This talk from Arthur Caplan is from the Wilson Center's Synthetic Biology Project:"Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, explores unresolved synthetic biology ethical questions at a January 8 program with Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies Chief Science Advisor Andrew Maynard... Caplan is the author or editor of 25 books and over 500 articles in professional medical, science and bioethics journals. He has served on a number of national and international committees including as chair of the National Cancer Institute Biobanking Ethics Group, and chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human Cloning."
Caplan argues that, unlike many other emerging technologies, synbio doesn't suffer from a severe "ethics lag" as in other fields (e.g., genomics). (The first paper published on synbio ethics, Caplan's, was ten years ago.) However, the public myth of ethics lag persists and causes concern. 'Science leaps where ethics creeps is incorrect,' he states.
Caplan doesn't feel there's anything unique about synbio from an ethical standpoint (yes, perhaps we need to develop new IP and patent policies, but ethics doesn't have much to contribute to that).
To paraphrase: "Battle for egalitarian access to new technologies is often used as a rhetorical ploy against the development of that technology."
What is unique about synbio: it challenges people's metaphysical beliefs about what is life (the reductionistic approach to life and the "playing God" question).
2 comments:
This was a great talk by Arthur Caplan, but I should point out that the real Arthur is a little older than the person in the picture - which is me, giving the introductory remarks :-)
Andrew Maynard
http://2020science.org
Thank you for pointing that out, Andrew. I was in a hurry and meant to fix it. At least I know know that the right people are reading the blog. ;-)
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