Missing the Point

I just finished reading an article in the October 1 issue of Cancer and Biology Therapy (pdf) on the ethics of cancer research. Not the article I was expecting, I must confess; I was imagining some poor doctor struggling with the dilemma of making half the terminal patients in his study a control group. Or something along those lines. No; the problem Scott E. Kern has with cancer researchers is that they're a bunch of lazy bastards who are letting patients die.

 When I first wrote the above line, I thought of toning it down a little, as I was probably caricaturing his position. So I reread, and decided to leave the line as it is after reading this...

During the survey period, off-site lay-persons offer comments on my observations. “Don’t the people with families have a right to a career in cancer research also?” I choose not to answer. How would I? Do the patients have a duty to provide this “right”, perhaps by entering suspended animation?

Much as it pains me to say this, I have to say that I see his point. He makes it in a way that's insulting, ham-fisted and downright disingenuous, but the question that forms the title of the essay -- Where's the Passion? -- is one that I think would occur to me, too, under the same circumstances.

One would expect that a fair number of the researchers to whom he refers have lost family or friends to cancer, and that at least some of them would have entered the field for that very reason. It seems reasonable, therefore, to expect that they'd put in a lot of extra time in the lab. So the fact that they apparently weren't was quite a surprise to me.

The reason, I'm pretty sure, is that that one of his interviewees suggested; "They see it as a 9-to-5 job." I confess to finding this a little disappointing. I'd like to think that there are many researchers for whom the job is everything, who toil all the hours available in the quest for the mythical Cure for Cancer.

So on that point, Kern and I are in accord. But that's as far as it goes.

Cancer research is a job. It's one that employs many thousands worldwide, and I've no doubt that in many labs around the world, there are people working around the clock. It just happens that in the lab in question, the lack of extra hours put in coincided with the presence of one guy who's confusing a job with a duty.

Like it or not, we live in a world where pretty much every vocation is reduced to a mere job. People look at career prospects and make their choice on that basis. Sure, it's probably always been that way, but it seems to have been getting more and more common.¹ To harangue those who approach the job this way is to miss the point completely; Kern seems to be assuming that by working in the lab, these work-shy slackers are taking jobs away from the dedicated professionals. I doubt this is the case. And by adding 'professionalism' as a tag, he's suggesting that they're not merely lazy, but negligent. This is just insulting. There are other problems with this line of thinking, too.

For example, what does he think of those who research non-fatal illnesses? Indeed, what about those who eschew research altogether? And now that I think of it, what's he doing spending time wandering around empty buildings when he should be hunched over a microscope?

Like I said, he has the makings of a point. However, like Richard Dawkins is wont to do, he frames his argument in such a way that he's just alienating anyone he hopes to convince, and ends up with a paper that'll just be passed around to be ridiculed.

Notes

1. Yeah, yeah. In the good old days everyone respected their elders, never misused apostrophes or dogs, worked a twenty-hour day at mill for tuppence a month, etc, etc.