Doctoral Dissertation: Valuing Biodiversity - Insights from the Pharmaceutical Drug Discovery Process

博士论文：重视生物多样性 - 来自制药药物发现过程的见解

• 批准号: 9975929
• 负责人: Richard Norgaard
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-09-01 至 2001-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9975929&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Valuing; Biodiversity; Insights

This project will provide one year of support for one doctoral student for fieldwork and research on the relation between biotechnological research and the emergent socio-economic perceptions of the value of biological diversity. Since the conservation of biological diversity has become one of the most pressing environmental issues, drug design and its potential contribution to novel conservation incentives draws attention to the issue of valuing nature for and regardless of human uses. Because pharmaceutical drug design is located at the intersection between utilitarian business imperatives, public policy, new technologies and the frontier of scientific knowledge, the study of the processes for negotiating the attendant uncertainties about the value of biological diversity used in this applied science arena can yield important insights both for policies for the conservation of biodiversity and the value of nature more generally. The research aims to elucidate the decision-making processes that lead to the discovery of a drug "lead" (i.e. a viable candidate for full development into a drug), from extracts and other compounds found in the diversity of biological organisms. Since pharmaceutical research is centrally concerned with making biodiversity useable and continuously develops technologies to this end, and since this very endeavor is located at the frontiers of biological knowledge, it presents a rich study site for understanding how existing perceptions of nature are reshaped in the process of giving meaning and value to a "piece" of biodiversity, be it part of a plant, a synthetically imitated compound or a gene. Research methods from a range of science studies disciplines will be employed, with tools including ethnographic observation, interviewing and participant observation, to understand how actors within and affiliated with the drug design process value biodiversity in this area of co-emergent knowledge and values. This research differs from other social constructivist and ethnographic studies of science and technology in that it investigates the case of pharmaceutical discovery simultaneously as the locus of changing perceptions of the value of nature, an arena of policy intervention for environmental conservation and as the driving force behind new technologies that enable future changes in this perception. Preliminary work on strategies employed by the pharmaceutical industry to screen for potential drug candidates has shown there to exist competing narratives, a biological and an economic one. These put different emphases on the merit of biological organisms per se or as part of nature at large versus a conception of biodiversity as the sum of discrete identifiable, information-laden bits than can be made useful through technology, respectively. Since these different notions at play in different stages of the drug design process are reflective of public, scientific and policy stances towards the protection of biodiversity, drug design serves as a study ground for how competing economic and biological narratives shape our relation to nature. At the center of the fieldwork is the study of the different design stages any one compound undergoes in the process of becoming a "lead", and along which its value is established in complex interactions between lab technicians, scientists and managers. The purpose of this work is to gain a better understanding of different forces at play in the valuation of biodiversity in a utilitarian context, in order to better inform biodiversity conservation policy. This is made possible by the industry's characteristic as a novel form of scientific activity, that has embedded in it not only science and business, but also politics, e.g. in the form of property rights or the industry's role in implementing biodiversity conservation.

该项目将为一名博士生提供一年的支助，以便就生物技术研究与对生物多样性价值的新的社会经济认识之间的关系进行实地考察和研究。由于保护生物多样性已成为最紧迫的环境问题之一，药物设计及其对新的保护激励措施的潜在贡献引起了人们对重视自然的问题的关注，而不管人类的用途。由于药物设计处于实用商业需要、公共政策、新技术和科学知识前沿之间的交叉点，因此研究在这一应用科学竞技场中使用的生物多样性价值的谈判过程，可以为保护生物多样性和更普遍的自然价值的政策提供重要的见解。该研究旨在阐明从生物有机体多样性中发现的提取物和其他化合物中发现药物“先导”（即完全开发为药物的可行候选物）的决策过程。由于药物研究主要关注使生物多样性可用并为此目的不断开发技术，并且由于这一奋进位于生物知识的前沿，因此它为理解如何在赋予生物多样性的“一块”意义和价值的过程中重塑现有的自然观提供了丰富的研究场所，无论它是植物的一部分，一种人工合成的化合物或基因。将采用一系列科学研究学科的研究方法，包括人种学观察，访谈和参与者观察等工具，以了解药物设计过程中的参与者如何在这一共同出现的知识和价值领域中重视生物多样性。本研究不同于其他社会建构主义和人种学研究的科学和技术，它调查的情况下，药物发现同时作为改变对自然价值的看法，一个竞技场的政策干预环境保护和新技术，使未来的变化，在这种看法的驱动力。关于制药业筛选潜在候选药物所采用的战略的初步工作表明，存在相互竞争的叙述，一种是生物学的，一种是经济学的。这两种观点分别强调了生物有机体本身或作为大自然一部分的优点，而不是生物多样性的概念，即生物多样性是可通过技术加以利用的离散的、可识别的、载有信息的比特的总和。由于在药物设计过程的不同阶段发挥作用的这些不同的概念反映了公众，科学和政策对保护生物多样性的立场，药物设计作为一个研究基础，如何竞争的经济和生物叙事塑造我们与自然的关系。实地工作的中心是研究任何一种化合物在成为“领导”的过程中所经历的不同设计阶段，以及沿着其价值在实验室技术人员，科学家和管理人员之间的复杂互动中建立起来的过程。这项工作的目的是更好地了解在功利背景下生物多样性估值中发挥作用的不同力量，以便更好地为生物多样性保护政策提供信息。这是由于该行业作为一种新的科学活动形式的特点而成为可能的，这种特点不仅嵌入了科学和商业，而且还嵌入了政治，例如以财产权的形式或该行业在实施生物多样性保护方面的作用。