Is it ethical to investigate the genetic component of IQ?

Michael Cook
30 Sep 2015
Reproduced with Permission
BioEdge

With the advent of new genomic sequencing technologies, researchers around the world are working to identify genetic variants that help explain differences in intelligence. Can such findings be used to improve education for all, as some scientists believe? Or are they likely to have a chilling effect on programs meant to improve educational outcomes among disadvantaged populations? These are among the questions explored in " The Genetics of Intelligence: Ethics and the Conduct of Trustworthy Research ," a special report of the leading bioethics journal, Hastings Center Report.

The report assesses the science and explores concerns about the implications of the research and interest in applying it to education. It concludes with recommendations to ensure that the research is done in a way that is trustworthy and avoids the "vortex of classism and racism."

The special report is the product of a workshop on responsible research and the genetics of intelligence, conducted by The Hastings Center and Columbia University's Center for Research on Ethical, Legal & Social Implications of Psychiatric, Neurologic & Behavioral Genetics in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) and the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. The workshop was led by Erik Parens, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, and Paul Appelbaum, director of Columbia's center, who also serve as coeditors of the special report.

The workshop and special report came about after the CTY leadership approached some bioethicists, including Parens at Hastings and Gail Geller at Hopkins, for advice on a dilemma it was facing. A research team exploring the genetic underpinnings of high intelligence asked CTY if they could recruit people already participating in an ongoing CTY research project, the "Study of Exceptional Talent." The research team wanted to ask these participants if they would donate DNA samples for genomic analysis, with the ultimate goal of using findings to help improve education for highly intelligent students.

CTY's leadership was unsure how to respond. On the one hand, it respected the research team and its goal. But it also worried about the potentially ugly implications, given that the history of scientific inquiry into the genetics of intelligence is marred by assumptions about the superiority of some groups over others.

Major questions addressed in the special report include:

The report makes recommendations for conducting trustworthy research on the genetics of intelligence. One recommendation is that, in the conceptualization of the project, researchers should acquire awareness of and sensitivity to the historical and social context in which they should propose to do their research. Another is that they take steps to ensure that the results are accurately represented to journalists and the public. Given the high interest in the topic of the genetics of intelligence, as well as its history of being misused, Parens and Appelbaum write in the introduction that researchers have an obligation to minimize the chances that their results "are sucked into the vortex of classism and racism."

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