Ethicists provide insights on biotechnology advances

As biologists press toward a greater fundamental understanding of the basis of life, ethical conundrums trail in their wake.

From the ability to screen for genetic predisposition to disease to the creation of genetically altered foods, a host of ethical dilemmas has surfaced for society to contend with.

Fost

The issues are difficult ones with no clear-cut right or wrong answers, says Norman Fost, professor of pediatrics and a founder of UW–Madison’s quarter-century-old program in medical ethics.

Some of the first ethical manifestations derived from the increasing power of modern biology surfaced in the medical field as, for example, intensive care technology improved to the point where patients with little or no hope of long-term recovery or even survival were being kept alive indefinitely with the help of new machines and medicines.

The technology, says Fost, provoked a lot of questions: “Who should be kept alive? How long should people be kept alive? Who should make the life or death decisions?”

Those were questions, Fost says, that were new and chillingly uncomfortable to physicians. In the past 25 years, as biologists have nudged ever closer to knowing the intimate genetic details of life, those questions have been amplified and extended to other social realms such as agriculture.

With the help of the governor and the Legislature through the Madison Initiative public-private funding partnership, UW–Madison is in the process of hiring new faculty to strengthen what is already one of the world’s preeminent centers of bioethics.

The goal is to provide the expertise and insight to help society and policymakers tackle the difficult questions posed by modern biology. As part of the university’s program in medical ethics, faculty in the Law School and the Department of Philosophy engage in scholarly explorations of bioethics issues – journeys that will help society make the larger decisions about the use of the powerful new technologies emerging from labs worldwide.