From the production of designer babies to the potential for gene repair, what happens when science intersects societal norms is the subject of a community forum, “Ethics and Discovery: How Do We Decide?”

The event wraps up the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council Humanities Inquiry, a month-long look, through film, lecture, performance, art and literature at the notion of “discovery” applied to a cross-section of fields – why people are driven to it, and what happens when they succeed.

“The goal of the forum is to engage the audience in a conversation on the distinction between explaining and manipulating our world,” Inquiry coordinator Kathleen Thorne said, “whether there can be ‘good’ and ‘bad’ discoveries, and how we as a society decide how to deal with them.

“Because one thing is certain: Once a discovery is made, it can’t be undiscovered.”

The forum exemplifies the broad perspective that audiences have come to expect of Thorne’s inquiry programming, which has tackled subjects as diverse as food and American culture.

The March 23 panel will address issues raised during the current series, from how voters can make decisions about increasingly technical subjects, to assigning moral responsibility for a discovery’s ramifications.

The distinguished panel of experts in philosophy, science, religion, public policy and the law includes islander David Harrison, a senior lecturer at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs, who just completed two years as senior policy advisor to U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.

Harrison personally intersects discovery at the level of public policy.

He notes that government may try to spur technology by underwriting it, as is currently the case with fuel-cell technology. Or it may make the benefits of discovery more equitable, as when the government pays to increase broad-band access to rural areas.

In other instances, government may intercede outright to ban or limit discovery, as with stem cell research, or dampen discovery indirectly, by underfunding education, as is the case in Washington State.

Harrison believes issues of discovery transcend the political debates of the day, however.

“We are speaking, instead, to how human existence changes over time and how scientific advances afford a larger view and – ultimately even more critical – discovery goes to the very essence of being human,” Harrison said.

Discoveries raise issues that go beyond discussion of bio-ethics to impact society, he points out.

“When the telephone was invented, there were people who thought about inequities,” Harrison said, “like who had phones and who couldn’t afford them.”

Other concerns raised at the time included fears that the phone would become a nuisance, or that communicating across distance would unravel social relationships.

Harrison calls the three concerns “typical and ongoing” for today’s discoveries as well, but points to an important difference.

“The impact of discovery is greater,” Harrison said. “We are able to more fundamentally change the essence of our existence than we have ever been able to do.”

And that is why, he concludes, one must closely consider the likely impact of a discovery.

Thorne agrees, pointing out that good intentions didn’t add up to a positive outcome when Dr. Frankenstein crafted his creature – or when Robert Oppenheimer split the atom.

“It is not sufficient to be virtuous,” Thorne said. “The ethical practitioner must also be capable of moral reasoning.

“And in a democratic society, so must the rest of us. If we want to make the world a better place through discovery and technology, we have to be able to think what that means.

“Right now, most of us are preoccupied with the war in Iraq, but these questions will still be facing us when that ordeal is over, perhaps more than ever.”

——

“Ethics and Discovery: How Do We Decide?” examines the criteria that shape the pursuit and implementation of discoveries and advances.

This community forum, led by a panel of experts, will take place at 4 p.m. March 23 in the Bainbridge High School LGI room.

Panelists include Jan C. Heller, system director of the Office of Ethics and Theology for Providence Health System; Stephen R. Lasky, a research biologist working on the Human Genome Project; Sean O’Connor, who teaches biotechnology law at University of Pittsburgh; Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitman College David Carey; and David S. Harrison, senior lecturer of public affairs at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs and founder of the Northwest Policy Center.

“Ethics and Discovery” is the final event of the month-long Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council 2003 Humanities Inquiry, “Discovery: A Story without End.”

Tickets are available at the door, are $10/adults and $5/seniors and students. Call 842-7901 for information.