6533b839fe1ef96bd12a6dac
RESEARCH PRODUCT
A Personalist Ontological Approach to Synthetic Biology
José Miguel Hernández-andreuLucía Gómez-tatayJusto Aznarsubject
Value (ethics)Health (social science)business.industryHealth PolicyBiosecurityEnvironmental ethics06 humanities and the artsBioethicsSafeguarding0603 philosophy ethics and religion03 medical and health sciencesPhilosophySynthetic biologyBiosafety0302 clinical medicineMedicine060301 applied ethicsSocial scienceForm of the GoodSet (psychology)business030217 neurology & neurosurgerydescription
Although synthetic biology is a promising discipline, it also raises serious ethical questions that must be addressed in order to prevent unwanted consequences and to ensure that its progress leads toward the good of all. Questions arise about the role of this discipline in a possible redefinition of the concept of life and its creation. With regard to the products of synthetic biology, the moral status that they should be given as well as the ethically correct way to behave towards them are not clear. Moreover, risks that could result from a misuse of this technology or from an accidental release of synthetic organisms into the environment cannot be ignored; concerns about biosecurity and biosafety appear. Here we discuss these and other questions from a personalist ontological framework, which defends human life as an essential value and proposes a set of principles to ensure the safeguarding of this and other values that are based on it.
year | journal | country | edition | language |
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2015-12-08 | Bioethics |