Casuistry and the moral continuum. Evaluating animal biotechnology.
While the science of animal biotechnology is advancing at a rapid pace, the ethical discussion about the boundaries the public might want to set is at the most nascent stage. There is a tendency in the public debate for opponents to favor an all-out ban on the science, while proponents want to grant it carte blanche. I argue that a more nuanced position on animal biotechnology considers individual projects to be located on a moral continuum, where some are clearly morally justified, others morally impermissible, and some lie in the ethical gray-zone. To begin to define this continuum, we use the bioethical method of casuistry to analyze one case at the end of moral permissibility, and we contrast it with a case that is located at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. I advocate this approach to assessing the moral merit of biotechnology projects because of its attention to the details of individual cases--the protocols, ends, and methods--on which an accurate moral judgment necessarily rests.
Fiester
Autumn
A
Department of Medical Ethics and the Center for Bioethics, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3308, USA. fiester@mail.med.upenn.edu
D000827:Animal Welfare / Q000941:ethics*; D000818:Animals; D030801:Animals, Genetically Modified; D001709:Biotechnology / Q000941:ethics* / Q000379:methods; D032764:Casuistry; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000941:ethics* / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals