How eager would you be to take a medicine for an ailment if you were not at all sure if either the medicine would work on your ailment – or if the side-effects of the medication were worse than the disease? How confident would you be in someone you never met saying that they "have your best interests" in mind when making decisions for you, such as ? On one hand, new medicines could not be brought to market if no one was willing to take part in early trials of the medicine. On the other hand, not many people would be eager to be among the first to test out a new drug for an ailment or life-threatening disease, unless the alternatives were definitively worse. Research is often conducted on humans, animals, living systems, and environments in ways that could impact the well-being (positively and negatively) of those subjects of research. Important ethical questions arise when we begin to ask how much those subjects know about the risks of partaking in specific research or how a specific intervention may impact their health. Further, ethical problems are compounded when the subject(s) of research or decision-making cannot speak or make decisions for themselves, such as for an unconscious patient on life support, or even for non-human subjects, like animals, plants, and ecosystems. The main ethical question that arises is whether a subject or stakeholder is able to consent to participating in research and/or decision-making, or what is referred to as "informed consent."
Having the capacity to give consent to being part of research, receiving a medical treatment with known risks (like surgery), and/or having decisions (including policies) about your welfare made on your behalf requires the ability to consent and be informed (and understand that information) well enough to make a well-grounded decision. The idea of informed consent, however, is only applied to humans who can consent. While consent cannot be given by animals, ecosystems, and other non-human subjects, the idea of consent is implicit in trying to come to a decision about the minimization of harms. This consideration of the well-being of non-human subjects unable to consent would widely apply, from animals in a laboratory setting to aquifers in a hydraulic fracturing (fracking) zone, and are typically taken into consideration through existing regulatory processes (such as the Institutional Review Board or Environmental Impact Assessments.)
The main concept to keep in mind here is the idea of consent, whether it be informed consent of a patient or research subject, or a form of representative consent, where a person or organization stands in for the concerns of the non-human subject(s) undergoing research or significant changes.
Each research institution which is able to receive grants from the U.S. Government for human and/or animal research is required to have an Institutional Review Board (IRB) that reviews proposals to assure the protection of research subjects. Examples of and reasons for requiring review of research that involves human subjects are numerous and multiple throughout medical and behavioral research. (History is full of horror stories about the treatment of medical and behavioral research subjects.)
While it may not be bio-medical research, if we are to learn what we can about the many social and behavioral aspects of renewable energy and sustainability systems, we will need to research topics such as patterns of consumption, energy use, patterns of traffic flow, individual psychology, response to risks, etc. Behavioral and social requires the study of research subjects, which will require a review of the research by the institution's own IRB.
Penn State has very extensive Institutional Review Board (IRB) resources as part of the Office for Research Protections (which all research falls under.) This lesson is in no way a replacement for the extensive educational resources and regulatory support. See the following resources for more: Penn State's Institutional Review Board [3] and Penn State's Office for Research Protections [4].
The treatment of research subjects and medical patients can be approached through a basic principle (easy in theory, but not in practice) that subjects ought to be treated how they want to be treated. The difficult part can be in determining whether subjects understand the risks of the procedure or research in which they are partaking. Further, protecting the identity of information and research data about a subject is required (privacy and confidentiality) if no harm comes to the subject from the information generated by the research (such as a pre-existing condition or genetic marker for a specific disease). Subjects that are experiencing conditions that could compromise or coerce subjects into agreeing to research or treatments that may not be in their best interests.
From 1850 to 1920, roughly 85% of the old-growth forests in the United States were cut down. Much of this lumber fed the early iron and steel mills and resulted in the industrial expansion of the United States, and many of these areas have since been reforested. Nevertheless, this expansion impacted or even eradicated the landscapes and ecosystems of many different species. Further, this exact pattern of rapid deforestation has been occurring in the Amazon rainforest since 1972, beginning with the building of interior highways. (By 2013, approximately 800,000 km2 of rainforest will have been cleared since 1970, roughly the size of France and Italy combined.) The loss of respiration from the trees (keeping humidity in the region constant) has resulted in multiple problems in the Amazon river basin, from extreme flooding to droughts. How do we being to judge the loss of such services that the rainforest itself provides? How do we clearly compare the costs of the loss of such ecological services, such as clean water and protection from floods, to the financial benefits and economic developments such activities bring with them?
Environmental and ecological systems can be significantly impacted by human intervention. Animals, plants, schools of fish, even entire ecosystems are impacted by human consumption patterns, particularly in the history of energy production. Animals, particularly mice, are continually used to test new drugs, the toxicity of chemical compounds, the potential for cancer from exposure, etc. Further, animals are designed to produce necessary human medicines, such as insulin from pigs, or now even organs in sheep grown with human tissue (20% by genetics) to decrease the chances of organ transplant rejections, and bacteria are being designed to produce ponds of biofuels.
As discussed previously, we can do our best to ensure human subjects and patients are able to consent to take part in research or a medical procedure, or someone who may represent their best interests can typically speak for that person's wishes (such as towards the end of life, when a person may be impaired). However, thinking about consent for something like a lab mouse or a landscape does not make sense. How would a lab mouse want to be treated? (Probably not how most of them are treated.) Is it right to introduce engineered genetics into the environment that could breed into native species of plants, changing the inherited genetic structure of the plant forever, such as genetically modifying corn engineered for biofuels?
For human subjects research, the Office for Research Protections (ORP) requires research to be approved through the Institutional Review Board (IRB). For animal subjects research, the ORP requires review by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). For environmental based research, such as for biofuels, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is typically conducted on the part of the researcher. (Check to see here if there is a review board for this.) Regardless, procedures for assessing environmental factors need to be significantly improved, particularly under the principles and goals of sustainability.
Source: Committee for the Update of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (2010). Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, Eighth Edition.
Source: Based on the United Nations Environment Programme: Abaza, H., Bisset, R., & Sadler, B. (2004). Environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment: towards an integrated approach. Geneva, UNEP.
A stakeholder is an entity which has a specific interest in the outcomes of a given action, such as a project or change in policy. 'Entities' here can refer to individual citizens, organizations, business, groups of people, systems, ecosystems, or even members of future generations. To have a stake in something means to be in some manner or another impacted by the outcomes of the action proposed or completed. Precisely who or what all the stakeholders are in a given action is not necessarily clear before the action is completed and an impact analysis conducted. Nevertheless, there is an obligation based on principles of basic social justice and democratic processes to determine what the impacts of a given action could possibly be and to whom or what.
An action can have a wide variety of impacts. However, those impacts depend on the standpoint of the stakeholder. One stakeholder may have received a very good deal out of the action while for the other stakeholder the outcome was negative. For example, say you have a small house in the woods by a stream which you use to drink and water your garden with on dry days, the excess from which you make a small bit of money. Along comes a gold prospector who, now living up the stream from you, decides to dam the stream up in the search for gold. You now only have access to a small trickle of the water you just had access to the day before. (What would you do?) Obviously, the outcomes of a given action are rather different depending on the stakeholder's standpoint. (Not all outcomes have to be so stark in comparison.) We might call these two individuals primary stakeholders, while those benefiting from the prospector's gold and those who may not be able to any longer purchase the farmer's vegetables may be referred to here as secondary stakeholders. Those individuals who would able to go in and require the prospector to dismantle or at least minimize the impact of the gold mining operation would be referred to here as key stakeholders, who hold power over the outcomes of the action but may or may not be impacted by the action.
Some stakeholders are not able to represent their interests during a consideration of impacts, for example, an endangered environment, ecosystem, or species is obviously not able to represent 'its' interests in human decision-making processes. As such, these kinds of stakeholders require representative proxies for their interests, which often come in the form of special interest NGOs. There are also many groups of individuals (humans) that are unable to properly enter into the decision-making process for reasons of gender, race, class, economic status, social status, or otherwise. Assuring that outcomes and impacts of actions do not adversely affect those stakeholders that cannot represent themselves requires a comprehensive stakeholder analysis and includes representations of those interested that cannot readily represent themselves. Why is this necessary? Because the dominant financial and political forces will almost always work in their own best interests, leverage what power they have. This is, in fact, the crucial difference between stakeholder in an action and shareholder in a company.
The product of a well-conducted stakeholder analysis ought to produce a shared balance of benefits/burdens from a given action and, foremost, not impact those in a weak position or otherwise unable to represent their own interests. A fair process requires the consideration of possible impacts to the primary stakeholders, secondary stakeholders, and key stakeholders. Basic procedural fairness usually necessitates a partially to completely open process where stakeholders are able to give light to their perspective on the impacts from the initial conception of the action. A stakeholder analysis is likely to produce the best results (perceived as fair) when conducted early on in the process of deliberation around a decision or action so engagement with all interested stakeholders can begin. The stakeholder analysis process is a mapping out of people, groups, or systems that hold a stake in the outcome of the action. Initially, a stakeholder analysis can be done by theoretically mapping out the possible impacts on stakeholders of a given decision or action. Mapping out in a real process requires direct representation from the members of the group, i.e., as effective as it may be, it is improper to assume a stakeholder's standpoint is a given. Taking our previous example of the gold prospector and the gardener, it would probably be improper and incorrect for the prospector to assume that if the gardener minded the loss of streamflow, his land could be purchased for a good sum of money.
Links
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rat_eating_or_praying%3F.jpg
[2] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
[3] http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/humans
[4] http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/
[5] https://www.flickr.com/photos/crustmania/10094847976/in/photolist-go3JB3-Dy7rvW-W79rmd-p6NLu6-nWmkGq-iF2aod-5Yk5gW-2dDHmC4-4Kn6Hj-69WTrL-63tKee-CmXSW-d9PMY5-24ptLVp-4mtNah-5Euzub-aA8b9Z-bEV5DR-8ta1FY-hn7WmH-9xVF1e-qHcH9X-V61Zv8-98cbwh-2ep7LBS-29UjNxA-9pBhB9-5ptRcS-ELRwH4-YUoeZz-VH62wQ-5qacFh-iUfPMn-XRyuAJ-SDLxuy-26obis1-pidGDp-fq8iRj-4iNoSh-9Hk8R5-5Sc2gj-nNzvsg-qTKUA7-nLjtcv-VSftQa-bkABZZ-pJZQgn-3kQjaT-dmucvu-WVJAm6
[6] https://www.flickr.com/photos/crustmania/
[7] https://www.flickr.com
[8] https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/
[9] https://www.pexels.com/photo/creek-in-a-forest-1271620/
[10] https://www.pexels.com/@andreimike
[11] https://www.pexels.com