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Complete summary 'Biomedical Sciences and Society'

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Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)

This summary contains the complete exam material covered in the course Biomedical Sciences and Society at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

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Lecture 1:
- Vaccine: tool to build artificial immunity against certain diseases (an unharmful part/code of a virus to
induce immunity)

What makes vaccines a success? Relevant actors: people (doctors, managers, nurses, developers,
administrators etc), infrastructure & logistics (cooling, transport, roads, ships, hospitals etc), goods & products
(needies, liquids, fridges, paper), systems and structure (administration, finance, government etc), knowledge
& experience (science, practical experiences etc).

What can we learn about vaccine hesitancy from the covid-19 experience? People remain unvaccinated for a
variety of reasons:

- Some cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons,
- Others struggle to navigate for diverse source of information
- Many hesitate, for example because of specific medical conditions
- And some are anti-vax

Increasing the vaccination rate therefore requires careful collaboration between all the relevant ‘actors’:
people, infrastructure & logistics, goods & products, systems & structure, knowledge & experience. There is a
complex database; sovereignty (authority) over your own body meaning that you can decide what is put in your
body VS protecting public health, so what does inclusivity really mean in this context?

Science and technology
The terms science and technology are often pronounced in the same breath and used as synonyms because
they are closely intertwined, that their difference is many time ignored. Science is all about acquiring
knowledge of the natural phenomenon along with the reasons for such phenomenon; science is nothing but
the process of exploring new knowledge. Technology is about putting the scientific knowledge into practice.

- Intertwined: they emerge through mutual shaping; science and technology emerge together with
society. Science and technology are like how a hand fits into a glove. Science in the 21 st century cannot
thrive without technology.

Science – technology - society have a fork-shaped, messy processes of development

- Messy: unexpected technological breakthroughs and societal developments can influence the
direction of scientific and technological development, making it move in other, unexpected directions
than originally planned by scientists and engineers, resulting in fork-shaped trajectories with dead
ends and multiple possible routes.

Examples of S&T

- Internet: the internet was not invented for what it is now; initially it was supposed to be a tool for data
sharing within universities, so not for people to go on social media and socialize.
- Bicycles and mobile phones: they were not developed to become what they currently are
- All sorts of medicines and biomedical technologies such as Viagra (the pill was not invented for the
purpose that it is used nowadays) and the HeLa cell line.

Why is it important that science and technology don’t develop independently from each other, but from mutual
shaping and also in unexpected ways which makes the development processes fork-shaped and messy?
It is relevant because science and technology are part of the solution to all sorts of challenges such as the
climate, sustainability, security, poverty, inequality, health and well-being. BUT, science and technology are
part of the problem as well such as creating pollution and emissions, resulting in growing inequalities, also
unexpected and unwanted effects.

There are often mismatches between S&T and society: technologies that don’t work for a vulnerable
group/minorities, technologies that don’t actually address the problem of the targeted actor at hand (the one
that is aimed for) but for a completely different actor. Example: cochlear implants

- Mismatch: Evolved traits that were once advantageous but became maladaptive due to changes in the
environment.

, Gene-edited (of course it is not ethical) discussion questions and answers ('Of course it's not ethical': shock at
gene-edited baby claims)

1. Science and technology as part of the solution  How is the gene-edited baby part of the (which?
whose?) solution, and to what problem? The genomes have been altered to disable a gene known as
CCR5, blocking the pathway that is used by the HIV virus to enter cells.

2. Science and technology as part of the problem  How is the gene-edited baby part of the (which?
whose?) problem? The view on the Chinese science; He (the scientist who done this) worked outside
established and supervised scientific protocols which could taint the reputation of Chinese Science. It’s
unethical because the decision that was made about these twin girls was not made by them, but by
someone else and this change that happened to them will remain in their offspring for future
generations.
3. Mismatches S&T- society  What mismatches between S&T and society do you observe in the article?
This can also lead to inequalities; people that can undergo this genome editing are often from the elite
and the poor people are not able to afford this new technology of genome editing  rich people will
not get sick often compared to the poor people. What is going to happen to augmented soldiers that
have this edited genome that are fighting to worldwide soldiers that don’t have this edited genome?

Four views on technology and society

1. Instrumental view: society develops and uses technology to reach its own goals. In other words,
society develops technology and uses it to reach its own goals: technology is an instrument to reach a
particular goal in society.
Example: I want to each warm food (goal) so I develop fire as a technology to reach that goal.

2. Deterministic view: technological development follows its own trajectory, and technological
development has an impact on society. The technological development happens and a society we
cannot govern/control this, whether we want it or not.
Example: the fear of genetic editing of babies would be a deterministic view; gene editing development
has an impact on society  people are scared that its unethical. Also with cochlear implants, the
development of the cochlear implant has an impact on society; people are scared that the deaf culture
will disappear.

3. Interactive view (designing): society and technology influence each other. ‘what kind of world and
society do we want to live in and what kind of technology contributes to that world?’. Difference
between this view and the instrumental view is that this view recognizes that society and technology
influence each other and asks a rather big question (in what kind of world do we want to live in) rather
that what kind of goal do I want to reach (instrumental).

4. Interactive view (adaptive): society and technology influence each other. ‘how can society reinvent
itself in the context of its technological development?’ It recognizes that society steers the
development of science and technology, but that S&T have an impact on society that requires society
to reinvent itself/to change.
Example: given that we have developed technologies for gene editing babies, how as a society do we
need to change in order to make sure that these technologies are not only used by the rich? How do
we need to reinvent our society to make sure that this technological development of gene editing is
accessible to everyone?

Yuval Noah Harari he has the deterministic view because he mentions that technology is going to progress by
itself, digital technologies and algorithms (systems) are going to become dominant in the world. However, he
also raises the question that we humans have to decide how we want to engage with this technology, do we
want that algorithms really take over or do we want to develop these side works where algorithms and humans

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