From a traditional perspective, ethics is a part of philosophy. Also traditionally, we have become accustomed to having a profoundly philosophical discourse on autonomy, dignity and, more recently, intimacy of the individual. On the historical axis of human knowledge, just recently concepts have been claimed, recontextualized and redesigned by domains extraneous to philosophy. Especially in the medical field, along with the emergence of the modern bioethics, there is a need to correlate the traditional theories with the trends of a postmodern society, characterized by effervescence: in reactions, in thinking, in change, in adaptation.
In vitro fertilization (IVF) is the most widely known assisted reproductive technique (ART). Due to IVF, a number of medical practices have emerged, such as surrogate motherhood or cryopreservation of human embryos, which gives the possibility to have children not only to infertile heterosexual couples at the normal age of procreation, but also to homosexual or lesbian couples or to people who are past the biological age when they could naturally procreate. IVF makes it possible to create embryos outside the human body, and therefore opens the door for the possibility of physical and moral augmentation of the future child prior to implanting the embryo in uterus, as well as for embryonic stem cell research, in order to find the causality of diseases and treat them, but also for experiments that today do not seem so futuristic anymore, such as tcreating human-animal chimeras or hybrids, or cloning. This article aims to analyze the relevant literature on the mechanism of achieving social acceptability for these controversial techniques.
Recent sociological, philosophical, legal and bioethical literature has signaled the current family crisis under the impact of new reproductive technologies, but in this paper we will only focus on four of the most controversial practices: solo reproduction, cloning, artificial embryos, and genetic engineering for non-medical reasons. Starting from the ideas expressed by Ingmar Persson and Julian Săvulescu in the book, "Unfit for the Future. The Need for Moral Enhancement", as well as in a series of works by Julian Săvulescu, which have, as a common ground, the theory developed by him along with Persson in the above mentioned volume, we will argue that in the knowledge-based society, we have reached the point of transition from the postmodern family to a new type of family, in which the content of the concepts of maternity and paternity has changed, so that it has come to a point ehere principles that have managed to maintain their theoretical stability for more than 2,000 years seem inadequate, as is the case of mater semper certa est, pater incertus, which could be more realistically rephrased today by mater incerta est, pater non est necessarium.
One of the problems that arise in crisis situations is that of fake news (presenting as being real events that did not actually take place) and of conspiracy theories (which emerge from subjective interpretations of real facts). The medical and social crisis created by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has resized the role of researchers and bioethicists, emphasizing their social responsibility in properly informing not only the academic community, but also the general public. The present article analyzes the new dimensions that the ethical principle of responsibility of researchers acquires as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
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