Emerging biotechnologies: full report - Nuffield Council on Bioethics

E m e r g i n g b i o t e c h n o l o g i e s
Ambiguous visions
3.14 In a modern plural society it is almost inevitable that different social groups will have divergent
interests and values, and emerging <strong>biotechnologies</strong> have a particular capacity to polarise these.
What look like significant benefits to some (for instance, promises of ‘life extension’), may often
appear to others, equally reasonably, as worrisome threats (for instance: overpopulation,
socially debilitating age profiles, or growing inequality). The issue of whose values and
understandings prevail has been taken up force<strong>full</strong>y by feminist writing in bioethics. 205 In a
democratic society or, indeed, any system that respects the right of individuals and groups to
determine their own values and interests, it is an important question how these different
understandings of the nature of ‘harm’ and ‘benefit’ will weigh in any decision that affects them
all.
C H A P T E R 3
3.15 Likewise, ideas of what constitutes the scope of ‘harm’ or ‘benefit’ may differ significantly. For
example, the effects of genetically modified (GM) crops may be understood in terms of food
safety, environmental impact, global trade, agronomic practice, farmer livelihoods, corporate
concentration, property rights, the political economy of food as a whole, or the fundamental
relations between humanity and nature. In this example, socially responsible policy making may
take into account several of these perspectives; regulation typically considers only the first three
– and especially the first.
3.16 A third difficulty lies in determining an ethically and socially fair distribution of these multidimensional,
differently valued, short- and long-term harms and benefits across different
populations or social groups. 206 How much should be gained by particular ‘winners’ before the
impact on specific ‘losers’ can be justified, if at all, and how should the ‘losers’ be
compensated? How can different valuations be integrated in a decision making procedure?
Which, if any, may be set aside? Ambiguity is thus relevant not just to narrow risk-based
appraisal of emerging technologies, but also to any notion of ethics-based governance.
Ambiguous practices
3.17 Whereas the ultimate outcomes of emerging <strong>biotechnologies</strong> may be more speculative, the
novelty of practices and products of <strong>biotechnologies</strong> can be challenging for established forms of
understanding or evaluation. This novelty leads to ambiguity about the nature of what is
involved in biotechnology, whether it is continuous with previous practice or qualitatively
different in some important way (for example, whether and, if so, in what ways, marker-assisted
breeding – or induced mutagenesis, or genetic engineering – are importantly different from
traditional plant breeding). These ambiguities have been articulated in ways that draw attention
to the question of whether <strong>biotechnologies</strong> involve crossing some ‘line’ that is invested with
ethical importance, and therefore whether the practices involved should be subject to a
separate ethical judgment.
3.18 One way in which objections to some <strong>biotechnologies</strong> have been expressed is through the
accusation that practitioners are ‘playing God’, implicitly crossing a line between forms of
agency that are acceptable and those that are improper. Such objections have been levelled,
for example, at the creation of an organism with a synthetic genome by the J. Craig Venter
Institute. The ‘playing God’ accusation is one way of expressing unease or dissatisfaction with
205 See, for example, the articles in Bioethics 15(3),as summarised by the guest editors’ note of that edition: Diniz D and
Donchin A (2001) Guest editors' note Bioethics 15: iii–v.
206 See, for example, Beck U (1992) Risk society: towards a new modernity (London: Sage); Renn O, Webler T and Wiedemann
P (Editors) (1995) Fairness and competence in citizen participation: evaluating models for environmental discourse
(Dordrecht: Kluwer); Rayner S and Cantor R (2006) How fair is safe enough? The cultural approach to societal technology
choice Risk Analysis 7: 3-9.
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