Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
surrounding that of animals. This is in part because
patenting animals' genetic materials is linked to cloning.
The larger bioethical issue is captured well by the Church
of Scotland's Society, Religion and Technology Project:
recent centuries. What have been the ''human and
ecosystem health'' tradeoffs associated with these
benefits?
2. Is it morally preferable to engage in ''slowing down
the expansion of corporate control over germplasm''
and other genetic materials? Why or why not?
3. Compare any opportunities lost with the risks
prevented if germplasm ownership by private
concerns is halted.
Many people would also say that knowledge of a genetic
sequence itself is part of the global commons and should
be for all to benefit from. To patent parts of the human
genome as such, even in the form of ''copy genes,'' would
be ethically unacceptable to many in Europe. In response
it is argued that patenting is the legal assessment of
patent claims, and should not be confused with ethics.
But patenting is already an ethical activity, firstly in that
it expresses a certain set of ethical values of our society; it
is a response to a question of justice, to prevent unfair
exploitation of inventions. Secondly a clause excluding
inventions ''contrary to public order and decency'' is part
of most European patent legislation - an extreme case of
something like a letter bomb would be excluded as
immoral. But now we have brought cancerous mice and
human genetic material in the potential frame of
intellectual property that ethics has moved to a much
more central position, where it sits uncomfortably with
the patenting profession. They do not like the role of
ethical adjudicator to be thrust upon them by society.
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Neuroethics
Ethicists and scientists have continuously struggled with
defining just what constitutes personhood, but virtually
every definition includes the human mind. So, the
mind-brain connection includes elements of both ethics
and neuroscience. Nanotechnology and other emergent
applications of neurotechnologies affect who a person is.
The medical definition of neuroethics is a bit pedestrian;
that is, ethical aspects of neuromedicine. However,
neuroethics is more than a subset of biomedical ethics.
Manipulations of neural tissue affect who we are, in-
cluding our free will. This has intrigued ethicists for
millennia. Neuroscientists Dai Rees and Steven Rose
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consider neuroethics more broadly to include aspects of
responsibility, personhood, and human agency. These
issues are already upon us:
Teachable moment: patenting germplasm
Consider the following statement from Keith Douglas
Warner of Environmental Studies Institute at Santa Clara
University:
How will the rapid growth of human brain/machine
interfacing - a combination of neuroscience and
informatics (cyborgery) - change how we live and
think? These are not esoteric or science fiction; we aren't
talking about some science-fiction prospects of human
cloning, but prospects and problems that will become
increasingly sharply present for us and our children in
the next ten to twenty years.
The privatization of germplasm formerly considered
the common heritage of humankind is incompatible
with notions of the common good and economic
justice. The scrutiny that life industries have been
receiving is well deserved, although most of this
attention has been focused on the potential threats to
human and ecosystem health. The economic
implications of the biotechnology patent regime are
less obvious because they do not impact individuals,
but rather social groups. The pubic appears less
interested in this dimension of the biotechnology
revolution. Nevertheless, addressing this patent
regime through the lens of the common good is a better
strategy for critics of agricultural biotechnology, who
will likely be more successful in slowing down the
expansion of corporate control over germplasm by
addressing economic issues.
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Every neuroethical issue is entangled with the concept
of ''self.'' Indeed, self is more than an aggregation of
neurons, or even their synaptic functions. The challenge
is how to characterize the mind and the self, while
merging the scientific method with ethics. But this is
nothing new. Rene Descartes tried but died before
completing this project, followed by the rationalists
(closest to Descartes' view), the empiricists (especially
David Hume), until the thoroughly modern view of
John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism. All of these views fall
short in dealing with the self, so they also fail in pro-
viding an ethical framework for neuroethics. For ex-
ample, Hume's logical positivism contended that all
knowledge is based on logical inference from simple
''protocol sentences'' grounded in observable facts. This
Questions
1. The biotechnical revolution has improved crop yields
and has greatly increased the world's food supply in
