A majority opinion seems to have emerged in scholarly analysis of the assortment of technologies that have been given the label "synthetic biology." According to this view, society should allow the technology to proceed and even provide it some financial support, while monitoring its progress and attempting to ensure that the development leads to good outcomes. 1 The near-consensus is captured by the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (PCSBI) in its report New Directions: The Ethics of Synthetic Biology and Emerging Technologies, which arguably marked the end of a preliminary round of analysis about the ethical and policy questions raised by synthetic biology. Like a number of other, earlier documents issued by various groups around the world, the report called attention to questions about how the technology will be used; whether it might be misused; what sorts of accidents might happen along the way; the economic, environmental, and social impacts of the eventual applications; whether the very idea of "synthetic biology" should be troubling; and how the debate over all of these questions will be conducted. Also like most similar documents, however, while it called for careful monitoring and oversight of technology, it did not recommend any significant new constraints on its development and use. The commission's stance was that it would be "imprudent either to declare a moratorium on synthetic biology until all risks can be determined and mitigated, or to simply 'let science rip,' regardless of the likely risks." 2 The questions that should be asked of synthetic biology have not been put to rest, of course, and cannot be put entirely to rest. Partly this is just because of factual uncertainties; the technology is still emerging, and the possible outcomes are still uncertain. Partly, too, it is because of conceptual uncertainties: how to articulate and how to address the questions also remain up for debate.In this report, we will take stock of the current consensus, comment on some of the major points of disagreement, and identify the next steps for the debate. In part I, we offer a brief overview of the research and applications commonly grouped together under the heading of synthetic biology, partly in order to set the stage for the rest of the discussion and partly because we want to highlight some conceptual problems that attend the very label given this field. In parts II, III, and IV, we take up, respectively, three broad classes of concerns that arise in the context of synthetic biology: concerns about the intrinsic or inherent value of doing synthetic biology, concerns about the concrete harms and benefits of doing synthetic biology, and concerns about justice. Addressing these concerns requires a method for bringing the public's values to bear on policy-making concerning emerging biotechnologies; in part V, we discuss the challenges in developing such a method.
Precaution can be consistent with support of science
The emerging phenomenon of genetic paternity testing shows how good science and useful social reform can run off the rails. Genetic paternity testing enables us to sort out, in a transparent and decisive way, the age-old but traditionally never-quite-answerable question of whether a child is genetically related to the husband of the child's mother. Given the impossibility of settling this question for certain, British and American law has long held that a biological relationship must almost always be assumed to exist. According to what is known as the "marital presumption" or "presumption of legitimacy," a child born to a woman within a marital relationship is assumed to be the biological child of the woman's husband unless he was absent, impotent, or sterile. In other words, if paternity was not a physical impossibility for the husband, there was a nearly irrebuttable presumption that he was the father of the child. 1 The husband was locked into the role of fatherhood. Some now argue that this presumption is outmoded. 2 Science makes certainty possible, and family members should be able to use this science to gain knowledge about their true family relationships, to extricate themselves from relationships that have been scientifically undermined, and to establish new relationships on the basis of the scientific evidence. This position now permeates the media 3 and has given birth to a mini-industry. 4 Additionally, it is beginning to wrest American law away from its traditional presumptions: an increasing number of states are introducing and approving legislation that makes it easier to use genetic paternity testing in court. 5 As the testing establishes itself in society, divorce lawyers could end up recommending that their clients obtain genetic paternity testing. 6 The pressing conceptual issue behind paternity testing is the nature of parenthood. Paternity testing encourages us to suppose that a parental relationship to a child is fundamentally a genetic relationship, or at least necessarily includes a genetic relationship. Paternity testing also encourages us to I am grateful to the participants of Genetic Ties and the Future of the Family, a research project run conjointly by The Hastings Center and the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy, and Law at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. Discussions held in the course of this project have influenced this paper in various ways. I am especially grateful to Mary Anderlik for detailed comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and at a colloquium at Oxford University on Genetic Technologies and the Family, and the paper has benefited from comments offered on each of those occasions. Funding for Genetic Ties and the Future of the Family is provided by the National Institutes of Health (grant #HG02485).
The emergence of de‐extinction is a study in technological optimism. What has already been accomplished in recovering ancient genomes, recreating them, and reproducing animals with engineered genomes is amazing but also has a long ways to go to achieve “de‐extinction” as most people would understand that term. Still, with some caveats in place, creating a functional replacement for an extinct species may sometimes be doable, and given the right goals, might sometimes make sense. The International Union for Conservation of Nature guidelines for de‐extinction do a reasonable job of keeping the caveats in place and clarifying the goals. In fact, given the right caveats about what de‐extinction can accomplish, we should pay a lot of attention to the technology and should think carefully about the goals. Not only has the technology been advancing, but our environmental standards have been getting looser and more flexible, providing less guidance for implementing the technology. The guiding ideals for conservation are often explained as a choice between John Muir, founder of The Sierra Club, and Gifford Pinchot, who helped create the U.S. Forest Service. Muir argued for preserving some places in the world in their natural state because of their great value and beauty. Pinchot, by contrast, was bluntly utilitarian. He argued for trying to keep some natural places more or less undamaged so that we could use them later. There has long been dissatisfaction with this choice, and in the last couple of decades, a number of prominent voices have proposed a “gardening ethic” as a new standard that combines elements of Muir and Pinchot. A gardening ethic is supposed to both celebrate the land and declare that it must now be managed. But what would good gardening mean when it comes to de‐extinction?
This issue of the Hastings Center Report (May‐June 2017) features a couple of interesting takes on the governance challenges of emerging technologies. In an essay on the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report published this February on human germ‐line gene editing, Eric Juengst, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina, argues that the NASEM committee did not manage to rethink the rules. Juengst reaches what he calls an “eccentric conclusion”: “The committee's 2017 consensus report has been widely interpreted as ‘opening the door’ to inheritable human genetic modification and holding a line against enhancement interventions. But on a close reading it does neither.” In the column Policy and Politics, Sarah Chan, a chancellor's fellow at the University of Edinburgh, discusses the emerging science of “organoids,” “embryoids,” and “synthetic human entities with embryo‐like features” and calls for a sustained effort to rethink the rules for embryo research.
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