Public Understanding of Science

A policy question was posed in 2001 to Canadian publics: should Canada proceed with clinical trials on xenotransplantation and if so, under what conditions? As part of its development of policy and regulations on this medical technology, Health Canada and the Canadian Public Health Association implemented a public consultation process that included a public opinion survey and deliberative citizen fora modeled along the citizens' jury. This study focuses on the citizen fora and describes an assessment of effectiveness based on an evaluation framework developed on the basis of concepts from constructive technology assessment and deliberative democracy.

One of today's great issues is how an advanced medical technology like xenotransplantation should be applied. It is well known that medicine brings not only potential but also risk. On the cultural level, xenotransplantations are equally complicated; they arouse thoughts about whether our outlook on humanity will be influenced now that modern techniques can “correct” our defective bodies. The article asks whether xenotransplantation creates new cultural meanings. That is, how do newly emerging ideas of a technologically created normality raise a set of moral questions about nature and culture, mind and body? The discussion is based on interview studies with patients suffering from diabetes and Parkinson's disease. The former have been given porcine islets, while the others have had human fetal cells transplanted into the brain; the latter are also potential recipients of xenotransplants. This empirical material becomes the basis for discussing how diseases can lead to a crisis in which it is essential—on a concrete, everyday level—to find strategies for dealing with the consequences. In this process of identity and normalization, advanced biomedicine is an important factor.

The reasons given by the Japanese public, scientists, and school and university students toward xenotransplantation were assessed by questionnaire surveys and by respondents' written comments. Between 1997 and 2000, there was an increase in the number of people who said they had heard of xenotransplant research, from 43 percent to 67 percent. In 2000, three in ten among the public said that it should be encouraged, while half said that it should not. In contrast, just less than half of the scientists said they supported the technology. The major reasons given in all groups were to save human life, versus safety and ethical concerns. More of the general public and school students considered xenotransplants to be unnatural compared with the scientists and university students. The reasons given are discussed in light of Japanese culture and the situation regarding organ transplants. Some in all groups, including young people, expressed both benefits and risks of this technology, and sophisticated arguments were used, suggesting that a number of people are able to consider moral dilemmas, such as those posed by the use of genetically engineered animals for xenotransplants. Still there remain a number of even educated persons who argue on only one side of the debate over the use of xenotransplants.

It has been assumed that the general public is unable to conceptualize information about risk uncertainties, and so communication about food risk has tended to avoid this type of information. However, recent societal and political pressure to increase transparency in risk management practices will result in the uncertainties inherent in risk analysis becoming subject to public scrutiny. Best practice regarding risk communication must address how to communicate risk uncertainty. A questionnaire was developed that aimed to assess how the general public characterized uncertainty associated with food risks. The results indicated that people wanted to be provided with information about food risk uncertainty as soon as the uncertainty was identified. People were more accepting of uncertainty associated with the scientific process of risk management than they were of uncertainty due to lack of action or lack of interest on the part of the government. The findings indicate that the focus of risk communication should be on “what is being done to reduce the uncertainty.” Recommendations are made regarding best practice for communicating risk uncertainty.

Throughout the past century, research into human genetics revealed the relationships between biochemistry and various human characteristics in increasing detail. At each step of this path of discovery, social critics warned that knowledge of genetics, and especially social attention to genetics, might heighten racist attitudes. In light of these warnings and the recent sequencing of the Human Genome, it is important to inquire into the interpretations laypersons might hold of the relationship between race and genetics. A variety of recent efforts have described the insufficiency of public opinion polls for arriving at sophisticated understandings of such complex attitudinal structures. Therefore, this essay offers a sketch of some lay understandings of race and genetics in the United States based on a series of focus group sessions. In order to interpret the responses, the analysis employs a novel template for interpreting focus group research based on the theoretical concept of rhetorical formations. This approach reveals the way in which the knowledge of individual members is brought to bear upon collective decision-making through the social process of discussion to produce a pool of information that is similar to expert knowledge, although phrased in a popular vocabulary. Differences in the ways in which cultural groups negotiate this knowledge are discussed.