Bioethics Institute To Be Held in Ames

The Bioethics Institute, hosted by the Iowa State University Bioethics Program, will be held at Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa, on June 5 to 9, 2006.  It will provide faculty and extension personnel with the background they need to incorporate bioethics into their courses and extension activities, at no cost to participants.  The Bioethics Institute will be of interest to individuals who address issues related to life science ethics in a wide range of disciplines.

Plenary speakers include Temple Grandin, Animal Science, Colorado State University and Paul Thompson,  Philosophy,  Michigan State University.  Professor Grandin is among the best known animal welfare specialists in the world.  Her written work has influenced the treatment of animals throughout the United States and the world.  Her efforts to insure proper and humane stockmanship, and her work designing humane slaughter facilities have changed the circumstances of life and death for millions of animals.  Professor Thompson is one of the nation's leading scholar in agricultural ethics, and is well known for philosophical work dealing with agriculture and international trade, biotechnology, animal agriculture and animal welfare. 

Admittance to the Institute is limited to 40 participants chosen through a competitive application process. The deadline for application is April 30, 2006. Information and application

Evaluating Food Biotechnology

Kristen Hessler, Bioethics Outreach Coordinator


In his book Food Biotechnology in Ethical Perspective, Paul Thompson argues for what he calls "the presumptive case for food biotechnology," by which he means that "the burden of proof falls not on those who would develop food biotechnology but on those who would oppose it." Thompson’s presumptive case in favor of agricultural biotechnology is based primarily on its promised benefits. He writes: “The tools and science that we know as food biotechnology can be employed to increase agricultural productivity, reduce negative environmental impacts and to insure and improve food safety.” This is true enough. However, applications of food biotechnology can have a wide variety of impacts on the environment, food safety and agricultural productivity. Some may increase productivity while having no environmental benefits or even some environmental cost. When we look at all the possibilities, not just the possibility of benefits, we should question whether Thompson’s presumptive case in favor of food biotechnology holds up.

More important, however, is a methodological question: Why should ethicists look for a general presumption about such a broad category of technologies in the first place? In his book, Thompson takes his options to be exactly three: a presumptive case in favor of agricultural biotechnology, a presumptive case against it, or a case-by-case analysis of individual applications of biotechnology in agriculture. However, it is not clear what an ethical analysis of agricultural biotechnology gains by the establishment of either a favorable or a negative presumption about the technology. Cass Sunstein and Edna Ullmann-Margalit call such a strategy a “second-order decision,” which they describe as a “precommitment strategy” designed to “reduce the burdens of later decisions in particular cases.” Indeed, Thompson describes the situation of evaluating agricultural biotechnology in this way:

In fact, decisions are seldom made by weighing potential gains against potential losses case by case. Doing so imposes intolerable costs on the decision making process. There is no area of life in which every possible option is weighed, and clearly all our time would be spent in weighing and deliberating if it were so.

He likens the case-by-case analysis of biotechnology to an ethical view that requires a full cost-benefit analysis of every action, called act utilitarianism. Thompson points out that act utilitarianism presents insurmountable practical difficulties for the individual, who indeed would have to spend all her time weighing and deliberating to meet the requirements of such a demanding ethical framework.

However, the comparison between a case-by-case analysis of applications of agricultural biotechnology and a simple act utilitarian view is misleading. Distinct applications of biotechnology in agriculture do not present themselves for evaluation every day, much less before an individual can undertake any action whatsoever. While requiring a full act utilitarian analysis of every action would indeed be crippling for an individual, requiring an ethical evaluation of distinct applications of biotechnology simply does not present the same concentration of practical difficulties for ethicists. The fact that Thompson thinks that it does may be an indication that he is conflating an ethical evaluation of biotechnology with a regulatory stance. From a regulator’s perspective, it may make sense to accept biotechnological innovations barring their presenting specific problems. But the ethicist should be committed to analyzing in a nuanced and more complete fashion the potential for benefit as well as screening out the potential for overt harm. So setting a general default presumption in favor of any agricultural biotechnology that does not present a danger of overt harm, as Thompson’s view would suggest, seems like setting a very low bar for an ethical evaluation.

Moreover, how challenging it is to accomplish a case-by-case analysis of biotechnology depends on how we individuate cases and whether we allow relevant information to inform more than one evaluation. For example, there are several varieties of Bt corn currently available for planting. The different varieties may produce slightly different versions of the crystal protein toxin (Cry toxin) or the same Cry toxin in different amounts, or in different plant tissues (such as the stalk but not the ear). The similarities among these cases include the relative safety of the Cry proteins for humans and the likely environmental impacts of the presence of the Cry toxins in the field, including the likely impacts on other species. It would not be taxingly difficult to evaluate these strains separately, if information about previously-decided cases were allowed to be taken into account in each case. It also would not be too costly in terms of ethical sensitivity of our evaluation to treat all these products as a single category. What would be costly, from an ethical perspective, is to lump together all of agricultural biotechnology into a presumptively beneficial category barring special information about the harmfulness of particular cases. Such a strategy runs a serious risk of overlooking important contextual information about what ethical difference a particular product can be realistically expected to make.

July 10-13, 2006

Biotechnology Education Workshop II - Advanced Workshop for Science, Agriculture, and Family and Consumer Sciences Educators. Information

July 10-28, 2006

On-line course: Teaching Bioethics.  Information

July 17-19, 2006

Bioethics Workshop I.  Information