Bioethics The ethics of medical and biological research. moral principles (ideas of right vs. wrong) that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity.
SAFTEY
Safety is a moral concern for opponents of biotechnology who worry that its power disrupts the complex balance in living nature in ways that are likely to be harmful.
LIBERTY
Liberty is a moral concern for those who fear that biotechnology will give some people tyrannical power over others.
JUSTICE
Justice is a moral concern for people who anticipate that biotechnology will be so expensive that only the richest individuals will benefit from it so that the rich will have an unjust advantage over the poor.
ENVIRONMENTAL NATURE
Environmental nature is a moral concern for the environment and natural world.
HUMAN NATURE
Human nature is a moral concern for anyone who fears that biotechnology could change the way humans think, feel, or act.
S Precise methods and careful testing will ensure safety for the public -millions have eaten genetically modified food and not been harmed .
O: unforeseen effects on humans and the environment.
Oppose: Some worry that people could be coerced informally by social pressure, employers, and insurance companies so that they will feel compelled to adopt biotechnology products and procedures. Moreover, others suggest that biotech can give parents the power to control the nature and behavior of their children in ways that threaten the liberty of the children.
Support: Groups insist that there should be no threat to liberty as long as biotechnology is chosen freely by individuals in a free market economy.
Oppose: Groups worry that reproductive biotechnology eventually could divide humanity into two separate species based on the wealth or poverty of their ancestors: the "genrich" who would be genetically designed to be superior and the "genpoor" who would be left behind as biologically inferior beings.
Support: Defenders of biotechnology foresee that in a free-market society prices for biotechnology products and services eventually will decline as a result of competition, and this will lessen the advantages of the rich over the poor.
Oppose: Some environmentalists predict that biotechnology will promote the replacement of the natural environment with a purely artificial world and that this will deprive human beings of healthy contact with wild nature. They also fear that introducing genetically modified organisms into the environment will produce monstrous forms of life that will threaten human beings and the natural world.
Support: Others respond by noting that beginning with agriculture, human beings have been creating genetically modified organisms that transform the environment for thousands of years. Also, environmental biotechnology is developing new organisms, such as bacteria genetically engineered to metabolize toxic wastes, to restore dangerous natural environments to a condition that is safe for human beings.
Oppose: Some worry that the biotechnological transformation of human nature will produce a "posthuman" world with no place for human dignity rooted in human nature.
Support: Some welcome the prospect of using biotechnology to move toward a "transhuman" condition (enhanced human intellect & physiology).
S Prices will drop due to competition
O Fear that society will enter a period where one group opposes another based on wealth and poverty
O nature will be replaced by man made organisms and the natural world will be lost.
S humans have been modifying for thousands of years to create things that can help the environment.
O concern we will replace human dignity in a post human world
S some welcome what could be a trans humans with superior strength and superior intellect
Oppose: Groups have have warned that genetically modified crops and foods could endanger human health as well as the health of the environment. Critics of medical biotechnology fear that biotechnology medicine alters the human body and mind in radical ways that could produce harmful consequences—perhaps far into the future—in ways that are hard to foresee
Support: Groups argue that its techniques are so precise and controlled that it tends to be far safer than older forms of technology. Studies show there is no clear evidence that any human being among the hundreds of millions who have been exposed has become sick from eating genetically modified foods. Similarly, the risks to human health from medical biotechnology can be reduced by means of careful testing and new techniques for designing drugs and therapies that are designed specifically for individual patients with unique genetic traits.