Biotethed project

Biotechnology Ethics is becoming a better-defined discipline in the realm of Bioethics, addressing ethical issues emerging from the application of sciences to biological advances and industrial technology. Ethics must keep abreast of the rapid scientific and technical developments, and this requires continuous research in philosophy and continuous dialogue with ice-breaking scientists. At the same time, the latter realize that only interdisciplinary studies can provide them with the judgement and decision making capacity necessary for their societal role; therefore their need of BT-Ethics education grows exponentially. Tying research to teaching has been the goal of a strategic action spanning 2003-2005 and producing BT-Ethics courses aimed at PhD students in Europe. Ten of the groups that have driven this progressively successful initiative propose now to expand their activity in several dimensions: a) towards emerging issues from new fields of biotechnological application " e.g. in nano-neuro and immunotechnologies, stem cell studies, GM food, human reproductive technologies, b) towards the extension towards new EU member states, c) toward the consolidation and continuity of the educational effort.
For b) we rely on the membership of active research groups from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Lithuania; for a) and c) we can count on the partnership of EMBO, whose Science and Society Programme promotes balance discussions on molecular biology via a range of stimulating activities that support public communication from scientists, and target natural disseminators such as teachers.
The tools of this action are interdisciplinary encounters with scientists, annual courses located in the Eastern regions of Europe, electronic databases and publications; all activities will engage both the established group leaders and their students to make Biotechnology Ethics an essential element in the toolset needed to enhance the contribution to society well-being.

Biotechnology today

Biotechnology is defined as "the integration of natural and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, partsthereof and molecular analogues for products and services' and is the meeting point of different disciplines, originating in Biology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics and Engineering. Historically, their interactions have resulted in a burst of industrial activities with a huge although ambiguous impact on the planet. Among the assets accrued are large distributions/accumulations of wealth, new food sources and new medicines. But there are also liabilities, such as environmental contamination and degradation of genomes.
This is a wide, complex field. Accordingly, the professional activities and the personal responsibilities of biotechnologists are extremely diverse and the frequency by which scientists are confronted with decision-requiring situations increase exponentially with their proficiency.

The strong link with industry

An important tendency is becoming clear: with the increased efficiency in translating laboratory results into industrial achievements and products, the gap in time between the two is clearly decreasing and the figure of the basic (or "pure') biologist is substituted by a dynamic achiever who is personally involved both in a lab discovery and in the projecting of a product useful in agriculture, industrial processes or health.
This development causes the biologist more precisely, the ground-breaking molecular biologist to be the person invested with the power and the duty of ethical decision making.

The scientist's dilemma on ethics

As a consequence, the scientist cannot remain ignorant or insensitive to ethical issues.
But it would be wrong to go tothe excess of expecting the scientist to be a bioethicist as well as a scientist. This may be dangerous, because of the pressure that the public puts on the already pressured scientist and because it makes scientists alone responsible for representing the interest of the rest of society which finds an excuse to abdicate. Obviously, the solution lies somewhere between "scientists being ethical experts' and "society becoming more proficient at digesting and reacting to new information with expert help'. We believe that the answer to this must involve two events: a) a better definition of the discipline and b) a more organic cooperation/exchange between scientists and ethicists. These requirements are summarized in the proposition biotechnology ethics.

Biotechnology ethics distinct from biomedical ethics

A proportion of the decisions to be made are momentous; they involve or may affect the well being of other individuals, of society at large, of the environment, even the quality of life on Earth for the present and future generations. These decisions are of moral nature: while technical knowledge is indispensable to locate and evaluate the concrete alternatives, an appreciation of ethics and ethical issues is indispensable in making the choice between them. This choice may be on occasion difficult, considering the prevailing social, economic and political pressures.
One factor that adds stumbling blocks to the situation is the tendency of grouping all ethical issues concerned in any way with "life' under the label Bioethics which, in turn - by virtue of the perception of the general public and especially the media - is heavily skewed towards Medical Ethics and issues concerned with, e.g., human conception, prenatal testing, sex selection, health care, terminal care, psychotherapy.
These are important and sensitive issues and the way they are approached is influenced by religious and socio-political decisions in society at large and also among the scientists. We feel that expansion and advances in other branches of ethics, e.g., Environmental, Biotechnological and Industrial Ethics are hampered by the overwhelming accent on Medical and personal problems and also by the fact that a certain polarization of opinions is artificially transferred out of context from the latter, thus blurring and freezing issues where consensus could be expected and would accelerate solutions.

The BioT-Ethics project

Acting on these motivations, a group of centres has gathered in 2002 from 11 European states and has started a research effort to characterize biotechnology ethics as partially distinct within the bioethical disciplines. This group felt that the natural connection between research and education was particularly useful and necessary in a discipline producing societal effects.

Summary of results

The two years' research work by our group has contributed to characterizing biotechnology ethics " studied in articles, explored in meetings and discussed in courses " as a self-standing sub-discipline of ethics with clearer goals and limits and with the target set at the interface of industry and biology.
Our efforts have succeeded in presenting biotechnology ethics to students and researchers of biotechnology at the graduate level by developing a didactic methodology whose progress was evident by comparing courses in successive years.
Naturally, the BT-Ethics teaching fulfils the needs in this field of candidates for the title of European Doctor in biotechnology. But, after experiencing our courses, also EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organization, has expressed interest in cooperating and offering BT-ethics teaching to EMBL graduate students and young scientists.
First of all it was urgent to the planning group that the course was not meant as a teaching-course in the sense that we wanted to provide the students with answers.
The doctoral students possess a huge resource for the course themselves since a) they are already engaged in research and b) they express their engagement in society by wanting to discuss the ethical problems related to their working fields. (One also needs to keep in mind that some of the students themselves will be teaching biotechnology ethics to graduate students at their own universities, and therefore apply for this type of course). Therefore the most important aim of such a course should be to provide the students with the skills, so that they actually engage in debate and bring forward their own point of views and the course becomes a frame " a forum where interdisciplinary discussion on ethical issues can be provided for through a combination of short lectures and debates on cases, in small groups and in plenary sessions. Essential to this type of course is the two-way-communication between 'teachers' and students.