Lecture 11 (Bioethics and Regulation of Biotechnology) Wednesday, November 24, 2010
- Ethics/bioethics and regulation of technology
- Next week: forensics and review
- Bioethics: philosophical study of controversies brought out by advances of
biotechnology/medicine
- Multidisciplinary
- Interesting, difficult for some cases
- Article by George Grant, “Thinking About Technology”—very interesting,
READ
- Canadian philosopher, passed away in 1988, spent most time in McMaster
- Used to be on CBC all the time, very influential social commentator
- Best known for his views on nationalism and technology
- One of our most original thinkers
- Technology and Justice—ability for justice to be distributed evenly amongst
people as result of technology
- “We are technological civilisation”
- A lot of people think of technology as something we use (tool), but it uses us—
influences the way we do things-the way we interact with people
- Computer scientist makes statement, article reflects on that statement
- Knowing: traditional thing in science, understanding how world works
- Making: building things, art
- Brought together in way that does not allow one to make distinction between
them
- Incredible interaction in modern Western civilization between the two
o Atomic bomb- understanding how atom works, using that to make
something
- Technology we’ve developed has changed the way we do things
o Cell phone/iPhone
- Computer scientist says “The Computer Does Not Impose on Us the Ways It
Must Be Used” in 1976
- But it’s freed up the secretaries of typing up corrections—in fact, we don’t have
secretaries
- Spend more time e-mailing than going to the library, have lunches in office
- Excludes certain forms of community and permits others
- Difficult to think about technology because you’re immersed in it
- Apply Grant’s article about technology, apply to biotechnology
o Affects the way you work, interact with human beings, behave
o Potential to dramatically alter human interaction to greater extent than
computer technology has
- Nanotechnology, biotech, information tech, cognitive science: understand how
people think
- Psychopharmacology: Ritelin, Prozac, alter state of mind
- Genetic engineering - Nanotechnology
- Artificial intelligence
- Cognitive science
- The accelerating convergence of all these “for improving human performance”
- *Transhumanism: human that’s had some additions, seems science-fiction but has
a great following in the world. The H+ movement for enhanced humans. Lots
advocating for this view.
- Humanity is on the verge of seizing technological control of our own evolution,
creating better, post-human future
o Sense of wonder and dread of same potential
o The Surrogates
o Can improve human species
o *Eugenics of 1930s worldwide- selective breeding, sterilize the
undesirables—in Alberta, sterilizing mentally retarded up to 1970s
- Can now physically visualize how many synapses are on brain- terabite hard
drives
o Becomes more believable that we can transcend our biological form as
technology progresses
- Eliminate aging
- Enhance intellectual abilities- psychopharmacological interventions (normal
people taking Ritelin)
- Every kind of therapeutic thing we develop (HGH, Ritelin, steroids) will be used
by people trying to advance themselves
- Stallone and HGH- reduces signs of physical aging. Not what it was intended for
- Humanists: ability to become more than we are now
- *Longevity, Health, Intelligence- get talked about the most
- Status quo bias
- Hard to argue against enhancing the human experience
- Biopolitical battlefronts
o Who’s a citizen with a right to life?- Stem cells, chimeras
o Control of reproduction- preimplantation genetic screening, IVF, could
have positive selection (desired characteristics—eugenics)
o Fixing disabilities to human enhancement- prosthetics, brain chips,
cosmetics
o Extending life- anti-aging drugs
o Control of the brain- Prozac (one of most frequently prescribed drugs)
- Don’t need background in biochemistry to work in bioethics field
o Probably more appropriate to have background in sociology, philosophy,
psychology
- World Transhumanist Association
o Chapters everywhere
o A lot in NA and Europe
o As new technologies with huge influence for human societies, we should
think about how we’re going to deal with them
- Younger people are for it, older are scared of it - Ethics
- Herodotus: historian, will get sick of him in College of Humanities :P
o Travelled to India, Africa, around Europe
o Wrote stories about places
o When we has in Persia, wrote story: Darius was king, had Greek visitors,
asked what price would have them eat their dead parents
o Greeks were outraged- burned their dead parents
o Asked the Callatiae for what price they’d burn their dead parents
o Callatiae outraged- ate their dead parents
o Custom is all—who’s right in this situation?
- Some of these arguments aren’t particularly black and white
- Ethical limits to use of biotechnology
o New technology
Since Cohen and Boyer moved DNA from one species to another
with control
o Plurality of moral convictions
o Divergent economic, pol., soc. Objectives
o Sensitivity of public (especially in Europe)
o Doubts of public about internal control mechanism of scientific
institutions and scientific community—don’t trust scientists to make moral
judgement
Terminator seeds for corn/soybean (Monsanto, etc.)- want you to
buy seeds every year. Company bought out by Monsanto and made
seeds so they wouldn’t be fertile after a year, even if you tried to
plant them the next year it wouldn’t work.
Huge public outcry, so it never came to market- evil
Also: in traditional cultures, saving of seeds is way you’ve been
doing things for thousands of years
o Complexity of ethical issues involved
Reproductive technologies
Daughter infertile, gets egg cell from mom, sperm from husband,
gives birth to own sister
Think about it
- Morale: what’s good and what’s evil in everyday life
- Ethics: study of principles at basis of morale
- When societies are stagnant, don’t have change in moral or ethical behaviour
- But when there’s rapid change in society, change in moral or ethical behaviour
o Ex. Cell phones becoming accessible to everyone
- Bioethics- not just for humans- environmental, animal
- Now there are new ones: genetic testing- who decides whether this is ethical?
- Organ transplant- one heart available—who should get it?
o Changes impressions if you reveal that the girl is a drug user, the 40-year-
old is overweight, the old woman is ugly/unhealthy - People are autonomous agents, can’t just use them for tools for what you want and
harvest their kidneys
- Benefits you get out of something should be proportional to risks. Don’t do something
that has 1% of good result.
- Trying to clone- harm outweighs the good
- Justice: benefits shouldn’t happen for particular group of individuals, risks shouldn’t be
for others
- Trial working so well for test group that they stop the trial, feel ethically responsible to
give it to placebo group. Have shown conclusively that it’s working.
- *Repo Man movie
- Nonmaleficence: do no harm
- Should stop clinical trial if it’s harming patients
- Dolly: big deal in 1996
- People didn’t realize that nucleus of fully-differentiated, adult cell could be used
to clone
- Can take any cell, put nucleus in an egg and make a new person
- Now, we’re asking what is acceptable to do
o Terminator seeds- possible, but not acceptable
o Gene therapy for germline cells- illegal to change genes that will get
passed on to next generation, though you could possibly do that too
- May 2007: human neurons were transplanted into brains of mice, grew there
o We use mouse models for human diseases
o Would be better if the model is made of human neurons
o Experiments were done
o Ethical conference discussed this topic
- Variety ways of approaching moral problems
- Morals tend to be more personal, ethics are rules we have to follow
- * Farm animals were engineered to be less intelligent in order to improve their
quality of life- lobotomized the chickens, goats
o When you keep them in nasty conditions, stress levels go up, don’t eat
properly, fight each other
o Idea is to breed them so they wouldn’t care
- Bioethics: how do you articulate the problem with this?
- Good starting point: look at public perception
- Cultural background affects approach you take- Herodotus
- Eurobarometer survey
o Genetic testing is useful
o Medicine is useful
o Cloning humans is useful, but high risk
o FOOD: don’t like it at all- not acceptable, great risk
o Less of a problem with cloning than with affecting food supply
- Can view biotechnology as group of useful technologies that affect different
disciplines
- Before, it was a skill used for many long traditions
- Now, much awareness and concern o *RECOMBINANT DNA
- Much control over biological processes
- Can change/manipulate genes quickly
- Why do Europeans hate this so much? It’s mainly about agricultural applications,
food supply.
- We don’t even label genetically modified foods—in 2006, FDA approved the sale
of beef from cloned animals
- They’re more attached to their food, used to growing it themselves
- We’re very urban, treat food as not something you pull out of the ground
- “We don’t want to be like lawyers, journalists and politicians where the public
hates us. They kind of like scientists, so
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