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Confrontations in ‘genethics’: rationalities, challenges, and methodological responses

Confrontations in ‘genethics’: rationalities, challenges, and methodological responses
Confrontations in ‘genethics’: rationalities, challenges, and methodological responses
It was only a matter of time before the portmanteau term “genethics” would be coined and a whole field within bioethics delineated. The term can be dated back at least to 1984 and the work of James Nagle, who claims credit for inventing the word, which he takes “to incorporate the various ethical implications and dilemmas generated by genetic engineering with the technologies and applications that directly or indirectly affect the human species.” In Nagle’s phrase, “Genethic issues are instances where medical genetics and biotechnology generate ethical problems that warrant societal deliberation.” The great promises and terrific threats of developments in scientific understanding of genetics, and the power to enhance, modify, or profit from the knowledge science breeds, naturally offer a huge range of issues to vex moral philosophers and social theorists. Issues as diverse as embryo selection and the quest for immortality continue to tax analysts, who offer reasons as varied as the matters that might be dubbed “genethical” for or against the morality of things that are actually possible, logically possible, and even just tenuously probable science fiction
0963-1801
46-55
Coggon, John
192d1511-cd81-45f4-8748-c398b74949b9
Coggon, John
192d1511-cd81-45f4-8748-c398b74949b9

Coggon, John (2011) Confrontations in ‘genethics’: rationalities, challenges, and methodological responses. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 20 (1), 46-55. (doi:10.1017/S0963180110000617). (PMID:21223609)

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Abstract

It was only a matter of time before the portmanteau term “genethics” would be coined and a whole field within bioethics delineated. The term can be dated back at least to 1984 and the work of James Nagle, who claims credit for inventing the word, which he takes “to incorporate the various ethical implications and dilemmas generated by genetic engineering with the technologies and applications that directly or indirectly affect the human species.” In Nagle’s phrase, “Genethic issues are instances where medical genetics and biotechnology generate ethical problems that warrant societal deliberation.” The great promises and terrific threats of developments in scientific understanding of genetics, and the power to enhance, modify, or profit from the knowledge science breeds, naturally offer a huge range of issues to vex moral philosophers and social theorists. Issues as diverse as embryo selection and the quest for immortality continue to tax analysts, who offer reasons as varied as the matters that might be dubbed “genethical” for or against the morality of things that are actually possible, logically possible, and even just tenuously probable science fiction

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Published date: January 2011
Organisations: Southampton Law School

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Local EPrints ID: 342967
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/342967
ISSN: 0963-1801
PURE UUID: 0cb2277a-9724-4de5-a0ae-b8749ee5f32f

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Date deposited: 19 Sep 2012 11:26
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 11:56

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Author: John Coggon

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