Biotechnology is a big ticket item in international forums concerned with studying the ethical issues and making sound recommendations to national governments for policy enactment. The most controversial issue is of course related to biotech healthcare which is not only about fighting disease but also human reproduction and its artificial procedures- the challenge is defining its ethical boundaries.
OECD REPORT: International Futures Project on “The Bio-economy to 2030: Designing a Policy Agenda”
Biotechnology: Ethical and social debates
Prepared by: Nicolas Rigaud
Biotechnology and bioethics. International Food Policy Research Institute
GM crops and GM food Biofuels. Warming as World's Top Environmental Threat
Bioprospecting. Global Trade and Biodiversity in Conflict
Animal welfare. Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission
Private Genetic Information. Genetics & Public Policy Center
Stem Cell Research (+xenotransplantation). The Pew Research Center (2005)
Available in pdf format:
The burning issues
In an age when medical technology is improving at a rapid rate, the availability of new treatments increases almost as quickly. With new advances, come dilemmas such as scientific, financial, and especially moral questions. These challenges are likely to increase as groups with vastly different views and resources struggle over the direction of health policy.
Biotechnology Healthcare has identified five topics that dominate ethical issues of biotech medicine. These questions will continue to cause controversy in the conceivable future, on third-party participants, employer—employees, and health care providers that must deal with policy implications on some of the issues or all of them for years to come.
Clinical trials with protection for human subjects.
In 1999, 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger died in the process of a gene therapy trial at the University of Pennsylvania. The institution was broadly criticized for failing to disclose essential information on consent documents, relaxing standards for accepting volunteers, and enrolling volunteers who were not eligible.
Cost control and affordability
The rising cost of healthcare and the cost of medications has become a political hot potato and will remain so in the foreseeable future. No matter what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the pharmaceutical industry’s argument make that research and development are funded by today’s prices and that price controls could retard R&D, a large swath of the public don’t buy it.
Privacy
Protecting patient privacy is a growing concern, because this technology is making it possible to decipher the human genome. But as scientists become proficient at deciphering a person’s genetic material, it is a growing concern that compromising information about a person’s future health is going to become available.
The elephant in the room-Stem Cell Research
Stem cell research is the abomination for the religious right and has worked its way into national politics and elections.
California, which is the birthplace of the biotech revolution and a state hardest hit by the high tech collapse of the past, has excited stakeholders with the potential economic value of stem cell research and overwhelmingly passed Proposition 71, which guarantees $3 billion in state funding over the next decade.
Protecting the United States against Bio-terrorism
Security is hugely important, and public fears over terrorism are not likely to go away. The federal government wants “Project Bioshield” be the incentive of development for treatments, with preventive medications and vaccines that can be available in sufficient quantities for the protection of the largest number of people.
Specific examples and international comparisons are drawn from a vast geographical area: Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All these countries have introduced some ethical deliberation, sometimes specific to these countries, other times shared by a more international audience with shared concerns.
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