Freedom of science is held as a high value in many societies and constitutional frameworks, with its philosophical justifications having a long tradition (Wilholt, 2010, 2012, chap. 1). Yet, setting up limits to controversial research — particularly in biomedicine — is a surprisingly underexplored topic in research and bioethics (an exception is Resnik, 2009, chap. 1). Given the rapid pace of technological advancement and its potentially profound societal impacts, this gap is becoming increasingly critical. My project addresses the philosophical and practical challenges involved in limiting biomedical research. Specifically, it is concerned with: (a) the ethical justification of research limits, such as research moratoria; (b) the procedures of deliberation that lead to decisions about such boundaries; and (c) the implementation of these limits via diverse policy tools. This talk will explain the motivation behind the project (cf. Christian, 2022), indicate some philosophical and technical issues of relevant limitation mechanisms, and illustrate the complex philosophical challenges using the debate about a clinical moratorium regarding CRISPR/Cas-based human germline editing (e.g. Lander et al., 2019). The overall goal of the project is to develop a bioconservative framework for the responsible governance of controversial biomedical research.
Speaker
Dr. Alexander Christian is a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy at the HHU, where he is responsible for a cross-faculty program on research ethics and bioethics. His research is about good scientific practice, science denialism, and ethical limits to controversial biomedical research.
Preparatory Reading
Wilholt, T. (2010). Scientific freedom: its grounds and their limitations. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 41(2), 174–181. doi.org/10.1016/ j.shpsa.2010.03.003
Background Reading
Christian, A. (2022). Addressing Conflicts of Interest and Conflicts of Commitment in Public Advocacy and Policy Making on CRISPR/Cas-Based Human Genome Editing. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 7. doi.org/10.3389/ frma.2022.775336
Lander, E. S., Baylis, F., Zhang, F., Charpentier, E., Berg, P., Bourgain, C., Friedrich, B., Joung, J. K., Li, J., Liu, D., Naldini, L., Nie, J.-B., Qiu, R., Schoene-Seifert, B., Shao, F., Terry, S., Wei, W., & Winnacker, E.-L. (2019). Adopt a moratorium on heritable genome editing. Nature, 567(7747), 165–168. doi.org/10.1038/ d41586-019-00726-5