RESPONDER: Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva, Honorary Professor at the Pasteur Institute, Director of the Institute of Research in Tropical Pathologies, Rondonia, Brazil
In the last few years, COMEST and UNESCO have played an important role in the development of international scientific cooperation and the related ethical reflection, as a necessary step for guiding practical issues and applications of science and technology in favor of the developing world. With this same purpose, an important co-sponsored international workshop “ Promoting Life Science Research and Training in Developing Countries: A need for concerted action” was held in Trieste in November 2003. The aim of the meeting was to discuss means to improve efforts of national and international funding agencies in favor of science education and scientific and technological research in the third world countries. It brought together representative leaders of Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), Welcome Trust (WT), Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) to discuss with leading representative of developing countries' scientists.
From the discussions taking place at the meeting it emerged a consensual corollary that social and economical development in the new millenium depends fundamentally on the promotion of science education and research activities, particularly in life sciences . A series of recommendations were therefore proposed that can be summarized as follows:
• a clear commitment on scientific approaches to problems solving in developing countries;
• need to promote long-term research and training partnerships;
• need to convert “brain draining” into ‘brain circulation”;
• strong regional networks of scientists in developing world are crucial;
• support and encourage Centers of Excellence as regional centers of training and research development;
• find ways to encourage the “diaspora” of developing world scientists to participate in the development of their home countries;
• improve coordination of donor and funding agencies activities adapted to local needs;
• better information about scientific programs in developed world is required;
• improve access to scientific information and publications; and
• improve access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) to promote world's integration into global science.
These ten recommendations could be certainly called the “Ten Commandments” for global sciences, but their introduction in the real world practices, mostly dominated by commercial interests and market laws is not easy. In our communication at the COMEST “Session on Benefit Sharing and International Cooperation in Research” we are discussing points that are sources of contradictory ethical conflicts. If the aim of scientific cooperation is to introduce a rational approach for social economic development, these conflicts of interest must be considered not only by scientists and scientific agencies and associations but also by the government of both developing and developed countries. I will raise some points that could be emphasized in more detail by COMEST:
• In modern world, innovation, as a fruit of technological progress plays a fundamental role in the world's economy. News and/or renewed products enter in national's market and are exported even to less developed and developing areas. In industrialized countries, where innovation arises from scientific and technological activities, this represents a driven force for economical progress and social improvement, as well as an activating factor for science and technology. It should be reminded that the most active and dynamic area that engenders innovation is exactly the industry sectors generate new equipment and new products for the use in research itself. However, in developing world, new and renewed products, in particular those that are used in the scientific and technological research are essentially dependent on imports from developed countries and the exchange must be compensated by export of basic agriculture products, raw materials and commodities of relative low value. To give an example valid for Brazil in the field of life sciences, the acquisition of a High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC ), an essential instrument for chemical and biochemical analysis of natural products used to identify new chemical products of interest for innovation in a series of industrial sectors (pharmaceutics, food and drink products, cosmetics, staining colorants, fibers, etc.), requires US$ 100,000.00. To compensate these resources, Brazil must export the equivalent to 400 tons of soybean grains, an amount equivalent to the production of 200 hectares of agricultural rich land. This shows that innovation and scientific activity became an extremely positive factor for social economical progress in industrialized world and in some way also a parasitic factor that depends on the efforts of the productive sector of the society with low-income conditions. International funding agencies and national policies must, therefore find solutions to equilibrate this contrast by creating mechanisms for supplying equipment and products necessary for scientific and technological research activities in and with developing countries.
• A second element to be discussed is the very nature of partnership in the existing international cooperation related to scientific and technological research and development (R&D). International cooperation in between developing and developed countries does exist and in some cases is very important and well succeed. It is also known that, in many developed countries, in function of the lack of attractive financial positions proposed for graduate or postgraduate students by universities and scientific Institutes, these institutions look for young candidates in developing countries. In principle, this wouldn't be negative for developing countries and for the international cooperation. However, it can became a real brain-draining, when the professional posts are offered for disciplines, subjects or projects are not accessible for joint development in the country or region of the young students when they return home. Ethical considerations must be elaborated in order to help developing countries to avoid or minimize brain drain. Scientific international cooperation must give priority attention to areas that are strategic for developing countries and that have perspective of development with sustainable and autonomous continuity after the interruption of the collaborative program.
• Scientific and technological cooperation must always take into consideration basic differences in the manpower structure of developed and developing countries. In industrialized countries we observe nowadays on one hand the unemployment of highly qualified and technically trained personnel and, on the other hand, a need for non-or low qualified personnel that, is usually covered by immigration from developing countries. In the developing world we perceive an inverse situation, with excess of non-or low qualified personnel that constitute the mass of unemployed people. The introduction of some modern and super-qualified technologies can be deleterious for the socio-economic development of the country if it is not prepared to form or recycle human resources. This phenomenon is quite clear in the agriculture and agro-industry area. In Brazil, South and Center-West areas are introducing modern technologies for soybean culture based in mechanization, automatism and robots. The success of this modern agriculture technology as a guarantee for expansion of exports with a positive effect on the national economic-financial point of view is not always, however, a success on the social point of view from a country that need to integrate marginal sectors of its population. This American style of agriculture technology is acceptable for developed and industrialized areas in South and Southeast areas of Brazil, but it has dramatic effects when introduced in under developed areas of Northeast and especially in the Amazon Region where, in addition, it produces intense environmental degradation. This was also the case of the development of modern industrial fishery industry in Tanzania's Victoria Lake. On the other hand, some modern technological developments have shown to produce the same national wealth and global NBP increase by promoting the socio-economic integration of rural populations and improving their living standards. A good example is the modern conservation agricultural technology, recently developed in Brazil and Argentina, known as the “zero tillage technology”. This modern technology offers a series of advantages: tillage is reduced to almost zero, avoiding needs of large expensive machines; the vegetation cover after harvesting is maintained after seeding and, in consequence, humidity is preserved as in the forest soils. Recent experiences in large degraded soil areas of Brazil and Argentina have shown a series of benefits for agricultural production, such as the decrease or elimination of soil erosion and compaction; increase in the organic constituents in the soil; increase in microorganisms and soil worms in soil; much lower investments and increased productivity.
COMEST has, therefore, an important role to play in scientific and technological cooperation as well as in the related ethical reflection in order to identify and indicate real benefits of science and technology for socio-economic development of third world countries:
• By defining ethical principles to be followed in the promotion of informed choices of priority fields to international cooperation;
• By helping developing and developed countries to identify and select partner institutions and professionals that follows the same principles and purposes; and
• By developing activities to favor the informed choice and adaptation of advanced scientific and technological tools, in benefit of the less developed and of poorest social sectors in third world countries.