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Casuistry and the moral continuum: Evaluating animal biotechnology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Autumn Fiester
Autumn Fiester*
Affiliation:
Department of Medical Ethics and the Center for Bioethics School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania 3401 Market Street, Suite 320 Philadelphia, PA 19104-3308 [email protected]
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 25 , Issue 1-2 , March 2006 , pp. 15 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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