Engages with the impact of modern technology on experimental physicists. This study reveals how the increasing scale and complexity of apparatus has distanced physicists from the very science which drew them into experimenting, and has fragmented microphysics into different technical traditions.

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 15, Issue 1, Page 21-24, March 2012.

Paul Thompson argues that current synthetic biology amounts to synthetic genomics, comprising a ‘platform’ technology, and that Christopher Preston's deontological objections based on its supposed rejection of the historical process of evolution miscarry. This makes it surprising that Thompson's normative ethic consists in a deontological appeal to Kantian duties of imperfect obligation. Construed as obligations subject to choice, such constraints risk being excessively malleable where the ethical objections to deployment of this technology concern land rights and/or exploitation. Thompson's advocacy of (...) processes ‘more beneficial’ well illustrates another vulnerability; processes more beneficial than ones that undermine livelihoods could be best avoided themselves, although ones more beneficial than the status quo may not. He well argues that non-deontological arguments should not be confined to human survival, but neglects stances that are either biocentric, consequentialist, or both. Yet a truly synthetic bioethics would be likely to embody these characteristics. (shrink)

Biotechnology is one of the fastest-growing areas of scientific, technical and industrial innovation and one of the most controversial. As developments have occurred such as genetic test therapies and the breeding of genetically modified food crops, so the public debates have become more heated and grave concerns have been expressed about access to genetic information, labelling of genetically modified foods and human and animal cloning. Across Europe, public opinion has become a crucial factor in the ability of governments and biotech (...) industries to exploit the new technology. This 2002 book presents the results of a unique cross-national and cross-disciplinary study of the relationship between the development of new biotechnology and public perception, media coverage and policy formulation. It outlines a conceptual framework for understanding these issues and contains a number of empirical studies including studies of the international controversies surrounding the cloning of Dolly the sheep and GM Soya. (shrink)

This collection of essays is a philosophical reflection on and critique of human experience from a clearly American perspective guided by phenomenological analysis. This book is divided into three parts.

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 15, Issue 1, Page 25-28, March 2012.

Bioethics coverage of the recent Ebola outbreak neglected the ethical issues associated with aspects of the outbreak having environmental significance. The neglect of environmental dimensions is symptomatic of the way that the current institutionalization of bioethics as a field of inquiry separates medical and environmental expertise. As visionaries who are recognizing the need for better integration of human and veterinary medicine with environmental health are starting to call for “One Health”, it is now time to recognize the need for “One (...) Bioethics.”. (shrink)

Recent developments in synthetic biology are described and characterized as moving the era of biotechnology into platform technologies. Platform technologies enable rapid and diffuse innovations and simultaneous product development in diffuse markets, often targeting sectors of the economy that have traditionally been thought to have little relationship to one another. In the case of synthetic biology, pharmaceutical and biofuel product development are occurring interactively. But the regulatory and ethical issues associated with these two applications share very little overlap. As such, (...) there is some risk that focus on traditional medical applications, for which the ethical expertise is highly developed, will overshadow the ethical issues that arise in connection with land use and its attendant socioeconomic consequences, especially in the developing world. The 2010 report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethics exhibits this tendency. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 15, Issue 1, Page 33-36, March 2012.