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

该项目将为一名博士生提供为期一年的实地考察和研究，研究生物技术研究与新兴的社会经济对生物多样性价值的认识之间的关系。由于生物多样性的保护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的潜在贡献引起了人们对重视自然而不顾人类用途的问题的关注。由于药物设计处于实用的商业需求、公共政策、新技术和科学知识前沿之间的交叉点，因此，在这一应用科学领域中，对生物多样性价值的不确定性进行谈判的过程进行研究，可以为保护生物多样性的政策和更普遍的自然价值提供重要的见解。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”（即完全开发成药物的可行候选物）的决策过程。由于制药研究的核心是使生物多样性可用，并为此目的不断开发技术，而且由于这一努力位于生物知识的前沿，因此它提供了一个丰富的研究场所，可以了解在赋予生物多样性“部分”的意义和价值的过程中，现有的自然观念是如何重塑的，无论是植物的一部分，还是合成模仿化合物或基因。将采用一系列科学研究学科的研究方法，以及包括人种学观察、访谈和参与者观察在内的工具，以了解药物设计过程中的参与者和相关人员如何在这一共同涌现的知识和价值领域中重视生物多样性。这项研究与其他社会建构主义和科学技术人种学研究的不同之处在于，它调查了药物发现的情况，同时将其作为改变自然价值观念的场所，作为环境保护政策干预的舞台，并作为推动这种观念未来变化的新技术背后的驱动力。制药业筛选潜在候选药物所采用的策略的初步研究表明，存在着相互矛盾的说法，一个是生物学的，一个是经济的。这些观点不同地强调生物有机体本身或作为整个自然的一部分的价值，而不是将生物多样性的概念分别视为可识别的离散的、承载信息的比特的总和，这些比特可以通过技术变得有用。由于这些不同的概念在药物设计过程的不同阶段发挥作用，反映了公众、科学和政策对保护生物多样性的立场，药物设计可以作为一个研究基础，研究相互竞争的经济和生物叙事如何塑造我们与自然的关系。实地考察的核心是研究任何一种化合物在成为“先导”的过程中所经历的不同设计阶段，以及在实验室技术人员、科学家和管理人员之间复杂的互动中确立其价值的过程。这项工作的目的是为了更好地了解在功利背景下生物多样性评估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型科学活动形式的特点，它不仅嵌入科学和商业，而且嵌入政治，例如以产权的形式或该行业在实施生物多样性保护中的作用。

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.