A Hot and Cold Running Genius

Eva Harris won the MacArthur "genius grant" in 1997 for plenty of reasons. As a Pew Scholar in 2001, her bench work on the molecular virology and pathogenesis of dengue virus - specifically, the determinants for viral transmission - was tied purposefully to developing the epidemiological capacity of scientists in developing countries. Harris has helped many aspiring scientists in the developing world. They learn from her to create and sustain programs of bench science "on the cheap." And sometimes, it bears fruit in vaccines and even the promise of translating what might look like rudimentary science into the promise of a cure for the predominant arthropod-borne disease in the world.

Harris' genius, though, is in bioethics, although I find no record that she has ever used the term in her work. That's perhaps not surprising, given how much time bioethics seems to spend on "bad" scientists. I'm ready to tar Harris with the label "ethicist" because of her compulsive goodness. She can't seem to avoid fixating on "the cash value" of her work, and by that I do not mean the literal value she might have extracted from her most noteworthy accomplishment to date - the development of A Low Cost Approach to PCR: Appropriate Transfer of Biomedical Techniques - which brought DNA amplification to labs that could never have used it otherwise. No, for William James, who coined the term as part of the truly American philosophy of pragmatism, cash value was the cornerstone of ethical science: Science is good, he and John Dewey opined, when it works. Activism on behalf of vulnerable scientists and endangered people is just the sort of translation that scientists in training can point to as ethical genius.

Today Harris runs the Sustainable Sciences Institute in San Francisco, a nonprofit she began with the money awarded through her McArthur prize. The Institute teaches scientists what she calls "knowledge-based" technology transfer. So for DNA amplification, instead of $100 for silica particles, she teaches scientists in the developing world to begin with "a 20-pound bag of ceramic dust for $5 at the hobby store," and thermocycling based on ice, Bunsen burners, and somebody holding a thermometer. A device that costs $10,000 in even its most rudimentary form in the developed world is suddenly within reach of scientists whose entire programs would otherwise be impossible.

Harris spends much time defending her approach and her advocacy. In an interview with the Institute of International Studies at Berkeley, she puts the matter plainly: "In the United States, if you're a scientist and you take a stand, no one will listen to you. It's an incredible thing in this country, where as soon as you become an advocate or take a stand on an issue, you 'lose your objectivity' and people will no longer respect your science ... it's quite a slippery path."

At the dawn of exponential improvements in bioinformatics and genetic epidemiology - where vulnerable subjects donate DNA to scientists from wealthy universities, corporations and governments - there can be no question about who will get the first pills and tests. Objectivity isn't part of the equation: every scientist gets a paycheck. And far be it from me to argue that it is unethical for genomic science to spread its benefits incrementally across the world. But in teaching research ethics one points to the exemplars, and of late far too many have distinguished themselves in the public eye through behavior that is just reprehensible.

Eva Harris represents the good in science, the model that brings many if not most scientists to the lab in the first place, just as surely as young physicians imagine that they will one day cure the poor. Geniuses do good science. In Harris' case, this is true in more than both senses of the word.

Glenn McGee is the director of the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College, where he holds the John A. Balint Endowed Chair in Medical Ethics.