Medical and ineligible authorities spoke astir the morals and aboriginal of biotechnology astatine a Friday sheet hosted by the Program connected Science, Technology, and Society astatine the Harvard Kennedy School.
As portion of the 20th day of the STS, Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82, Harvard Law School prof I. Glenn Cohen, and Harvard Medical School genetics prof George M. Church participated successful a sheet moderated by Jenny Reardon, who directs the Science and Justice Research Center astatine the University of California, Santa Cruz. Other sheet participants included Christina Woopen, manager of the Center for Life and Ethics astatine the University of Bonn, and Northeastern prof Patricia J. Williams.
During the panel, Church spoke astir the inefficacy of discussing morals successful presumption of dichotomies similar “good versus evil” and “human rights oregon not having quality rights.” He besides criticized the binary logic of the trolley problem, an ethical dilemma wherever 1 indispensable take whether oregon not to sacrifice 1 idiosyncratic to forestall the deaths of aggregate others.
“Do you person the trolley spell towards the 100 kittens oregon quality embryos, oregon bash you person it spell towards immoderate felon?” helium said. “The occupation with the trolley occupation is that nary of these individuals should beryllium connected the trolley tracks successful the archetypal place.”
Daley said advances successful biotechnology person fixed humanity much powerfulness to manipulate earthy processes.
“If the improvement of beingness connected Earth is the play, humans are becoming the playwrights,” helium said.
Daley besides discussed the ways successful which aesculapian attraction and quality enhancement are becoming progressively conflated, pointing to cistron editing arsenic an example.
“What is familial saltation successful a mean sense, and what is pathological?” helium asked. “And wherever bash we gully the enactment betwixt illness attraction and quality enhancement?”
Woopen added that humans should refrain from being “emperor” and trying to “control nature” but should alternatively displacement to becoming its “custodian.”
Cohen explained that caller biotechnological advances tin person “huge spillover effects” that cannot beryllium contained oregon regulated, due to the fact that regulatory policies disagree from state to country.
“You cannot incorporate them simply to your polity, to your countries, and immoderate argumentation you like,” Cohen said of the spillover effects. “[Woopen’s] proposition was heavy planetary regulation, but the information of the substance is that benignant of regularisation is by acold the hardest to achieve,” helium said.
A self-described “techno-pessimist,” Williams besides cautioned the assemblage astir what she perceives arsenic a “crisis of loneliness” resulting from technological advances.
“A situation of seeing and being that allows america to enforce our astir solipsistic imaginative constructs upon cartographies successful ways that destruct the who, the what, the wherever — it is virtually earlier our eyes,” she said.
In closing remarks for the panel, Reardon said she believes nine indispensable measure the ethical concerns raised by emerging biotechnologies.
“We request to reconceive of each of these things, and arsenic we reconceive science, exertion and education, we’ll beryllium reconceiving what nine has to,” she said.
English (US)