Bioethics is becoming a big moral conundrum as of late, a “Pandoras box” if you will, that when opened and discussed brings up some big questions like “what is the meaning of life?”, “is there such a thing as free will or destiny?”, or “should we live forever?” These questions hit hard on society, because of the Perfect storm of genetic engineering and ethics. Caused by “Societal demand for an account of ethical issues occasioned by the science in general and biotechnology in particular”, “appalling societal illiteracy with regards to science”, “poor understanding of ethics by society”, “Gresham’s Law for Ethics”, “Entrenched scientific ideology denying the relevance of ethics to science, leading to poor understanding of ethics by science”, and finally “vested interests dominating ethical discussions” (Rollin 509).
From what I can understand “Gresham’s Law” can be boiled down to, one bad apple ruins the bunch. In bioethics, and ethics in general “‘Gresham’s Law for ethics’ affirms that ‘bad ethics drives good ethics out of circulation’” (Rollin 509). As an extreme example of “Gresham’s Law for ethics” would be Hitler. …show more content…
This is all a lot to take in, so as an aside let me explain what I mean when I say “bioethics.” When referring to bioethics, I’m referring to anything ethically related in the fields of biology, an example of which is genetic engineering (McCormick). One reason the morality of bioethics has risen could be the practical use of a new nuclease system called CRSPr-cas9. CRSPr makes changing the genome of an organism extremely easy and many are concerned about the “sacredness” of the genome (Kaebnick). That messing with the code we’re made of might taint nature. It’s a debate about “purity and foulness” (Kaebnick), an example of which would be
From what I can understand “Gresham’s Law” can be boiled down to, one bad apple ruins the bunch. In bioethics, and ethics in general “‘Gresham’s Law for ethics’ affirms that ‘bad ethics drives good ethics out of circulation’” (Rollin 509). As an extreme example of “Gresham’s Law for ethics” would be Hitler. …show more content…
This is all a lot to take in, so as an aside let me explain what I mean when I say “bioethics.” When referring to bioethics, I’m referring to anything ethically related in the fields of biology, an example of which is genetic engineering (McCormick). One reason the morality of bioethics has risen could be the practical use of a new nuclease system called CRSPr-cas9. CRSPr makes changing the genome of an organism extremely easy and many are concerned about the “sacredness” of the genome (Kaebnick). That messing with the code we’re made of might taint nature. It’s a debate about “purity and foulness” (Kaebnick), an example of which would be