All Together Now

July 30, 2009

Nanoethics. Neuroethics. Synbioethics. How many bioethics subfields do we really need to grapple with the issues at the cutting edge of contemporary science? Maybe just one, suggest the authors of a recent report from the Hastings Center and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars: an ethics of emerging technologies. The reason being that emerging technologies are not diverging from one another—rather, they are converging. As these fields begin to overlap, sharing tools and techniques, so too do the ethical questions converge. Namely, they raise the potential for both physical harms we must consider—unforeseen environmental damage from nanomaterials or synthetically engineered bioterrorism weapons—as well as nonphysical harms that might result from the inequitable distribution of, for instance, new drugs or energy sources built on nanotech or synthetic biology. (Science Progress)