Grand challenge: ELSI in a changing global environment

Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016: A commentary

“…Our experience so far with radiodiagnostics and organ donation, and now with assisted reproduction, indicates that the law catches up much later in these contentious areas. we may need an independent body to evaluate the ELsI in medical and other biological sciences in order to anticipate social consequences and harms along with benefits of new technologies (6).…”

The integrated ethics and society programme of the Human Brain Project: reflecting on an ongoing experience

“…Such an emphasis on dialogue between 'societal actors' and researchers and innovators arises out of dissatisfaction with earlier approaches, such as those framed in terms of 'Ethical, Legal and Social Implications' -the ELSI research most associated with the Human Genome Project (HGP) which was widely believed to have generated neither high quality research, nor, most importantly, to have had any discernible impact on the development of the HGP itself (Fisher 2005, Greenbaum 2013, Seltzer et al 2011. As research funding, such as that from the European Commission, increasingly came to frame itself in terms of the need to meet society's 'Grand Challenges', 5 it appeared more urgent to ensure that societal actors were effectively engaged in defining those challenges and that the research and development was on course to address them (EUC 2008, Kuhlman andRip 2014;Kallerud et al 2013, Kearns and Wienroth 2011, ERAB 2012, GCC 2011, Greenbaum 2013 Stilgoe, Owen and Macnaghten (2013) in slightly different terms as follows: Anticipation is an attempt to describe and analyse the potential impacts, intended or otherwise, (e.g., economic, social, environmental) that might arise from the outcomes of the research, not to predict a single most probable outcome but to explore both anticipated and, to the extent possible, unanticipated impacts and implications. Consideration of alternative scenarios may 5 https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/societal-challenges, accessed 08 May 2017.…”

Expanding ELSI to all areas of innovative science and technology

“…To promote the idea that the ELSI model should not be limited to genomics 15 In the following years, the institute will continue to be guided by these four areas of significant change.…”