How to Object to Radically New Technologies on the Basis of Justice: The Case of Synthetic Biology

Bioethics

Volumn 27, Issue 8, 2013, Pages 426-434

  Hunter, David ^a  

^a FLINDERS UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Justice; New technologies; Synthetic biology; Time; Uncertainty

Indexed keywords

ANIMAL; ARTICLE; ETHICS; HUMAN; JUSTICE; LEGAL ASPECT; NEW TECHNOLOGIES; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY; TECHNOLOGY; TIME; UNCERTAINTY;

JUSTICE; NEW TECHNOLOGIES; SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY; TIME; UNCERTAINTY;

ANIMALS; HUMANS; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY; TECHNOLOGY;

EID: 84883765768     PISSN: 02699702     EISSN: 14678519     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12049     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. I'm not going to define a radical new technology in detail here since I think the distinction between these and ordinary new technologies is a matter of degree rather than of kind. Typically they are new types of technology that open up new possibilities and allow us to do things that haven't been done before - nanotechnology, stem cells and synthetic biology might be taken as examples. In contrast, non-radical new technologies will typically consist of a variation or extension or improvement on something we can already do - take for example the Iphone 4S as compared to the Iphone 4.
2. M. Schmidt, A. Kelle, A. Ganguli-Mitra & H. de Vriend. 2009. Synthetic Biology. The Technoscience and its Societal Consequences. Springer Academic Publishing; M. Pa. Ferretti. Risk and Distributive Justice: the Case of Regulating New Technologies. Sci Eng Ethics 2010; 16(3): 501-515
3. T. Douglas & J. Savulescu. Synthetic Biology and the Ethics of Knowledge. J Med Ethics 2010; 36(11): 687-693
4. Since this paper focuses on justice as opposed to questions of risk, common approaches to risk such as the precautionary approach will not be discussed in detail, but only where and as they are relevant. In effect the question here is what distributions of risks and benefits are unjustifiable, as opposed to the important and broader question of what attitude towards potential risk should we have?
5. There is a similarity here to what Thomas Pogge refers to as prize funding in biomedical sciences, and predictably it has the same distorting effect on the academic work produced in bioethics as it does in the biosciences
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12. W. Kymlicka. 2002. Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The obvious major theory excluded here is consequentialism, but the concerns that might be raised by consequentialists tend to not be focused on distributions but instead on risks and benefits overall and are better thought of when analysing the overall risks and benefits, rather than the distribution of those outcomes.
13. In this article I aim to remain neutral in regards to the currency debate in distributive justice and will be using the neutral term 'outcomes' throughout
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26. A revised version of the Moore case might provide an example of this. In this case a physician established and commercialized a cell line using 'discarded' tissue from a patient, without consent from the patient for the commercialization. Moore v. Regents of the University of California. 793 479-490 (Cal. 1990
27. H. Melo, C. Brandão, G. Rego & R. Nunes. Ethical and Legal Issues in Xenotransplantation. Bioethics 2001; 15: 430-442
28. This might be understood in regards to Scanlon's contractualist theory of reasonably rejectable principles Harvard: Harvard University Press.. T.M. Scanlon. 1998. What we owe to each other
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32. This of course depends on precisely which species of consequentialism is being proposed, but the general point still holds true, consequentialist theories focus on outcomes.
33. This general structure is not uncommon in actuality for most health interventions and in particular public health interventions, which typically have much higher uptake rates among those who are already well off
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39. While this is no doubt uncommon among political philosophers and in well developed theories of justice, it is commonplace both in public understandings of justice, and how the concept is used in some of the bioethics literature.
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41. To be more precise, the problem with them is that they are three dimensional snapshots of a four dimensional world, they do not and cannot take the passage of time into consideration.
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44. As with all of these points the predicted impact on the pattern is of course speculative - if there is evidence that ultimately these technologies will be in everyone's reach then this would no longer stand as an objection.
45. J. Harris. 2007. Enhancing Evolution: The ethical case for making better people. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
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47. There is of course room to debate whether new technologies will ever give grounds for a patterned justice objection, given the typical diffusion of new technologies
48. A. Buchanan. 2011. Better than Human: The Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves. Oxford: Oxford University Press