Episode 040: Françoise Baylis
Prof. Françoise Baylis is a renowned bioethicist and recipient of this year’s Killam Prize in the humanities. Her work on the ethics of gene editing and other technologies related to human reproduction offers clear guidance and thought-provoking critical insights into an area of research that is not only on the cutting edge of science, but tied to the most profound emotions of women and their partners who are trying to have children.
Transcript
Cameron: Ah, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I want to talk at a higher level about the kind of work that you do, but what I'm really interested in is getting at, like, how does a philosopher participate in this kind of research? Like, what do you actually do during the day? You don't, you don't have a lab of your own, that sort of thing. Right. Because of course you're doing research in an area that is quite emotionally laden, if nothing else.
Françoise: One of my first jobs actually was not in academia. I worked full-time at the Hospital for Sick Children as a ethics consultant. And I can tell you in that context, dealing with couples that were struggling with issues around human reproduction, I had people in my office crying. And so it really is some very emotional issues and in some cases you're dealing with end of life care. So yes, it's not just words and it's not that it doesn't have an impact on the world. So I think one has to be careful about how you position yourself and what you say.
Cameron: Yeah. just as an aside, I find the emotional content of my work as a professor and as a teacher to be probably the most important part of it. I'm dealing with MBA students, so they're around 30 years old. Often, they've got kids at home, they've given up a job, their partner is supporting them, or they're working part-time and not sleeping, and they feel like their marks are everything to them because it's an indication that they made the right choice. And my goodness, it can be tough.
Françoise: I think of my time as a graduate student and it was a wonderful time, and I have children in graduate school now and it is no longer that kind of a wonderful experience. The stresses, that our students are under is phenomenal and I think sometimes there's a failure on the part of even the institution to appreciate and respond. And so I do, I actually really, I really worry about the academy and the direction in which we're going, because it doesn't seem the joyful place of knowledge, production and exchange of ideas that it was at one time. I certainly have watched my son who has done all of his MA for all intents and purposes online. All of the learning that happens informally is lost. So there's not only the formal learning that's not happening under ideal circumstances, so that there's the informal learning, which is not happening at all.
I really do worry, about where we're going and actually worry about the survival of the university
as the particular type of institution it could... I mean it will survive. There will be universities, but the university as the type of institution that I benefited from, seems to be on the way out.
Cameron: That kind of university is a threat to people in power. They benefit from an uneducated populace. It's, it's tough. I, and you and I are both old enough to have been privileged to be a part of that university that we knew and loved.
Françoise: Yeah, no, I think that, that's very true. But I, on the hopeful side, I believe that the type of institution that the university represented is still needed in society. So I do believe that something will come from the ashes, There will be the phoenix rising because we need a place where what we do is value thinking, value ideas. And unfortunately, I think what we see in a number of cases is, we have a number of metrics that are set by systems and academics are smart people and you tell them what the metrics are, they will meet them. but those metrics are not actually measuring anything that's important because that which is measurable are tokens. And so I think that's one of the things we really need to be thinking about is where do we create a space for ideas.
Cameron: I'm an accounting researcher. It's all about the usefulness and uselessness of measuring things, and what do we do with those measurements?
Françoise: Okay, well you know more about this than me!
Cameron: My current research is on this notion of social impact. How do you measure the social impact of an organization? It's impossible.
Françoise: So that's one of the things that I do think overlaps with one of the questions that you were interested in, which is, in the academy right now, there are expectations of everyone. and by everyone I mean that both, in terms of discipline and in terms of progression through the ranks, to be active in terms of, seeking grant funding. And in that context, one of the things that happens is, the applicant is expected to explain what impact they will have. And very often they're expected to explain that in a relatively short timeframe. And I think what's really unfortunate about that is it has encouraged behaviors that ultimately did not support knowledge production. And I actually talk about this in my book, Altered Inheritance, in a chapter called Slow Science. One of the things I'm trying to say there is that we are so busy producing things to satisfy the masters that we're actually not getting to the right questions such that our talent is being expended, asking and answering questions that meet other people's goals and objectives. Because if I have to show you an impact within two to four years, I have to show you something that in my world is actually pretty trivial because the kind of impact I'm hoping to have may not show up till after my lifetime, and I may never know that I have had or not had that impact. And part of that is because I actually describe to my colleagues and my students that a lot of my work is breadcrumbs. It's about leaving ideas there for other people to pick up, expand upon, and improve upon, and continue to make progress. And so I think if you have that kind of a mindset that what you need is, "Well, what's a deliverable?" I can't really work in deliverables except for trivial things, right? So yes, I can tell you I've published these many articles, or I have gotten these many grants, or I have done these many podcasts, but what I'm really doing is trying to transmit idea through a variety of means, and I can't control the uptake of those ideas. I just have to keep trying to make them be accessible, engaging, and I have to try to have other people take up those ideas and push them along. Well, I cannot document that. I can't show that. I can just keep producing things in some way, sense or form. And so unfortunately then they count the things that I'm producing without actually paying attention to any of the substance. So it's the number of pages, the amount of dollars for grants, and that's not what's important. And I can't give, I cannot give a number to the ideas that I'm putting out into the world.
Cameron: No, it takes a combination of confidence and humility to do this because you have to have the confidence that what you're doing matters, but you have to have the humility to recognize that it's really up to others to decide whether to take it up or not.
Françoise: I think that's really important, that particular insight, and I think it overlaps with my work with regards to some of the stuff that I do in terms of policy making. In the context of trying to have an impact on policy, there are these windows, and the problem for an academic is you never know when a window's going to open, and when it does open, you have to be ready and able to walk through that door or that window. I guess I'm mixing my metaphors there. but you have to be able to be ready. And the other thing that's really important in terms of policy making is understanding. That you will not be the one to carry the idea. So you might have the idea, but you then have to formulate it in multiple ways. And one of those ways is you have to formulate it in such a way that you've persuaded somebody with more power than you in the system that it's a good idea. And then you've empowered them. You've given them the tools that they can carry that idea to the next step. And when they do that, they have to do the exact same thing. They have to persuade somebody else that it's a really good idea, and they have to show them the tools that they need in order to implement that idea. And I think that's really important, and I do think that is perhaps one of the limitations for persons who have my kind of training in philosophy, which is that they don't do the packaging of their ideas very well. That's not a criticism. It's to say that it's a transition between doing a certain kind of work within the academy and then trying to do work outside the academy where you're working with people with different skill sets, different opportunities, and needing to be able to change the way in which you do some of your own work.
Cameron: We're not taught how to do that typically in PhD programs. So can you describe what you mean by giving someone the tools to use your work? What does that look like?
Françoise: So in the context of the work that I've done, particularly with postdoctoral students that are looking to go out into the world and perhaps still have a traditional academic career, but that want to have an impact on the world, we do a lot of things, little practical things along the way. So if there is a public consultation, I would have the postdocs submit something. But part of that is not just to submit their ideas, it's to actually get better at knowing how to do that. And for example, they might write a 20 page paper, and then some of the work is how can we distill this down into three ideas? Or maybe it's only going to be one idea. And maybe, in the context of what we're looking at, it's going to be an idea that you want to support or that you want to contest. And so part of the thing there is to say, look, sometimes there's something really good out there in the world, and if you don't actually invest energy in supporting that which is good, it can also be
undermined. And I say that because very often we look at the things that we don't like and we're very quick to write a critique or a commentary or to engage in public discussion and debate, saying what's wrong with something, But I think it's really important, as we do that kind of work, that we also do the other kind of work, that these things are really important and we have them and we must hold onto them. And so it's a two faceted kind of perspective. And I think, a lot of my work also tries to remind people that there's somebody else on the receiving end of whatever work you do. Sometimes I've seen work that's actually not necessarily at hominem, but really not very pleasant. And it's another human being who has to read that. And I think, you know, you can even think about that in the context of peer review, whether for articles or grants. You don't have to be nasty. Somebody has spent time and has presumably done the best that they can on a topic of interest to them. And I think that there are parts of the academy that really could benefit from reminding themselves that there are human beings on the end of these notes, these emails, these blogs, these tweets, and that we really need to be more productive. And you're not productive when you're just attacking.
Cameron: Some social media platforms like Twitter seem to bring out more of that nastiness than others. Tell me about the kinds of outreach technologies that you use. You talked about blogs and so forth.
Françoise: I certainly write a number of blogs. I also write a number of articles for traditional print media, which is now also online, but still appears in print. I've created what I call my Twitter videos only because they're about two to two and a half minutes long. So in theory, if you're scrolling and you're walking to the elevator, for those of us who used to go to work in that kind of context, you had time perhaps from the car to the elevator to look at them. They are different avenues, where you're trying to reach people. Twitter is a little bit frustrating. I do participate in that as well, but it tends to be a little bit frustrating because it has become a venue where people are very quick to say you're wrong, and that's the polite version. And so some of my engagement is really to take other people's work and sometimes newspaper articles, et cetera, and to crop, if you will, or cut and paste a particular sentence that I think is relevant or provocative, and that will become my introduction to the tweet. So I don't put myself necessarily there. I help to amplify an idea that somebody else has expressed. And so I'm thinking, if you're interested in this idea, you might open the article and read it. I certainly benefit from Twitter in the sense that sometimes I'm alerted to something happening in the world that I might not otherwise have known. but obviously because of the people I'm following, we have similar types of interests, so it becomes a very positive engagement in that context.
Cameron: I know that you're also involved, quite heavily in a lot of policy work, but maybe before we turn to that aspect of your outreach, we should back up a little bit and talk directly about the work that you've done. I want to start with the book that you mentioned. It's called Altered Inheritance: CRISPR, and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing. Maybe you could start by giving us a Cole's Notes version of what is CRISPR?
Françoise: I think the simplest way to think about this is, imagine that you have a strand of DNA and that you have what we would call molecular scissors. And you could actually go in and cut that DNA. And then you either replace it with a different strand of DNA or you just remove a piece of DNA, or you just disrupt the DNA and you hope that it'll repair itself in the right way.
But basically what you're trying to do is to go into the cells of the body. And to actually change the genetic makeup. And we don't need to get more complicated than that. Everybody has DNA. That's what makes you who you are. And scientists now have the ability to go in and to make changes to that DNA. And so then the questions become, what kinds of changes? Why would we be doing this? Who should be doing this? Important questions.
Cameron: So it's basically like a word processor for DNA.
Françoise: That's certainly been one of the many metaphors that gets used. A lot of people, though, are a bit worried because that metaphor suggests it's a whole lot more precise than it is because, when I cut and paste, I know that it's going exactly where I want that new word to go or that one word
to be removed and this technology is not that precise. So yes, it's a perfect kind of metaphor. If you take away the precision. So you might start with a sentence that's coherent and you might end up with something that was incoherent and that's when you can imagine you would have problems with the human being.
Cameron: That's no different than my word processor.
Françoise: Okay, there you go. Is it a user problem or is it the software?
Cameron: It's trying to respond to reviewer suggestions. Yeah, so just what is the general promise of CRISPR?
Françoise: So the promise is twofold. One set of promises are very narrowly in the realm of healthcare, and it's in a context where we know that there are people who have health conditions that are distressing or. Disabling or experienced as life threatening. And there are many strands, if you will, of illness with different kinds of experiences, different kinds of severity. But the idea is that it would be possible if there's a genetic basis to this particular problem. So it's described as a genetic. Disease or a genetic defect that we would be able to go in and correct this, and therefore we would be thinking about it as a treatment, as a therapy, a gene therapy. So that's the promise. And so currently, for example, one of the areas in which work is happening is sickle cell disease. And there's the hope that we would be able to make those kinds of genetic changes such that the people who have that illness would not experience the debilitating consequences of that illness. So that's very positive. People are generally enthusiastic. Some of that enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that we've been working on gene therapies for probably 40, 50 years, and we don't really have many successes, and we have a few, significant disasters including, deaths. So in the grand scheme of things, people are excited about the possibility that we could offer gene therapies to. People who are excited about that possibility though are also deeply worried, and I am amongst those who are deeply worried about questions of access. These therapeutics that are being developed are right now coming out with price tags of close to a million dollars. and you can well imagine that in a country, for example, like the United States where you don't even have a government funded healthcare system. This will be something for an elite few who could really genuinely access this kind of therapeutic, if it were ever to be developed. , but we should kid ourselves even in government funded healthcare systems. the government is not strictly speaking in the business of printing money. And I have to say that in the context of covid, but strictly speaking, that's not what governments are doing. And so you're having to use available tax dollars and hopefully spend them well. And in that context, if we are going forward developing million dollar therapies for all kinds of interventions, you can imagine. A government funded healthcare system could not support those kinds of interventions. So we really need to think about what are we doing. So that's just to say very good, enthusiastic response. Some kinds of caution. And the reason for the caution is that because it could then perhaps have a positive impact on design, Can you design this differently or better? So it's not going to be this kind of outrageously expensive intervention. So let's park that for a minute. And that is what we call somatic genome editing. And the reason it's called somatic is because basically the changes to the DNA are being made to the somatic cells. And the somatic cells are your body cells. So that's your skin cells, your hair cells, your liver cells. There's a whole other kind of cell that we have in our body, which is called our reproductive cell. So those are our gametes, the sperm and the egg. Those cells, if we make changes to them, we'll have implications for future generations because any change that you make to somebody's sperm or egg then becomes part of any new being that they would create. And so that's called germline or heritable genome editing. And so then what you have in that context is people who are concerned that, maybe it's all right to make changes to this individual for this treatment purpose because they've consented to this kind of genetic modific. . But what happens if you actually make changes to their goads? You make changes to the egg and the sperm such that you're affecting their descendants, and not just their children, but their children's children and on. if you think everything's going to work out fine, then maybe you think that's great, But what if you've inserted an error? Remember, go back to your image of the word processing. What if something's gone wrong and you maybe don't see. Why? Because we have like billions of cells in our body. So you don't see it, but then it appears later in another generation. And we have had that problem with other kinds of health interventions. So I think it, it's, that's not science fiction that things could go terribly wrong. So there's that kind of concern. so if you, if I can, let me summarize it by saying, we've got two kinds of cells in the body, somatic cells and germ cells. Somatic cells treat people. Germ cells are about creating people with specific traits that you think are good. Okay? And the reason I want to frame it that way is it takes us to the next facet of this issue, which is some of these interventions are really for treatment purposes. Some of them are for what we call enhancement purposes. Now, as a philosopher, I'll often contest that distinction and say, there's not a huge difference between treatment and enhancement. What do you think you're doing when you treat somebody? You're trying to enhance them in some sense, right? But I think it's a useful heuristic here because what people mean by enhancement is say, why don't we just make them better, stronger, better eyesight, better vocal chords. And then of course, I think people can see quite quickly how a lot of those concerns would lead to concerns about eugenics.
Cameron: I was going to say, the eugenics movement never really went away, it appears. We thought it did, but it has reared its head again.
Françoise: It has never gone away insofar as we have, as a species, actually always embraced the idea of enhancement. And I think that's one of the things that we need to be really clear about. We actually as a species believe in enhancement. In fact, it's why we have education, right? We're trying to make ourselves better. It's why parents give their kids piano lessons. It's why some parents take them to soccer. We are always committed to trying to make ourselves better. The question is, do the means matter morally? And I think in this kind of context, yes, they do matter. And we need to think about the difference between things that are reversible and things that are not reversible. Things that people can choose, other things where people can't choose. And there's interesting work in philosophy around this idea of the right to an open future. And what does that mean if you're not only going to be controlled environmentally, but you're going to also be controlled genetically because then you really are looking at being true to this gene-environment interaction, but then you're really setting this up to say, where's the human in that? And are we really then just buying into a certain kind of determinism? And so as you can see, this really practical thing in the world raises huge philosophical questions about who we are, who gets to decide who we are, whether we actually have that level of control, or not.
Cameron: These are really profound issues. Can you give me a little introduction into the institutional framework for all of this? Like how is the bioethics of medical research and biomedical research actually governed in the world?
Françoise: So governance is a really difficult issue. and it's a difficult issue because it's a slippery concept, at least in a modern context. What I mean by that is that we've typically thought about governance in terms of laws and policies and guidelines and codes of ethics. and those are certainly really important. But I think increasingly there's an understanding that governance is, much broader. there I'm thinking of things like the educational system that's actually part of governance, the granting system. What either a philanthropist or the private sector or the government will choose to invest money in is actually an indirect form of governance. What society will support. And tolerate and participate in, because some of this research requires the active participation of humans, is an another indirect form of governance. So I think one of the things that, that needs to be thought of is, What's happening in the international and the multilateral space? What's happening nationally in terms of legislation and guidelines? What's happening institutionally in terms of either professional societies or academic institutions? And in terms of my work, it literally goes right back to the individual human. What are your values? What are you committed to? What does it mean for you to practice with integrity? Because at some level there's self-governance as well. So what will you participate in? When will you stand up and say that's wrong? , when will you engage your colleagues and try to get them to support or challenge something happening in the world? So I think governance is a really important and challenging issue, and in my own work I try to participate in all of those facets of governance. And if we go back to the example of heritable human genome editing. I was recently on the WHO committee to look specifically at governance of this, and we did publish a framework. It's available on the Web. So if you were to put in, I'm sure, search terms," WHO governance framework genome editing," you would find this. And I think if you look at it, you'll see that, one of my contributions to that report is trying to ensure that it was grounded in values. And so it's not just about mechanisms and structures, it's about what are the value commitments. And part of what becomes really important is to say, if this value is something you want to hold onto, then you would need to think about this technology in this way. And it's really trying to, again, going back to the language of tools, provide people with tools to link up what they care about with technology that might or might not help them with respect to what it is. they Care about. So there's like an ethics literacy that becomes really important in a contemporary context.
Cameron: Can you tell me a little bit more about the ethical frameworks that you're using? Because, there's, various kinds of ethical approaches, consequentialism, deontology, etc., etc.. You focus on an aspect of virtue ethics, I believe, so could you lead me through that a little bit?
Françoise: Right. So I think one of the things that's interesting is, you know, if you take courses in philosophy, you will learn all of the contemporary, formal, theoretical frameworks. So yes, for example, utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number. Or you might learn about principalism, and these are the four principles of bioethics. The work that I do is starting somewhere else, if you will. It's starting with humans and it's recognizing that you can have all the great governance structures in the world. You can have all these wonderful theories, but ultimately it's people that are doing the work. And so you really need to pay attention to who are these people, what are their virtues, what are their traits of character? And so for example, earlier on we talked about the importance of humil. In the context of decision making, For me, it's extremely important that all those who are participating in that decision making process believe, genuinely believe, that there may just be somebody in the room smarter than them. Because if you don't believe that, then you're not actually having an open conversation where you too might learn. And therefore, together we could see ourselves as a group of people trying to learn from each other, to move towards a solution for a problem that we. So yes, I put a lot of emphasis on people and traits of character. But I think the other thing that I put a lot of emphasis on is contesting the dominant mainstream commitment in the western world to the principle of autonomy. And I try to remind people that we are not, Autonomous atoms bouncing around in the world. We are all deeply interconnected and we may fail to see that sometimes, and we may fail to cherish that at sometimes, but that is our loss and to our detriment because if you do stop and think about it, we are all interdependent and part of my work is to get people to see that interdependence. So I think sometimes people can see it between themselves and their immediate family members, or maybe they can see it between themselves and their work colleagues or themselves and their book group, and they're themselves in their religious community. And what I'm trying to do in my work is I want 'em to see it between themselves and the world. And I've tried to suggest that the human genome might be a useful metaphor for that because it's what we all have in. So we're all part of this species homo sapiens, and if I can, then I want to push people a little bit further and say, what about all living organisms? Could we think about them? Could we understand them as part of this family, that we need to be paying attention to how we interact with each other, to how we support each other, and at that level, I'm really trying to contest so much that has been grounded on a very narrow understanding of autonomy that really ultimately collapses into self-interest in a context that makes no sense. So I'm advocating for social justice. I'm advocating for paying attention to the community as a whole. And in that context, I have to say, if we were to talk about a contemporary issue, been very frustrated and disappointed with the world's response to the current pandemic.
Cameron: Tell me more about that.
Françoise: A pandemic is a global problem by definition, and by and large, we responded to this global problem with individual solutions, either individual at the level of the person or individual in Canada, at the level of the province, or globally at the level of the country. So we looked after very narrow sets of interests. And that was a huge mistake, and many of us knew that was a mistake. And certainly WHO from the beginning called that a mistake, and people tried to set up structures and tried to explain viruses know nothing about human borders. They just don't. Right? And so they're moving and they're going wherever they can. And so for you to think that a response to a global problem doesn't require a global solution is just short sight. And I think that for me, that illustrates, many domains of life in which we are hampered by short horizons. So short horizons in terms of what an academic might contribute to knowledge production. It doesn't happen in a year or two years and may not happen in a lifetime. Short horizons in that our policy makers and contemporary democracies have four or five year cycles at the max. And so they're not looking to commit or to think big picture. And so in that context, honestly, they're doing work for two years and then they're trying to get reelected for two years. And so we actually have put in place a lot of structures that don't help us to do what's good for us, and I mean us, all of us. So some of my work has been around the concept of solidarity, and one of the things that was fascinating to me when I spent time working on this concept is how much it is about us and them, right? It's, we are going to be solidaire, we're going to be solid with each other up and against the Other. and we live in a world of othering right now, which is problematic. And so a lot of my work, for those of you who might take the time to look at the book, is about us all. It's about the common good. It's about reminding people that we all need to breathe, we all need water. we all want protection from a nuclear disaster. So we need to think about the things we have in common and we spend too much time focusing on all the things we can disagree about. And what would the world look like if we turned that on its head and we thought about the things we agreed about and the ways we could help each other.
Cameron: It sounds like an uphill battle because you're also dealing with an economic system that is predicated on self interest.
Françoise: It is, but there are ways in which there are people who are not self-interested. We just had a recent example of that with Yvon Chouinard and Patagonia, who has gifted his company to the tune of $3 billion to climate challenges. Imagine if all of the people who are uber wealthy could understand a really simple concept, and the simple concept is: You can't take it with you. And you haven't got enough time to spend it. Now, I realize that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and others who have this dream of doing all kinds of strange things beyond our atmosphere, might want to prove me wrong, that they can spend those billions of dollars. But really, why are you doing that when we have so many people on this planet who are hungry? We have so many people on this planet who are in war torn zones. We have so many ways in which all of us are going to be subject to the challenges of climate change. It seems to me that what we need is for people to reorient their priorities, but I take your point, money is power. So what I'm asking is for people to willingly give up power, and not a lot of people want to do that. Some people do and you know, there are other ways of thinking about power. Michel Foucault reminds us that if you really want to know where power rests, ultimately it rests with the people because the people support these structures. And so maybe we're on the path to a revolution. Maybe some people think that's the only way you can have progress is with some kind of massive disruption. Massive disruptions hurt people. So I'm trying to find other ways that wouldn't have to collapse into that kind of massive disruption. But, I and others might fail and that might be the future. Probably, again, not in my lifetime, but I'm hoping for a better world.
Cameron: I'd like to know more about how you actually do the work that you do. The breadth of skills needed to do your work is quite incredible. You've got to be able to keep up with the cutting edge medical science. You've got to understand social science. You have to be a philosopher. You have to be good at telling stories. What does your work actually look like on a day to day basis?
Françoise: Well, I think, an important point is that I don't try to do it all. For example, you've mentioned a number of different disciplines and so I am deeply committed to doing transdisciplinary research, and I have done that from the beginning and I have done that long before it was popular. And I would say to you that even though it's popular now, it is still very difficult and challenging. And that's partly because the structures really are not in to assist people who do the kind of work that I want to do. For example, a number of universities now will have interdisciplinary PhDs. The graduates of those programs have terrible times finding a job. They may be very brilliant, but we have an institution which is divided up into geography, history, English, and those are the PhDs they're looking for. That's just a very simple kind of example. Another kind of example is our granting agencies now all want multidisciplinary teams
I can't tell you how many times, a week before the deadline, somebody called and says, "Oh, Francoise, I need one of you, Would you sign onto my grant?" I'm not interested in that kind of work because you actually aren't really interested in me or what I have to contribute, and in many cases, maybe what I have to contribute would actually undermine your project. So the only projects I'm interested in doing in an interdisciplinary context is where from the beginning you come together and you say, Look, I think there are things we can learn from each other. So, I think one of the things that's really important is to show mutual respect and esteem for people who work in different disciplines and to work well with. I think if you show that people are really generous with what they know, so in the context of a lot of the work that I do, you're absolutely right. I am not a scientist. I am not a medical doctor. I'm a philosopher. So for me to be able to offer helpful comments on any of those areas, I have to work closely with a scientist or a doctor and I get them to explain it to me. And I have a very particular style of learning, so they're very generous with their time and they explain the science to me and it's one on one. So I, I'm really privileged in that context, but then I ask if I can teach it back to them in a way that would be accessible to the general public.
And it's only when I've gotten to that point where my metaphors are helpful and that I haven't actually done something wrong in terms of the description of the science, in terms of my effort to simplify it, that I'm then ready to go out into the world, because I want to explain things in ways that people can understand.
A very simple example: there was a time when I was doing a lot of work around egg freezing or embryo freezing in the early days of in vitro fertilization. And I will never forget a woman in the audience who said to me, " I'm not so keen on this idea of freezing embryos because, you know, I put meat in the freezer and it gets freezer burn. So, what's going to happen to my embryos?" And that's a really good question, and it's a reasonable question and you need to be able to offer an answer and explain it. So then I'm trying to explain, "Well, it's kind of more like antifreeze that you're putting into the embryo and so that maybe there'll be these crystals that will form or not." And you know, along the way, science is uncertain and the way in which we explain things changes as we learn things. But I think, in answer to your question, what I try to do is to work closely with colleagues that have skills that I don't have. I try to learn as much as I can. I try to make that information available in the way that I'm able to do it when I'm dealing with the general public. And when I'm dealing with a higher level of intervention, so for example, maybe policy making, an opportunity to speak to a government committee, a parliamentary committee, my job then is actually to open doors and not to walk through every single one of them. And I think, in my experience, that's not something that academics always do well, and I think unfortunately, again, it's because of the metrics. I mean, if you're busy building your cv, it's sometimes hard to be generous. But I think for me, when I get invitations, if I think I'm the right person, then. I'm very happy to accept the invitation and to try to make a contribution. And if I'm not the right person, I really try to get them to the right address. And I also do that for media people. People will call me to comment on all kinds of things and I say, You know what? I'm not the right person. If you can't find anybody, I can give you a low level answer, but there are better people than me who could help you with that.
Cameron: You have a long list of policy committees and policy making bodies that you've served on. What's that like? Are you able to get technical about your work or are you listening a lot? What's going on there?
Françoise: I would have to say that it's actually committee specific. So some committees have been really productive, wonderful experiences and other committees have been very difficult and I would say painful. And, I think twice in my life I've actually resigned from a committee, largely because I didn't think that the committee was effective because there was more time invested in conflict than there was invested in actually trying to be true to the mandate of the committee. So I think committee work is very difficult, and I don't walk away from all difficult committee work because sometimes it's really important that I be there. But I will say that sometimes it's been very lonely, because I feel like I'm a lone voice in the wilderness. So over time I've learned a few things. I try to make sure, when I'm on a committee, that there's at least one sympathetic person other than me on that committee. So I pay attention to the membership, and if I have an opportunity early on, I try to influence the membership by saying, "Look, I think you're missing this perspective, and it would be really good if you could expand the committee and include this additional perspective." I'm not always successful, but it is very difficult to be in a room and to be the only person voicing a particular perspective. If there isn't a single other person in the room who will say, "Well, that's not an unreasonable idea. We should at least listen to it." And so I think you know, it, it really matters. And so think about that. It really brings me back to a point I made before. What really matters at the end of the day are people, because good people, even in terrible structures, can do great work. Bad people in excellent structures cannot necessarily do great work. And so we really need to pay attention to people, who are they, who gets to decide, what do they bring to the table?
And, under the "what do they bring to the table," I always think it's important to expose both knowledge and values, because we always bring both to the table, right? These are the things I know and these are the things I care about. And I think it's really important to try to get people to be transparent about both of those, and that's not always the case.
Cameron: No. No. I'd like to wrap up by returning to the thing that first brought you to my attention. Um, working in a completely different field. I'm not always aware of the work that everybody does, but you know, there was the announcement of the Killam Prize winners, and I'd just like to ask what it means to you to be recognized like that.
Françoise: Oh gosh. Um, Wow, I didn't think I'd get this emotional. Um, it was really important. Um, and I wanna say not because of ego, but I think because it, it for me anyhow, really reflected some understanding or commitment to the category of work that I'm trying to do. So it makes it possible maybe for other people to be recognized for that. Sorry.
Cameron: Quite all right. You care about your work, you care about others.
Françoise: Yeah, I do. And um, and parts of the work have been hard. They really have been hard. Um, but on the positive side, um, I had a wonderful upbringing and one of the things that I was taught is that if you have skills, you have to put them in the service of others. And that's what I've tried to do. And in that context, I've been very aware that there's two things that are important and honestly, um, had help in sort of better understanding these really through the work of a colleague Susan Sherwin.
Many years ago, we wrote a paper together about the ethics consultant as advocate and architect. And the important part about the metaphor of architect, I think I've already alluded to, it's in creating spaces so that everybody can participate in important conversations. And that's hard sometimes. That's the point about opening doors. In my work, I've tried to open doors for lots of people that I think have talent, and I know that once they get over the sill, they can do it on their own because they have all that it takes to succeed. They just don't have people helping them get over the sill.
So I think architecture's a really important metaphor for a lot of the work that I and others try to do. And I think the other one was this notion of the advocate. And there's a place that I have to admit, I still struggle sometimes because there's both this idea that you can speak with or speak for.
And I'm deeply committed to the idea of speaking with. But on occasion I find myself speaking for, and I just always have to be careful about when I've done that and why I've done that and whether or not it's defensible. And I think it is in some cases because I think some people have difficulties standing up for themselves, and so I try to be the person that does that so that it'll be easier for the next person who comes along. But now that I'm less emotional, it was wonderful to receive the Killam Prize. It's not something that I thought would happen, and largely because I think we do still live in a very kind of disciplinary world, and the work that I do really moves across disciplines constantly.
Um, and so it's really hard to get recognition in one space for, for the kind of work that I.
Cameron: Yes. Well, you're an inspiration to me as an academic and many others who are trying to do work that matters and it's, it's just so lovely not only to see you get that recognition, but also today to have a chance to talk to you myself. Thank you so much.
Françoise: Well, thank you for reaching out.
Links
Françoise Baylis Wikipedia page
Her personal website
Killam Prize announcement
Credits
Host and producer: Cameron Graham
Photos: Kevin A. Fraser
Music: Musicbed
Tools: Squadcast, Descript, Audacity
Recorded: September 30, 2022
Location: Halifax and Toronto
