Françoise Baylis outlines principles for consensus building on research with pandemic risks.

__________________________________________

In the summer of 1983, between 10 and 12 thousand women with divergent interests and backgrounds gathered in upstate New York at the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice. Inspired by a similar protest camp in England, the women came together to protest the deployment of cruise and Pershing II nuclear missiles to Europe.

Photo Credit: NIAID/flickr. Image Description: Colorized transmission electron micrograph of influenza A virus particles, colorized red and gold, isolated from a patient sample and then propagated in cell culture.

In support of the encampment, a Resource Handbook was published. The handbook outlined a clear commitment to consensus as the decision-making process and included a list of five principles for forming consensus proposals:

Responsibility: Participants are responsible for voicing their opinions, participating in the discussion, and actively implementing the agreement.

Self-discipline: Blocking consensus should only be done for principled objections. Object clearly, to the point, and without putdowns or speeches. Participate in finding an alternative solution.

Respect: Respect others and trust them to make responsible input.

Cooperation: Look for areas of agreement and common ground and build on them. Avoid competitive, right/wrong, win/lose thinking.

Struggle: Use clear means of disagreement—no putdowns. Use disagreements and arguments to learn, grow and change. Work hard to build unity in the group, but not at the expense of the individuals who are its members.

In my own research on consensus building, I have added two more principles as bookends – I start with the principle of inclusivity and end with the principle of benevolence.

Inclusivity: Create opportunities for people who are (or are at risk of being) marginalized to contribute to discussion. Do the same for passive communicators who may refrain from expressing their opinions.

Benevolence: Be kind. Discussing challenging issues can result in heated debate, silent withdrawal and other difficult outcomes that need to be carefully managed. Moreover, when a collective decision is made, those whose opinions are not reflected in the decision may need reassurance that their voices were heard.

As with the deployment of nuclear weapons, other controversies have divided activists, experts, and others. This is true of the ongoing debate within and among nations over what governments must do to prevent a biological crisis and humanitarian disaster akin to the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Debate has been particularly fraught within the scientific community as regards how best to oversee laboratory research on dangerous or modified pathogens with pandemic potential.

But in step with the principles of collaborative decision-making summarized above, twenty-nine researchers with different expertise and different views on the merits and risks of pathogen research, assumed personal responsibility for active, principled, respectful, and cooperative engagement. These twenty-nine researchers were assembled as an Independent Task Force on Research with Pandemic Risks by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an organization devoted to reducing human-made threats to our existence. The researchers were able to endorse a consensus framework for responsible and sustainable governance of pathogen research grounded in the following ethical obligations: to ensure high-probability benefits for public health; to minimize risk of harm by using less-risky alternatives, where appropriate; to correct inequities in benefit-sharing and research burdens; and to respect prohibitions on research when there is not a proportionate harm-benefit ratio.

To be clear, members of the task force were not asked to endorse every finding in the final report, but rather to “endorse the general policy thrusts and judgments reached by the group.” Doing so was neither contentious nor difficult because task force members had engaged in a decision-making process steeped in practices of consensus-building where the overarching goal is unity, not unanimity. Whether the issue be Cold War-era nuclear weapons or pandemic era pathogen research, the practice of consensus-building is critical.

A Framework for Tomorrow’s Pathogen Research is an ethics-informed governance framework aimed at securing the public health benefits of research in virology and immunology while, at the same time, properly managing the myriad biosafety and biosecurity hazards. This framework fits within an emerging paradigm (see, for example, the World Health Organization’s governance frameworks on emerging technologies) where there is a strong underlying commitment to the common good coupled with an overarching aim to guide the development of safe, secure and responsible research. No doubt this orientation will help ensure widespread endorsement of the specific ethical obligations and the proposed strategies for improved management and oversight of research with pandemic risks.

 __________________________________________

Françoise Baylis is Distinguished Research Professor Emerita at Dalhousie University. She was a member of the Independent Task Force on Research with Pandemic Risks. @FrancoiseBaylis