New science often raises new ethical questions. Since scientific discoveries can change how we understand and live in the world, their ethical implications can influence society at large, affect a field’s public acceptance, and shape the creation of technologies that sometimes require new regulation.
But historically, ethicists have been given the opportunity to analyze advances in the life sciences only after those advances have started to affect the real world. This often results in ethical controversies gaining momentum before bioethicists are called upon to assess the implications of a discovery, identify moments at which crucial decisions need to be made, and suggest course corrections.
A team at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has now presented a solution in the form of a model called collaborative ethics…
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