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Ethical evaluation of new technologies: genetically modified organisms and plants

MJ Peterson and Ronald Sandler

Publication date: 01/08/2008

One of the major lessons of the 20th century is a warning that explicit ethical evaluation of the implications of a new technology with significant potential to cause widespread social or physical harm should precede its widespread use. The leading example, not least because of the dire circumstances that prompted even worried experts to urge its development, is nuclear technology. However, several other industrial technologies had sufficient environmental or other consequences to increase demands that new technologies receive ethical as well as technical and economic scrutiny before they enter widespread use.

Genetic modification (GM) technology has inspired considerable concern since its initial development in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Genetic modification is based on the ability to produce recombinant DNA (rDNA) by “splicing” genes that trigger emergence of some desired trait (such as ability to produce particular nutrient or increased resistance to a particular disease) present in the DNA of one organism into the DNA of another to produce a new DNA sequence that will yield a plant or organism of the latter type that also has the desired trait. Since its introduction genetic modification has been touted as a major – even revolutionary – advance over earlier forms of creating new plant varieties through hybridization because it allows much more specific selection of traits. It is also seen as revolutionary because it is a “deeper” technology: hybridization works at the level of whole organisms; GM operates at the more basic level of individual genes.

Like the other forms of “biotechnology” – tissue culturing, cloning, adding synthetic ingredients or inputs to the cultivation, husbandry, or processing of feeds and foods, GM technology inspires all the main forms of ethical concern that arise with new ways of handling physical objects: about impacts on the natural environment, about impacts on human health and physical well-being, about distributional consequences, about processes of decision-making regarding whether and if so when to use the technology.

Philosophers, ethicists, and others have expressed four types of objections to GM technology. Objections of the first type are what ethicists call “intrinsic objections” and involve claims that developing and using some technology is inherently wrong regardless of the results of doing so. The others are “extrinsic objections” involving claims that the technology (or action) is not inherently wrong but can be wrong if it causes or contributes to morally unacceptable situations or outcomes.

Resource type: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)

Citizen StakeholdersLegislation & RegulationScience & Technology

Taking European knowledge society seriously

Felt U, Wynne B et al

Publication date: 06/07/2007

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This report is the product of an expert working group acting under mandate from the European Commission Directorate General for Research (DG RTD), including contributions from specialists in science and technology studies, policy analysis, sociology, philosophy and law, as well as participants from civil society organizations.

The report looks at the causes and implications of widely-recognised European public unease with science and science-based technologies. It asks how we might at the same time further EU commitments to enhance democratic civil society in Europe, as well as address urgent challenges for science and technology policy, for science and governance, including those of climate and sustainability. Individual chapters deal with innovation policy, the regulation of risk institutionalised approaches to ethics, and modes of learning in complex environments, as well as efforts to engage European publics in the governance of science.

A final conceptual chapter draws these themes together by analysing the role of overarching ‘imaginaries’ in shaping practices and perspectives in all these areas. In conclusion, the report advances a number of salient messages for policy makers and sixteen specific recommendations for policy improvement. In sum, the authors call for new forms of experiment in both governance and science, moving beyond conventional linear understandings and engaging afresh with the rich diversity of European public life. Only in this way, the authors argue, will European policy take ‘knowledge society’ seriously -and fulfil its abundant promise.

Link takes you to an online document with the option to download.

Resource type: Web page URL

Citizen StakeholdersScience & Technology

Are scientists right and non-scientists wrong? Reflections on discussions of GM

Jan Deckers

Publication date: 30/09/2005

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The aim of this article is to further our understanding of the “GM is unnatural” view, and of the critical response to it.

While many people have been reported to hold the view that GM is unnatural, many policy-makers and their advisors have suggested that the view must be ignored or rejected, and that there are scientific reasons for doing so. Three “typical” examples of ways in which the “GM is unnatural” view has been treated by UK policy-makers and their advisors are explored. These are the Government’s position (DEFRA Report), the account of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and the position of Nigel Halford, a scientist with an advisory role to the Government. I show that their accounts fail to mount a convincing critique. Then, I draw on an empirical research project held during 2003–2004 at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north east of England.

Scientists met with non-scientists in a range of facilitated one-to-one conversations (“exchanges”) on various environmental issues, one of which was on GM. Our findings show that some scientists who rejected the “GM is unnatural” view struggled to do so consistently. Their struggle is interpreted in terms of a conflict between a so-called “scientific” worldview, and a different worldview that underlies the concerns of those who held the “GM is unnatural” view. This worldview is explored further by an examination of their concerns. What distinguishes this worldview from the “scientific” worldview is that the instrumentalization of the nonhuman world is questioned to a larger extent.

I conclude that, because the underlying concerns of those who held the “GM is unnatural” view were not with GM as such, yet with a worldview that was considered to be problematic, and of which many GM applications were held to be expressions, policy-makers and their advisors should reflect on the critical worldview of those who claim that GM is unnatural if they want to engage seriously with their concerns.

Main link goes to the pay per view abstract. The author’s .pdf version can be found here.

Resource type: Web page URL

Legislation & RegulationScience & TechnologySustainability

Late lessons from early warnings: the precautionary principle 1896-2000 (vol 1)

European Environment Agency

Publication date: 09/01/2002

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Late lessons from early warnings is about the gathering of information on the hazards of human economic activities and its use in taking action to better protect both the environment and the health of the species and ecosystems that are dependent on it, and then living with the consequences.

The report is based on case studies. The authors of the case studies, all experts in their particular field of environmental, occupational and consumer hazards, were asked to identify the dates of early warnings, to analyse how this information was used, or not used, in reducing hazards, and to describe the resulting costs, benefits and lessons for the future.

Resource type: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)

Plant & Animal BreedingScience & Technology

Foom farm to fork: the regulatory status of non-GMO plant innovations under current EU law

De Jong P, et al

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In April 2017, the Scientific Advice Mechanism (‘SAM’)presented its explanatory note on ‘New Techniques in Agricultural Biotechnology’ to the European Commission (‘the SAM Note’). The SAM Note provides a detailed description of the nature and characteristics of so-called‘plant breeding innovations’ or ‘new breeding techniques’(‘NBTs’), and how they are similar to or different from conventional breeding techniques (‘CBT’, such as crossing and selection, or mutation breeding) and established techniques of genetic modification(‘GM’, such as the use of recombinant nucleic acids).

According to the SAM Note, the term ‘NBTs’ refers to a wide range of new breeding methods, some of which are substantially different from established transgenic approaches in their way of introducing traits to an organism.Whereas some NBTs amount to a refinement of CBT and integrate genetic material that is derived from a sexually compatible species, some nevertheless are used in combination with established GM techniques. Some NBTs result in organisms that contain only point mutations and are practically indistinguishable from varieties bred through CBT. The NBTs that have attracted most attention in recent years (and are, presumably also for that reason, currently subject to a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice of the EU or ‘CJEU’) are the so-called genome editing techniques.The present article focuses specifically on those genome editing techniques

Resource type: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)