Ethics and Trends in Biotechnology

Biotechnology offers exciting and promising prospects for healing the sick and relieving suffering. But exactly because of their impressive powers to alter the workings of body and mind, the dual uses of the same technologies also make them attractive to people who are not sick, but who would use them to look younger, perform better, or feel happier. These applications of biotechnology are already presenting us with some unfamiliar and very difficult challenges. In this course, we consider such possible beyond therapy uses and explore both their scientific basis and the ethical and social issues they are likely to raise. We consider how pursuing the goals of better children, superior performance, ageless bodies, or happy souls might be aided or hindered, elevated or degraded, by seeking them through a wide variety of technological means. Among the biotechnological techniques considered are techniques for screening genes and testing embryos, choosing sex of children, modifying the behavior of children, augmenting muscle size and strength, enhancing athletic performance, slowing senescence, blunting painful memories, brightening mood, and altering basic temperaments. Toward the end of the course, we begin to ask what kinds of human beings and what sort of society we might be creating in the coming age of biotechnology.