Notesale: Turn your study into money

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THE ETHICS OF BIOTECHNOLOGY
BIOTECHNOLOGY
BIOTECHNOLOGY: the variety of techniques it encompasses; its origins in what Darwin called ‘unconscious’ and
‘conscious’ selection
...

CONSEQUENCES
A consequentialist argument for biotechnology could focus on a host of benefits:
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AGRICULTURE: production of herbicide-, virus-, insect-resistant crops, or ones that thrive on poor soils
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GENETICALLY MODIFIED (GM) FOODS: ones that are slow to ripen (e
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, Calgene’s Flavr Savr tomato,
developed in 1994; Golden Rice)
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ENGINEERING OF MICROORGANISMS: mass production of commercially important enzymes (e
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,
enzymes required to produce cheese, beer); fuel production; breaking down biodegradable plastics;
cleaning up waste and pollution (including oil spills) (= bioremediation)
...
g
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), rather than the various parasitic and infectious
diseases suffered by people in poorer countries)
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)
NON-ANTHROPOCENTRIC ARGUMENTS: worries that GM organisms will disrupt ecosystems by, for
instance, creating exceptionally hardy weeds or (indirectly) new varieties of predator
...
g
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But are consequences all that matter? It would be wrong to suppose that if biotech can have good effects, then
it ought to be permitted, no further argument being necessary
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(Compare: given the existence of slavery, slaves can no doubt be put to better or worse uses (e
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, cleaning
hospitals)
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)

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BUT ARE THERE ANY GO OD REASONS FOR THINK ING THAT SOME FORMS OF BIOTECH ARE
INTRINSICALLY WRONG?
‘BIOTECH IS AGAINST NATURE’
Note the various meanings of the term ‘nature’
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However (very arguably) this picture of the universe was refuted by Early
Modern thinkers such as Galileo and Descartes
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And modern physics has no room for teloi
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But even if some forms of biotech really are unnatural, must they
therefore be morally wrong? On the face of it, the answer would seem to be ‘no’
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g
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g
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BLICKENS AND BRAINLESS CHICKENS
In Frontiers of Justice and elsewhere, MARTHA NUSSBAUM argues that sentient nonhuman beings are
entitled, as a matter of justice, to exercise their essential capabilities
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But what if scientists were to create a new creature, a BLICKEN, which could exercise its limited set of essential
capabilities without moving, for instance, or mixing with conspecifics? And what – to consider a more extreme
example – could be wrong with creating brainless, non-sentient chickens?
NUSSBAUM says that a chicken’s capabilities are flight, feeding, interacting with other chickens, and sight
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Therefore, since it has been prevented from fulfilling this, an
injustice has occurred
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THE CASE OF BRAINLESS CHICKENS
As long as their brain stem is intact, the homeostatic functions of the chicken will continue to operate
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A brainless chicken is a living
but non-sentient being, just like a plant
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“Animals bred for consumption are crops and agricultural products like any other
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IS THERE ANYTHING WRONG WITH CREATING BR AINLESS CHICKENS?
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The process of creating brainless chickens would have involved a great deal of suffering
We have, as it were, stolen consciousness from a creature
It might not be morally wrong to create particular brainless chickens, but it would be morally wrong
to create this kind of creature

DAVID E
...
Our disgust is, he says, directed ‘more towards the agents of scientific innovations than at
the innovations themselves… [W]hat seems wrong about such innovations is that they are the doings of a certain
kind of person…’
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Whereas old-style pastoralists - he claims - had to identify their creatures’ natural ends and work with
them, new-style biotech engineers work out where the profit lies and then mould the animal to suit
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He believes that these criticisms say something about the genetic engineers, that they have certain
vices
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However, despite this, philosophers believes that there are pro tanto reasons, which outweigh the vice of hubris
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FREY AND WELLMAN, CH
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What was once at the hands of
God or the natural lottery is now under our control
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GENETIC ENGINEERING TO AVOID DISEASES
WRONGFUL LIFE
Diseases such as Tay Sachs are so awful that it makes the life of the affected person so unbearable that it may
be worse than if they had lived at all
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WRONGFUL DISABILIY (NON-IDENTITY PROBLEM)
In this case, the disability can only be prevented by not being born but the disability does not make the life of
the individual unbearable
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This alludes to eugenic movements of
the Nazis in which they killed disabled people
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A
number of social studies show that disabled people rate their standard of life higher than non-disabled people
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If they had the choice to not be disabled then most would not be
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Some argue that everyone has a burdens in their life, trying to remove
them would be misplaced perfectionism
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Lastly, though the process of measuring your standard of life is complex
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Therefore, there are good reasons for attempting to avoid disability and believing that it makes one believe that
they are not full moral agents with all the same privileges as non-disabled people is a mistake
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This is an empirical question which
can be tested
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t would be
analogous to arguing that we should not try to reduce smoking in order to prevent diseases like cancer and heart
disease if that would reduce research on those diseases and treatment for the persons who have them
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USE OF GENETIC ENGINEERING TO ENHANCE NORMAL FUNCTION
Parents are seen with the responsibility to create the best children they can, investing time in their athletic and
intellectual abilities, so why would using genetic engineering as a means to further this end be morally wrong?
ENVIRONMENTAL VERSUS GENETIC CHANGES
Opponents believe that genetic interventions modify the identity of the individual, whereas environmental
interventions only modify accidental features and leave identify unchanged
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A change in eye colour for instance, won’t shape your personality (or
would it?)
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There traits are produced by interactions between our
genotype and our environment
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Imagine those of
a higher socio-economic class, along with the privileges also have the most intelligent children, memory, immune
system, capacity to have a stay concentrated for a long period of time

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