Research Report for the Wellcome Trust Project on `Building a Sustainable Capacity in Dual-use Bioethics`
By Jim Whitman
It is widely acknowledged that twenty-first century life science research presents numerous dual use issues – that much of the benign potential of new advances in the life sciences can also be misused for pernicious and destructive purposes. The problem is extensive enough that biotechnology itself has been characterized as a `dual use dilemma`. This paper argues that it is unhelpful and misleading to place the focus of dual use bioethics on the apprehension of dilemmas; and that to place the onus of responsibility on practicing life scientists to experience dilemmas when the character and momentum of life sciences research is a structural matter is unlikely to enhance biosecurity. An ethics which turns crucially on dilemmas will not suffice.
