bioethics in biotechnology

1. BIOETHICS IN
BIOTECHNOLOGY
CHARMAINE MOFFAT

2. •Bioethics refers to the moral and social issues and
problems that have risen as a result of modern medicine
and medical research.
•Ethical and bioethical principles can be personal,
organizational, institutional or worldwide.
•Ethical views differ from country to country according to
culture and tradition and they also change with time due
to shifting perceptions of values, which are affected by
scientific and technological progress, as well as the
media.

3. • Ethical issues include;
Abortion
• An embryo has the same moral value as any other member of the human species. But
does any human cell deserve respect as a potential person?
Suicide
Human cloning
Allocation of healthcare resources
Genetic engineering
Artificial insemination
Contraception
Organ donation and transplantation
Human genome project

4. •Bioethics considers what choices we make.
•If we could use genetic engineering to create a human-
chimpanzee hybrid, should we?
•Should we allow genetically modified organisms to be
used for food?
•Should we allow mandatory DNA sampling of everyone
who is arrested?
•Should we allow genetic engineering of animals to
produce human organs?

5. •There are 3 important criteria to bioethics
1.Respect
2.Do no harm
3.justice

6. •Not everyone agrees about what is right or good
Is it really right to eat animals?Which ones?
•The goal of bioethics is to understand the costs and
benefits of decisions as well as the values and conflicts
What are the costs of a decision and what are the
benefits?
What values are being given priority over other values?

7. •Bioethical questions also arise in medicine;
Is it acceptable for a parent to deny treatment to a child
on the basis of religious beliefs?
If a teenager has a sexually transmitted disease, should
his or her parents be informed if they are the ones paying
for treatment?
Should we allow people to not be vaccinated even
though it puts others at risk?

8. • Bioethics depend on what the government and the people
view as ethical.
Should we use cloning to save an endangered species?
• The use of embryonic stem cells in research results in
tremendous breakthroughs because of the ability of stem
cells to differentiate.
• Such as production of spare organs and other biological
products for medical treatments.
• This process requires the destruction of a developing embryo
for the collection of genetic information

9. •Objections are centered more around the human
element as to who makes decision that life is expendable
in one case and not the other
•Misuse is the center of ethical objections
•Objections to products on the uncertainty as to what
long term effects the use of genetically modified
materials have in the absence of long term records.

10. THANKYOU!!!