Shaping genes : ethics, law, and science of using new genetic technology in medicine and agriculture / Darryl R.J. Macer.

  • Darryl Raymund Johnson Macer
Date:
1990
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Shaping genes : ethics, law, and science of using new genetic technology in medicine and agriculture / Darryl R.J. Macer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/440
    Prefcice I hope that this book is able to provide up-to-date science with some illustrations of the ethical dilemmas that arise from the use of new genetic techniques. It is intended for all students, researchers,practitioners and public interested in these issues, to contribute something to the ongoing discussion of bioethics. The book has been written with an extensive bibliography so that it can be used as a source book for others directly involved with, and researching these issues, who may come to different conclusions. This book considers the problems for the use of new genetic and reproductive techniques in medicine, together with the use of genetic engineering for nonhuman applications. This includes such issues as environmental ethics and regulations, commercialisation of science, and the use of animals, with the subsequent ethical, legal and social problems. The reason for the combined approach is twofold, one is the genetic technology is applicable to all organisms, and the second is that bioethics should be viewed as the study of life in general. It is impossible to separate many people's apprehension to genetics from the feared abuses of human applications, such as the eugenic extremes of the past, despite the moral gulf between medicine and plant breeding. Agriculture can be argued to be even more basic to life than medicine, and if we upset the environment it is more catastrophic than the absence of a new medical treatment. I would appreciate any feedback and criticism of this work, as these issues require continued development and discussion. I would like to thank many people for supporting this work. I thank Trinity College, Cambridge, England, for financial support that they provided during 1988 and 1989, and the use of facilities at the University of Cambridge. I thank the staff of the Hastings Center for time spent there. I thank the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Crop Research Division for support given to enable further research into ethical problems in the area of nonhuman applications during the first half of 1990. I also thank them for permission to quote from their New Zealand public opinion survey. I wish to thank all the people who provided me with important information to be used in this book, without whose help it would be diminished. I am obliged to the critical comments made on different parts of early drafts of this project, by the following people; Rev. Michael Banner, Prof. Sam R.J. Berry, Mr Howard Bezar, Prof. John W. Bowker, Prof. Alastair V. Campbell, Dr. Tony Connor, Dr. Tim R. Forester, Dr. Neil Hartman, Mr. Sean Jackson, Prof. D.Gareth Jones, Dr. Tit Meng Lim, Mr. Keith Moyse, and Rev. Melvin Tinker. I am indebted to the support given by my wife Nobuko, and our parents, in this project. I am responsible for all the inadequacies of this book, and look forward to receiving criticism of it. Danyl Macer Institute of Biological Sciences University of Tsukuba Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305 Japan. September 1990
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3