Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
countries then must determine if there is sufficient evi-
dence to support such an action. If they do have the
evidence, Europe must next ensure that the studies meet
all scientific requirements (i.e., they are replicable, etc.).
If the studies are not sufficient, the ban cannot be
established until further research has been conducted.
If all the scientific evidence is credible, then the
countries encounter the feasibility issues. Can the
countries be sustained without GM foods? The majority
of the food produced has some form of genetic alteration,
so such a ban would be dramatic.
This question also entails a political aspect. Moreover,
with such a ban, it is undeniable that many of Europe's
trading partners will be infuriated. So, will all the nations
be
theory or another for the most part, but most concede
the value of other models. However, they all agree that
ethics is a rational and reflective process of deciding how
we ought to treat each other.
Temporal aspects of bioethical
decisions: environmental case
studies
An important consideration in making bioethical de-
cisions is the amount and type of effects that will result
from an action. This is the beginning of rational ethics,
that is, forming a factual premise. A particularly difficult
aspect of a decision or an activity is predicting the cas-
cade of events and their future impacts.
From a teleological perspective, an event can represent
a means or an end. Indeed, an end can actually be a means
toward another end. So let us consider a few bioethical
problems of various scales. Manufacturing and commer-
cial decisions about material use, such as metallic pig-
ments in paint, lead-based fuel additives, and industrial
processes that generate carcinogenic byproducts, can have
lasting effects for generations. Such decisions are quite
complex. A case in point is the comparison of short- and
long-term effects of using coal
versus
nuclear fission to
generate electricity. Combusting coal releases particle
matter and damaging compounds like sulfur dioxide and
toxic substances like mercury. Nuclear power presents
a short-term concern about potential accidental releases
of radioactive materials and long-lived radioactive wastes
(sometimes with half-lives of hundreds of thousands of
years). Nuclear events have also been extremely in-
fluential in our perception of pollution and threats to
public health. Most notably, the cases of Three Mile
Island, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania in 1979 and the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in the Ukraine in
1986 have had an unquestionable impact on not only
nuclear power, but on other aspects of environmental
policy, such as community ''right to know'' and the impor-
tance of risk assessment, management, and communication.
Similarly, decisions regarding armed conflict must
consider not only the tactical warfare, but the geo-
political and public health changes wrought by the con-
flict. Furthermore, the psychological and medical effects
on combatants and noncombatants must be taken into
account. Prominent cases of these effects include the use
of the defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam and decisions
to prescribe drugs and to use chemicals in the Persian
Gulf War in the 1990s. The World War II atomic bomb-
ings on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945 not only served the purpose of accelerating
the end of the war in the Pacific arena, but also ushered in
the continuing threat of nuclear war. In addition, the
bombings were the world's first entrees to the linkage of
able
to
handle
the
political
backlash
of
such
a
regulation?
By answering yes to the above questions, Europe is
able to move onto the final question - would this regu-
lation be permitted under World Trade Organization
guidelines? If the answer is yes, then they ban the food. If
the answer is no, then they have no choice but to allow
the goods to be sold in their nations.
The initial decision posed was whether Europe should
ban GM foods. Europe had two options, to ban or not to
ban the food. If they chose to ban, they had two
suboptions. First, they could attempt to get studies and
research to support the decision. Second, they could
avoid the research step and proceed to ban the GM food.
This demonstrates that the GMOs have macroethical
and geopolitical ramifications, so no matter how com-
fortable the GMO researcher may feel, there will be
opposition to the research.
Environmental health: the ethics
of scale and the scale of ethics
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in
moments of comfort and convenience, but where he
stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)
29
Environmental problems are often characterized by scale,
a concept familiar to most engineers. In fact, we often
describe phenomena by their dimensions and by when
they occur; that is, by their respective spatial and tem-
poral scales. Engineers are comfortable with dimensional
analysis. But, can we ''measure'' ethics in a similar way?
Of course, physical analogies do not completely hold for
metaphysical phenomena, but they can be instructive.
King's advice is that we can measure ethics, especially in
our behavior during worst cases. How well can we stick
to our principles and duties when things get tough?
Philosophers and teachers of ethical philosophy at the
university level frequently subscribe to one classical
