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

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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.