Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to K Bayertz.
In recent years, undesirable costs and the likely payoffs of DNA technology have been widely discussed. In this paper, the author concentrates on molecular genetic diagnostics. One of the main benefits of molecular genetic diagnostics is its predictive potential. However, the predictive dimension inherent in this type of diagnostics also gives rise to a host of problems.
The principle of scientific freedom usually is taken for granted; few attempts have been made to justify it systematically. The present paper discusses three "classic" arguments, which are used to justify this principle. It will become clear (a) that each argument refers to a different understanding of science and, therefore, justifies a different type of science; (b) that each of them involves presuppositions which do not always match the social reality of scientific research; the profound changes science has undergone since its inception are not sufficiently taken into account.
In its first part, this paper seeks to make plausible (a) that molecular genetic diagnostics differs in ethically relevant ways from traditional types of medical diagnostics and (b) that the consequences of introducing this technology in broad screening-programs to detect widespread genetic diseases in a population which is not at high risk may change our understanding of health and disease in a problematic way. In its second part, the paper discusses some aspects of public control of scientific and technological innovations in the field of molecular genetic diagnostics.
In this paper we have emphasised the technological dimension of the biosciences, especially the biosciences of our time. As a straight forward fact this dimension is less controversial than the question of its relevance is. We have argued that the existence of this dimension is a consequence of the empirical character of the biosciences (as well as of the sciences in general). Knowledge of nature can be achieved only if the subject of knowledge is able to gain access to natural phenomena, and technological means have become increasingly necessary for achieving this. The more that is already known, the greater the technological investment required to produce new knowledge. Therefore there is an interrelationship between the advancement of knowledge and the amount and complexity of the research technology required. It would be short sighted to conclude from this observation that human imagination and inventiveness have become superfluous. Nevertheless the growing preponderance of technological means for progress in science is undeniable. A particularly important insight is that this process not only involves a quantitative increase in technology within science. Our main hypothesis is that there is a close relationship between the type of means used, the type of subject required for performing research, the kinds of objects investigated in science, and the nature of the results that are generated. We have tried to illustrate this by distinguishing between three different types of bioscience: (a) a descriptive type, (b) an experimental type, and (c) and an industrial type. Without pretending this provides a universal key to the history of the biosciences and to understanding of the way science works today, we hope that such a distinction may open up new avenues of thought. We hope that this approach will provide us with a more realistic picture of science. The propositional view reduces science to its theoretical results, in particular to the theories emanating from basic research. Science is seen as a special kind of philosophy; its central aim is to provide us with a 'true' view of the world. Thus the social problems which result from scientific inquiry and from the application of its results seem to be something external to the very essence of science and thus only of secondary importance. We believe, therefore, that this picture of science is both theoretically unsatisfactory and socially misleading. An appropriate account of science cannot ignore the fact that basic research represents only a very small part of the science system of our time. It cannot neglect the fact that science today is steeped with technology and to a great extent also industrialised. And it cannot treat the social problems of science as something merely 'external'. To view science as an activity in the sense outlined in this paper permits one to integrate these different aspects into one coherent and realistic picture. 1. It is obvious that technology plays a crucial role in determining the social reality of science. This is mainly because of the high costs of contemporary research technology that science can no longer be performed by gentleman scientists like Alexander von Humboldt or Charles Darwin, who not only financed their own living but the cost of their own research too. Science today is a profession, and in many cases it can be performed only in large groups or institutions financed by the state or by private companies. At the same time this means that it is more and more dependent upon decisions made outside science. Scientific activities have assumed the economic form of wage labour. The internal structure of science is characterised by a division of labour and hierarchical forms of decision making. 2. From a more traditional point this may seem to be a development 'external' to science, without any relevance for its 'essence'. The aim of science, it may be said, is to discover the truth about the external world, and the ways of reaching it a
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Progress in medicine has solved many problems facing humanity. At the same time, however, it has also led to many new ones. There is no reason to believe that this ambivalence will cease to exist with respect to future applications of gene technology in medicine. A sober and differential assessment of the chances and risks of this new technology is therefore necessary. The present paper outlines just such an assessment. Its main conclusion is that genetic diagnostics may pose more difficult ethical and social problems than gene therapy. This may especially be the case if this diagnostic technology is routinely used for screening programs to detect widespread diseases like cancer, hypertension or diabetes in a population that is not at high risk.
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This paper is based on the hypothesis that the effort to establish new criteria for diagnosing human death, which has been taking place over the past twenty years or more, can be viewed as a paradigm case for the impact of scientific and technological progress on morality. This impact takes the form of three tendencies within the change in morality, which may be characterized as 'denaturalization', 'functionalization' and 'homogenization'. The paper concludes with the view that these tendencies do not indicate a decline of morality, as feared by some authors, but rather a structural change.
Against the background of rapid progress in the field of reproduction medicine and gene technology, the governments of various countries have set up commissions to discuss the moral, legal and social problems involved and make proposals for regulation. Thus, in 1986 the Swiss Federal Council convened an expert commission which, after two years of discussion, has recently published a voluminous document (the "Amstad Report"). The present paper attempts to analyze, from the philosophical viewpoint, some of the problems associated with such processes for the further development of morality for specific ends. A leading question in this regard is the role of philosophical thought in these processes, i.e. the potentialities and limits of ethics for the creation of a moral consensus on the problems surrounding technical intervention in human reproduction. There are four schools of thought: 1. The activities of expert commissions are evidence of the fact that man is at present endeavouring consciously to "construct" his morality. He may always have been the subject of his mortality, but this was without his own knowledge and awareness. Today, under the pressure of new means of action, man is becoming the conscious subject of his mortality and the formation of a morality is a process aimed at a specific result. 2. The fundamental difficulty of such a scheme arises from the absence of a theoretical and socially tested system for the "construction" of a new morality. This is also true of philosophy: on questions of morality it possesses analytic competence but no specific methods of generating new norms and values.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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