetings and seminars have been organised with public health and political leaders at all levels to provide information and opportunity for feedback. (Oxitec 2011)'

But if we unpack this statement in detail it's not really sectioning  deliberation of knowledge exchange from multiple publics back to the project. The model of consultation  was narrow in its scope and offered little opportunity for inclusive deliberations and responsiveness. Would we describe an approach that is about informing publics when a trial is underway as a form of RI? Probably not - it's not upstream, it's happening downstream as the technology is being deployed. This was a closed way of doing engagement and deploying a technology to address a disease challenge in a part of the world where dengue is a significant public health burden. In addition it was PAT that determined what successful engagement looked like.

4.1. Political support in Brazil

What is interesting about this case is that there was high level political support for the development and deployment of these mosquitoes. As de Campos et al explain, 'the limitations of the community engagement model adopted for the first open field trial of OX513A are particularly significant if we consider that the releases were receiving at the same time very visible political support from local, regional and federal authorities. Under growing public pressure to deliver effective measures against dengue, a significant amount of political capital was to be gained from showcasing a new technology in action.'  The images below show Ministers and prominent individuals in Brazillian government visiting facilities and trying to showcase this tech as an example of a technology that does good. 

de Campos et al have further described how 'PAT was also winning plaudits from British officials. In September 2012, during a trade mission to Brazil led by British Prime Minister David Cameron, UK Trade and Investment Minister Lord Green heralded Oxitec’s growing operations in the country as an example of successful British technology abroad.' 

“I congratulate Oxitec,” Lord Green remarked, “for securing new partnerships in Brazil. Getting more companies exporting is a crucial part of the Government’s plan for growth” (Oxitec 2012c).

Building on this political momentum a new release was proposed - this was the first field trial to be conducted in a dense urban setting. Significantly, this took place in the midst of a dengue outbreak. The engagement activities were similar to the ones that had taken place previously.

A Moscamed techical consultant explained that: 

'We developed a plan for publicising the project with home visits, lectures in city schools and communication through local media outlets, so that the population is aware of the stages of the project and will be happy to open their homes to the installation of monitoring traps. (Quoted in Oxitec 2012b).' PAT deployed visual props as well as a song which was broadcast from loudspeakers to inform the public the trial was taking place. You can listen to the song  here . There was a clear attempt to brand the study as a national effort.

The trial took place amidst worsening public health conditions and in February 2014, the city’s mayor declared a state of emergency due to the growing number of dengue cases in the area. For Oxitec, PAT was an attempt to localise insect biotechnology in Brazil - allowing Oxitec to expand the geographical reach of its technology.  de Campos et al describe how:

'Localisation also included the development of a regulatory pathway for GM insects in Brazil...A landmark moment in this process was achieved in April 2014, when CTNBio authorised the commercial release of OX513A mosquitoes on the basis of their ‘intrinsic safety and negligible environmental risk’:

                        We may conclude … based on the evidence submitted by [the] applicant, related literature and our risk assessment, that the OX513A Ae. aegypti mosquito poses no additional risks to the environment, human beings and animals when compared to the same non-GM species. (CTNBio)

Questions about the efficacy of GM insects as an effective tool for the control of dengue, CTNBio noted, were outside the scope of its inquiry and belonged instead to political authorities at the state and federal level... The rhetorical demarcation of a narrow domain of safety, and its separation from questions of technological efficacy, economic efficiency or political legitimacy is a common strategy of regulatory agencies tasked with the governance of GM organisms (Jasanoff  2011 ; Lezaun  2011 ; Hartley  2016 ). The decision to determine the question of safety on the basis of a direct comparison with the risk profile of a conventional or non-GM variety of the organism under review is also a classic example of the application of the principle of substantial equivalence to the assessment of biotechnological life forms (Levidow, Murphy, and Carr  2007 ).

Yet in the context of the introduction of GM mosquitoes in Brazil, such a narrowly framed assessment had significant ramifications. For one, it implied that the OX513A strain ought to be evaluated as a discrete and self-standing technology, rather than in terms of the balance of costs and benefits that GM mosquitoes would introduce within the broader effort to control dengue. An assessment of cost-effectiveness would have required a comparison with alternative approaches to mosquito control and dengue prevention, including a consideration of their potential interactions. Since CTNBio refused to examine this question, there was no regulatory venue for a public appraisal of how the introduction of GM mosquitoes might impact traditional measures of personal protection, for instance, or the sort of spraying and habitat-reduction campaigns that had been used so successfully in the 1960s and 1970s (cf. Lezaun and Porter  2015 ; see also Lezaun and de Koning  2015 )...

The dengue emergency made GM mosquitoes particularly attractive to political leaders; a great deal of political capital was invested in the successful introduction of OX513A mosquitoes, and a significant amount of political capital was gained from showcasing this technology in action, even in an experimental form, at a time when the country appeared to have no effective tools to halt the spread of the disease. The discovery of the chikungunya virus in 2014, and of Zika in 2015, only enhanced the promissory value of biotechnological methods for the control of A. aegypti.

Yet these political calculations have remained under-scrutinised, a behind-the-scenes force that has rarely been subjected to public inquiry. The significant amount of media interest in OX513A mosquitoes and the multiple programmes of ‘community engagement’ undertaken during the open field releases served primarily to ‘publicise’ the releases, rather than to examine the fundamentally political choice to pursue a biotechnological strategy of vector control, or to explore the conditions of public acceptability prior to a decision to deploy the technology.

This is why, in our opinion, the concept of Responsible Innovation needs to be more closely interlinked with a strong notion of political accountability. Political decisions create the conditions of possibility for specific innovation trajectories, within which discrete research and development projects then unfold. The ability to scrutinise these decisions determines whether and how core ideas associated with Responsible Innovation, such as inclusive deliberation or responsiveness, are adopted by innovation actors and, if so, to what effect. The still inconclusive history of OX513A mosquitoes in Brazil suggests that we need to consider more carefully how the calculations that lead political authorities to support specific innovation trajectories can themselves be subject to processes of anticipation, reflexive learning and inclusive deliberation.'

4.2. Conclusion & what the Brazil case teaches us

In this week's session we have unpacked the contested role of technology in a development space. Leach and Scoone's 'three races' provides a key articulation of the competing ideas surrounding the linking of science and technology with development outcomes. There is a key need for technology in a development context to be appropriate and participatory - this is what RI teaches us. Yet, RI as a body of theory has developed in relation to technology development in the global North. There has been little consideration of the barriers and indeed the appropriateness of RI in a global South context. As Vasen (2017) argues, political policy makers in the Global South have traditionally perceived RI and its conceptual ancestors as a ‘luxury’, held by developed nations who can afford to place risk assessment before economic reward. In addition, there is much we don't know about the conditions that might impact on RI in this setting. The Brazil case teaches us that political decisions create the conditions of possibility for specific innovation trajectories and that there is a need to consider how the calculations of political authorities can themselves be subject to reflexive learning and inclusive deliberation.