Executive Director, GeneForum

Gregory Fowler is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Geneforum, an Oregon based nonprofit organization dedicated to “enhancing public understanding, promoting civic discourse and informing genetic policy through the measurement and monitoring of public values.” He is also Senior Research Associate and Program Director, Technology & Citizenship Program, Center for Public Health Studies in the School of Community Health at Portland State University, and an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Oregon Health and Science University. An “Ethics and Values in Science and Technology (EVIST)” grant from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1985 to study the ethics of human genetic engineering, became the focus of 20 years of professional research and writing in science education, science and technology studies, and participatory democracy. He is a standing member of the Oregon State Legislature’s Advisory Committee on Genetic Privacy and Research mandated to create opportunities for public education and input on issues of genetic privacy and research. He is Oregon’s only Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, an international forum which elects scientists, artists and scholars with interdisciplinary accomplishments, a record of public service, and a global perspective to the Academy to discuss the vital problems of humankind and to “keep under continuous review the social consequences and policy implications of knowledge.” He holds a doctorate in genetics from Brown University. 

In a landmark popular referendum in June 1998, Switzerland voted by a 2:1 majority not to ban genetic engineering.  The popular initiative, called the “Gene Protection Initiative, GPI,” was rooted primarily in a substantial degree of unease over what was initially viewed as a scary and mysterious new technology.  Its stated goals were the prohibition of transgenic animals, the banning of all field releases of transgenic crops and the prevention of patenting certain inventions of biotechnology.  Before the popular vote took place, the Swiss Parliament committed itself to enact a strict regulatory framework, but no bans.  In the intervening 3 years of intense public education by the media, biotechnology industry, and the scientific and medical communities, general opposition to genetic engineering decreased from 62 percent to 33 percent, and acceptance increased from 25 percent to almost 40 percent.

The Swiss experience, especially, shows that given time, money and the open sharing of ideas, complex societal issues raised by new technologies can be brought to the public’s attention allowing informed democratic decisions to be reached.  Ordinary citizens do not need to be scientists to understand the important implications of the new technological advances.  When factual information and basic principles are conveyed in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways, the scene is set for a shift from monologue to dialogue, from “I-thinking” to “We-thinking,” to occur.  Sheila Jasanoff reminds us in her latest book, “Designs on Nature,” (2005) of the need to talk, and sometimes to argue, about the scientific and technological choices that confront us.  In science, as in politics, the need for this process of inquiry, debate and learning—“participatory democracy”—is endless.

There is a bumper sticker that reads, “Commit deliberate acts of planned and organized solidarity.” That is a good starting point for creating the democratic conditions for science and technology—and 21st century genetic science, in particular—to thrive.  But the simultaneous challenge is to generate multiple and new approaches for the governance of technology that can draw ideas from past mistakes, cope with social complexity in the present, and harness technological change for the common good in the future.

In this context—and drawing on the work of Benjamin Barber (1990) and the Oregon Health Decisions (Ref. M. Garland, 1999), the Geneforum model, which seeks to intensify the democratization of genetic technology, will be presented.