The Ethics of Biotechnology

The essays collected in this volume provide students of ethics with essential tools for making sense of emerging biotechnical capacities and the turbulent power relations these capacities are bringing into the world. Unlike previous reference works in bioethics, which focus on specific domains of human activity (such as genetic research or biomedicine), this volume directs students? attention to the underlying cultural and institutional forces that shape how biotechnologists approach the world, and teaches students how to weigh the ethical significance of these forces. This innovative approach to the ethics of biotechnology, detailed in the volume?s introduction, equips students to track the dynamic interplay of biology, digital technology and the high-tech economy which is remaking the living world today and the human relation to it.

Part 1: Artificiality and Industry: Biotechnology Between the Possible and the Actual, Part 2: Increased Capacity: The Foundations of a Bioeconomy, Part 3: Recombinant Thresholds: From Molecular Biology to Biotech , Part 4: Sequencing, Synthesis, Design: From Genomics to Synthetic Biology , Part 5: Digital Biology and the Biotechnical Imagination , Part 6: Biotechnical Uncertainty and the Ethical Near Future.

Gaymon Bennett is Assistant Professor of Religion, Science, and Technology at Arizona State University, USA.