Weeks 1-2.

Course Overview; History of Biotechnology and its Regulation; Recombinant DNA Techniques
I will go over administrative details, provide a quick overview of the content and requirements of the course, and provide a brief history of biotechnology. I will also provide a lay-introduction to background biology, the basics of recombinant DNA technology, and an introduction to the regulatory framework governing biotechnology. To get started on the ethics side, we will read an early article by Stephen Stitch, a philosopher who analyzes and critiques the main moral arguments which were being made towards the beginning of the rDNA debate.

Week 3-4.

Technology Studies, Risk Assessment, and Pesticide Producing Crops
In addition to readings which provide a relatively neutral framework for assessing technology, we will also look at both pro- and anti-technology views. Technology studies emphasize, among other things, unintended consequences of adopting technology that tend to be overlooked, and consequences of adopting technology that have so-called revenge effects, effects which undermine the original purpose for which the technology was adopted. As an aid to understanding these views on technology, we will look at the impact of Bt-producing crops on the monarch butterfly as an example of an unintended consequence, and we will look at the argument that the use of pesticide producing crops will result in pesticide resistant pests as an example of a revenge effect.

Weeks 5-6.

Contractualism and the Imposition of Risk
We will look at an ethical theory known as contractualism, and use it to explore the question of what the moral principles are for determining how large a benefit must be in order to justify a given level of risk when utilizing biotechnology. According to contractualism, morality requires each of us to be able to justify our actions to others on principles that it would be unreasonable for them to reject. Obviously, it would not be unreasonable for someone to reject a principle which allowed me to impose any kind of risk upon them that I wanted, and so contractualism does not allow me to do so. But it would be unreasonable for someone to reject a principle which never allowed me to impose any kind of risk upon them whatsoever, and so contractualism permits me to impose some risks on others. After looking at some of the risks various kind of biotechnology impose, we will try to see what we can do by way of coming up with a reasonable middle ground.

Week 7. Patenting Life
The standard consequentialist justification for the patent system is that allowing patents on any patentable subject matter that is useful, novel, and nonobvious promotes technological innovation by increasing expected profits and thereby attracting funding for useful research and development. In this section, we will look at the kind of ethical theory known as consequentialism, of which utilitarianism is a prominent example, and analyze the consequentialist justification for patenting biotechnology. Many people also object to patenting kinds of living organisms on non-consequentialist grounds, and we will analyze the main non-consequentialist objections as well.

Week 8.

Methods and Uses of Animal Biotechnology
As a prerequisite to focusing on ethical issues arising from the application of biotechnology to animals, we will survey the methods and uses of animal biotechnology.

Week 9.

Consequentialist Considerations regarding Animal Biotechnology
In this section, we examine the main consequentialist considerations regarding animal biotechnology, including issues of human safety, animal welfare, and sociological effects.

Week 10.

Non-Consequentialist Considerations regarding Animal Biotechnology
Many people believe that even if certain kinds of animal biotechnology would be beneficial, they are nonetheless morally unacceptable. In this section, we will analyze the main non-consequentialist objections to certain kinds of animal biotechnology.

Week 11.

Alleged Regulatory Failures
The public has a profound distrust of many of the biotechnology companies and, to a certain extent, this has spilled over onto the regulatory agencies as well. As a prelude to looking at procedural and democratic considerations, we will look at some of the allegations of misconduct or neglect that have been made against the biotech companies and regulatory agencies, and some of the ethical arguments which might be deployed in the hopes of justifying conduct which at least appears to be suspect.

Week 12-15.

Procedural and Democratic Considerations
Some of the objections voiced by the public are not so much about the particular governmental decisions that have been made regarding biotechnology as they are about the political process by which those decisions, right or wrong, were made. In this section, we look at different conceptions of democracy with an aim to exploring the question of how such decisions should be made. We will explore the extent to which representatives must defer to the public's preferences, the role that public deliberation plays in a democracy, and the role that experts should play in a democracy.

Robert Streiffer, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
rstreiffer@facstaff.wisc.edu
http://philosophy.wisc.edu/streiffer/

Main Address
Philosophy Department, UW-Madison
5185 Helen C. White Hall, 600 N. Park St.
Madison, WI 53706-1475
(608) 263-9479

Medical Ethics Address
Program in Medical Ethics, UW-Madison
1411 Medical Sciences Center, 1300 University Ave.
Madison, WI 53706-1532
(608) 262-7490

** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed for research and educational purposes only. **