Chance Encounters

Kristien Hens

Description

In this rigorous and necessary book, Kristien Hens brings together bioethics and the philosophy of biology to argue that it is ethically necessary for scientific research to include a place for the philosopher. As well as ethical, their role is conceptual: they can improve the quality and coherence of scientific research by ensuring that particular concepts are used consistently and thoughtfully across interdisciplinary projects. Hens argues that chance and uncertainty play a central part in bioethics, but that these qualities can be in tension with the attempt to establish a given theory as scientific knowledge: in describing organisms and practices, in a sense we create the world. Hens contends that this is necessarily an ethical activity.


Examining genetic research, biomedical ethics, autism research and the concept of risk, Hens illustrates that there is no ‘universal’ or ‘neutral’ state of scientific and clinical knowledge, and that attending to the situatedness of individual experience is essential to understand the world around us, to know its (and our) limitations, and to forge an ethical future.


Chance Encounters is aimed at a broad audience of researchers in bioethics, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, as well as biomedical and environmental scientists. It will also be relevant to policymakers, and the artwork by Christina Stadlbauer and Bartaku will be of interest to artists and writers working at the intersection of art and science.
 

Sujets

• Medical
• Médecine
• Ethics

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 09 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800648524
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

Chance Encounters
A Bioethics for a Damaged Planet
Kristien Hens





https://www.openbookpublishers.com
© 2022 Kristien Hens




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license. This license allows you to share, copy, distribute, and transmit the work providing you do not modify the work, you do not use the work for commercial purposes, you attribute the work to the authors, and you provide a link to the license. Attribution should not in any way suggest that the authors endorse you or your use of the work and should include the following information:
Kristien Hens, Chance Encounters: A Bioethics for a Damaged Planet . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0320
Further details about CC licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0320#resources
ISBN Paperback: 9781800648494
ISBN Hardback: 9781800648500
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781800648517
ISBN Digital eBook (EPUB): 9781800648524
ISBN Digital eBook (AZW3): 9781800648531
ISBN XML: 9781800648548
ISBN HTML: 9781800648555
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0320
Cover image: Intuitive abstract of fungal/vegetal collaborations.
Drawing by Christina Stadlbauer (2019).
Cover design by Jeevanjot Nagpal

Contents
Note to the reader regarding the choice of images and sketches vii
Prologue: Van Rensselaer Potter ix
1. A Foundation for Bioethics: Van Rensselaer Potter’s Legacy 1
2. Overview of the Arguments 9
PART ONE: SCIENCE 13
3. Research Ethics all the Way Down 17
The Curious Case of Paulo Macchiarini 17
What Is Philosophy For? 21
4. Against Dualisms 25
Debating Nature and Nurture 26
Genes-Environment 31
Epigenetics 41
5. Development and Ethics 51
Development and Environment 51
Development and Ethics 54
PART TWO: CHANCE AND CREATIVITY 65
6. A Dog Is a Dog Is a Dog: Of Nature and Values 69
7. A Process Ontology for Bioethics 77
Prehensions and Actual Occasions 77
Whiteheadian Fallacies 82
8. Time, Culture and Creativity 87
Time Is of the Essence 87
World-Making: Creating and Being Created 92
9. Symbiosis and Interdependency 101
PART THREE: EXPERIENCE 109
10. Medical Ethics and Environmental Ethics 113
11. Diseases, Disorders, Disabilities, and Norms 117
Diseases: What They Are and Why It Matters 117
Disability 122
Canguilhem and The World-Making of Disease Judgements 125
The Strange Case of Human Enhancement 130
12. Standpoints 143
Epistemic Standpoints and Epistemic (In)Justices 144
The Role of the Bioethicist: Diplomats and Idiots 149
PART FOUR: TROUBLES 155
13. Bringing Back the Environment 159
14. Caring Responsibilities 167
15. Unforgetting The Past 175
16. A Creative and Forward-Looking Bioethics 181
PART FIVE: BIOETHICS 187
17. Concepts: Risks 191
18. Development: Autism Research 205
19. Trouble: Crocodiles and Mice 211
20. Creativity: A Game Inspiring A Bioethicist 219
Epilogue: Thinking With 225
Bibliography 231
Index 245

Note to the reader regarding the choice of images and sketches
Dear reader,
The images and sketches that can be viewed in this publication were included in the following way:
By the bliss of chance, the author´s path aligned with ours — we are artists and researchers Christina Stadlbauer and Bart Vandeput (Bartaku). We both have a practice that is enquiry-based, crossing disciplines, mixing media and contexts. Kristien Hens invited us to provide visuals for her book.
We accepted, read the manuscript and observed many parallels and connections between our practice and Kristien’s line of work. In particular, our frequent collaborations with scientists bring out similar questions as those voiced in the book. These enquiries drive artistic research processes and create the basis of tangible art works.
Our visual contribution provides a different angle to view the landscape Hens describes. This means that the images are not mere “illustrations” of the text but rather complement the author´s analysis. We especially hope the imagery invites you to stay joyfully with the troubles that are discussed in Kristien Hens’ writings.
Thank you, Kristien, for inviting us to participate in this publication!

Prologue: Van Rensselaer Potter
In which I introduce one of the original bioethicists

© 2022 Kristien Hens, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0320.22 The purpose of this book is to contribute to the future of the species by promoting the formation of a new discipline, the discipline of bioethics. If there are ‘two cultures’ that seem unable to speak to each other—science and the humanities—and if this is part of the reason that the future seems in doubt, then possible, we might build a ‘bridge to the future’ by building the discipline of Bioethics as a bridge between the two cultures.
—Van Rensselaer Potter (Rensselaer Potter, 1971, p. vii)




Practice to tune into time management and resilience of vegetal life forms.
From Christina Stadlbauer’s The Phytonic Oracle. A tool to read into the future, based on selected plants from the FlowerClock, 2022. Photos by Christina Stadlbauer, 2022 1


1 Christina Stadlbauer, The Phytonic Oracle; participatory installation at “Plant Measures” exhibition, Finlayson Art Area, Tampere (FI), 2022.

1. A Foundation for Bioethics: Van Rensselaer Potter’s Legacy

© 2022 Kristien Hens, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0320.01
How to live on a damaged planet? This was the question that the contributors to Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet asked themselves, a volume that was edited by Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt and that appeared in 2017 ( Tsing et al ., 2017). At the time of writing, it is 2022, and a pandemic has thrown humanity off guard. COVID-19 serves as a wake-up call for many ethicists and policymakers. How do we go forward? How to prevent, mitigate or live with even more challenging disasters yet to come? What methods do we use? What should be the guiding ethical principles? What technologies are appropriate? How will they change us? What about possible future health crises related to environmental pollution and climate change? Bioethics is the discipline deeply invested in questions related to technologies, health, and biology. Today, in 2022, bioethical reflections on responsibility towards future generations, our position as human animals in the biosphere, and the limitations of medicine in the face of human health crises are more needed than ever. At the same time, mainstream bioethics has still to rise fully to the occasion when facing possible future calamities.
First, bioethicists like me may have ignored the situatedness of knowledge and ethical reflection. We have assumed that a toolbox of Anglo-Saxon principles such as autonomy and beneficence ( Beauchamp and Childress, 1979), or more continental ones, including dignity, would suffice in maintaining an ethical biomedical practice. We have sometimes missed opportunities to engage with other value systems and marginalized standpoints. As Henk Ten Have writes in Bizarre Bioethics : It [bioethics] is too distanced from the values of ordinary people and too far from the social context in which problems arise. Ethics should be ‘resocialized’ (i.e., located into specific contexts; for example, considering the setting of poverty with the lack of access to treatment). ( ten Have, 2022)
Second, our perspectives were perhaps too fringe, too easily seduced by the lure of fantastic new technologies. Maybe disproportionally too much attention has been paid to the ethics of designer babies when the world as we know it is at risk of ceasing to exist. At the same time, the challenges humanity is facing are unprecedented. As I am writing these lines, most scientists and politicians acknowledge that it will be tough to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celcius. It is almost certain that generations after us will face unprecedented difficulties. Bioethics has a pivotal role as health, the environment, and new technologies have been the topics of our enquiry long ago. Still, until recently, environmental or engineering ethics have played a marginal role in bioethics conferences. Questions about environmental justice and where the world should be headed are often overshadowed by discussions about genetic privacy and the risks of genetic modification. Indeed, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet contains contributions of artists, writers and academics working in anthropology, history, humanities, biology, feminist philosophy, botany, ecology, literature and genetics, but no bioethicists.
Since the second half of the twentieth century, bioethics has been heavily influenced by Georgetown professors Beauchamp and Childress’ book Principles of Biomedical Ethics ( Beauchamp and Childress, 1979). This book laid down what would become the four principles of bioethics that every beginning bioethics student has to learn: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Since its publication, many have criticized it for valid reasons that will make their wa