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Ethical Challenges Regarding Agricultural Biotechnology!
The words morals and ethics are used to mean roughly the same thing, even though they do not. In its modern definition, morals include norms also with respect to nature.
The discipline of ethics, on the other hand, is moral philosophy -that is, describing the subject as well as comparing and critically reflecting different moralities.
Reflecting philosophically on ethics is a fulfilling and spiritually demanding concern. But ethics including the ethics of biotechnology and genetic engineering-must be brought down from the lofty heights of ideas or values and placed into the reality of everyday life. To deal responsibly means always and above all to deal intelligently-to weigh the consequences of our actions or non-actions according to the benefits and the harm they can provoke.
Intelligent action is acting in one’s enlightened self- interest and is thus compatible with the selfish tendencies in some of our societies. To assume that altruism and a holistic world-view are predominant human characteristics would be unrealistic.
Because the issue is complex, some essentials are follows:
1. Ethical challenges in discussion and with semantics
2. Ethical challenges of decision processes
3. Ethical challenges with regard to solidarity
At the end of the 20th century, we should see people who have different convictions and opinions as fellow human beings with a diverging view of the world. A more humanist attitude amongst those with differing views will also affect the language we use: Wherever managers of multinational corporations or bureaucrats at research institutes dismiss calls for caution or precaution as stupidity or old-style communist rhetoric, they lack not only style but also wisdom. Some observers fear that today a small minority of radical environmentalists are manipulating the public politically, in a way that may deny poorer nations access to a technology that could help them produce more and better food.
A kind of bio-McCarthyism is taking place, leading to slandering and vilification of anybody who sees genetic engineering and green biotechnology as anything but a nail in the coffin of modem society. Complex problems have no simple solutions. Assessing the contribution of genetic engineering to fighting hunger in developing countries is not simply an academic task involving facts and figures and rational evaluation.
The interpretation of data is subject to the interests and value judgments of a variety of stakeholders. Because we live in a world of heterogeneous social systems, with a multitude of value judgments and pluralism of interest, identical information leads to diverging verdicts.
Whereas some people consider genetic engineering something unnatural and inherently nasty and a threat to development in poor countries, others see a compelling moral imperative to develop genetically improved crops to combat poverty and ensure food security. The notion that there is no such thing as one objective reality but a multitude of subjective realities seems prevalent in discussions of biotechnology, as it does in discussions of all major social issues.
There is an assumption that science is neutral and objective. What objectivity means here is that the scientist should provide disinterested information about facts, and not permit an intrusion of his or her subjective values. Disinterested sciences have never existed, and never will. It is impossible to avoid having personal valuations affect our judgment, so we should at least make them explicit and give transparency to what we define as desirable and undesirable.
The private sector is often accused of having profit interests. That is true if after investing billions of dollars in research, you hope to find something that is attractive enough that clients will buy it for a good price. Is that a reason for blame in democratic and market-oriented societies, providing the pursuit of commercial interests is based on law and enlightened self-interest? What are the interests of those opposing biotechnology?
For many observers, large international nongovernment organisations are self-styled Robin Hoods interested in saving the world. This may be true, or it may not be so simple. It would certainly be interesting to shed more light on the necessity of opinion marketing for the generation of funds for NGOs. Some of the NGOs are also adept in using their power in media and voter terms.
As the media are more likely to take up wild stories about the creation of monsters than stories about slow but steady progress toward better crop varieties for resource poor farmers, a certain kind of semantics and argumentation has direct relevance for the acquisition of funds.
Although any set of personal values can be legitimate from the perspective of its holders, personal values should not necessarily be imposed on others in the sense of prescriptive ethics. This holds especially true for the competition of anthropocentric and bio-centric values.
Differences of values and convictions start at a very fundamental level: There are people who oppose genetic engineering for the fundamental reason that human beings should not do what they perceive as playing God. Others give the biosphere as such specific rights-that is, that species boundaries are not to be violated.
The ambivalence of technological progress and the fact that a technological innovation can be used for good as well as for ill is neither new nor confined to genetic engineering and biotechnology. Whether you see biotechnology as a threat or as a blessing depends in part on where you position human beings in the biosphere.
Technology Inherent Risks:
For genetically improved organisms, the risks classified as inherent in the technology are frequently summarised as biosafety risks. There is a wealth of scientific literature on the deliberate release of living modified organisms into either new environments or areas where they could prove particularly harmful. Until today, no severe biosafety risks have become known.
The same is true for genetically altered food: Thousands of scientific papers have demonstrated the safety of the technology and no scientifically reputable test has produced so far any hint that genetically improved food could be in any way toxic.
There is a broad consensus amongst most scientists that serious concerns about the release of living modified organisms are unwarranted. In 1999, nearly 41 million hectares around the world were planted commercially with new genetically improved crops, and no serious issue arose.
It is particularly cynical that field trials that could prove the on-going validity of the scientific consensus on safety in the environment are being vandalised, thus preventing the accumulation of further evidence of the behaviour of the new varieties.
Most countries with biotechnological-based industries have sophisticated legislation in place intended to ensure the safe transfer, handling, use, and disposal of such organisms and their products. But even with the best procedures and regulations in place, some risks will remain.
Risks-calculable risks-must be taken, otherwise technological progress becomes impossible. There is always the possibility, no matter how slim, that something could go wrong. But science deals in probabilities, while the public has little appreciation for P values, so the few studies discussing specific risks have received disproportionate media play.
Technology Transcending Risks:
Technology-transcending risks, as opposed to technology- inherent risks, emanate from the political and social context in which a technology is used. In developing countries, these risks spring from both the course the global economy takes and country-specific political and social circumstances.
The most critical risks have to do with three issues: aggravation of the prosperity gap between industrial and developing countries, growth in the disparity in income and wealth distribution within poor societies, and loss of biodiversity. This is not the place to go into a detailed discussion of these issues. What has to be stressed again, however, is the necessity to disentangle risks.
Where there is war, civil strife, and harsh political regimes, there will be hunger. Food insecurity is one of the most terrible manifestations of human deprivation and is inextricably linked to every other facet of development.
Poverty is one of the major causes of food insecurity, and sustainable progress in poverty alleviation is critical to improved access to food. Poverty is linked not only to poor national economic performance but also to a political structure that renders poor people powerless. So policy matters of a general nature, and in particular good governance, are of overriding importance for food security.
Progress toward food security also requires a proper macroeconomic framework, and the elements that have been most important for success on the poverty front are known today . Technology-transcending risks mostly materialise because a gap opens between human scientific technical ability and human willingness to shoulder moral and political responsibility. Today, the risks most likely to inhibit development lie in the political, economic, and social milieu in which technology is applied.
All technological decisions must be the result of a scientific weighing of arguments and be based on a sober and disinterested benefit-risk analysis in a specific situation and within a wider technological portfolio-that is, they have to be decisions based on the ethic of accountability.
Ethics of Accountability:
At the moment there are more than 800 million people- mostly women and children-living with chronic malnutrition. In addition, hundreds of millions of people more face food shortages during some part of the year. World population will grow by at least another 3 billion over the next 50 years, with virtually all of the increase in developing countries. Researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) say that food production in developing countries will have to be doubled in the next 50 years if a major food security crisis is to be prevented.
During that same 50 years, water will become increasingly scarce and what is left will be more polluted. Arable land is shrinking and what is left will be less productive. In addition, Earth is getting warmer, and no one knows what this is going to mean for the ability of poor countries to produce sufficient food. There is one last scary development.Over the past decades, cereal yields per hectare have deteriorated by one-third. Many food experts expect that this downward trend will continue and that conventional breeding might not be able to reverse it.
The spectrum of potential benefits from the application of genetic engineering and biotechnology to food crops in developing countries ranges from diagnostic aids, for example to accelerate the finding of plant and animal diseases, to gene mapping, which allows speedier identification of interesting and useful genetic material for every kind of plant usable in agriculture.
The main objective of R&D for food security is to find improved seed varieties that enable reliable high yields at the same or lower tillage costs through qualities such as resistance to or tolerance of diseases and pests as well as to stress factors.
Equally important objectives are the transfer of genes with nitrogen-fixing capacity onto grains, and the improvement of food quality by overcoming vitamin or mineral deficiencies. There is a wealth of serious analyses that see a great potential for genetically improved crops to contribute to human well-being, particularly in developing countries.
The possibilities of higher yields from new genetically improved crops plus their capability to cope with soil toxicity may also help prevent the farming of ecologically fragile areas, or the clearing of tropical forests for agricultural purposes. As natural biodiversity in such areas is particularly high, tremendous positive effects for biodiversity would result.
New agricultural technologies can only contribute one stone to the complex mosaic of agricultural development. Policies must ensure that a development-friendly environment exists and that technological progress is oriented toward the needs of the poor, particularly smallholders.
All serious analyses admit concerns with regard to human health, environmental safety, and intellectual property rights (IPR), but the majority concludes that-with a proper regulatory regimen enforced-benefits are likely to greatly outstrip concerns, so that ethically there should be every effort to realise these benefits.
Continued research on all aspects of genetic engineering and biotechnology is necessary to maximise benefits and minimise risks. Whatever helps to address public concerns and regain public confidence for genetic engineering and biotechnology must be done, because in the end, in pluralistic democratic societies, it is social acceptance that makes success feasible.
Ethical Dilemmas:
Ethical dilemmas are predicaments that force us to decide between two or more alternative courses of action, each of which is more or less fraught with guilt. Tragic situations illustrative of this quandary abound-situations involving life-and death decisions and, with them, inevitable suffering and grief.
Ethical dilemmas, then, are not situations that confront us with a choice between an ethically enjoined and a forbidden course of action, but rather ones where we are offered a choice between two or more undesirable courses of action. Not doing anything or putting up with a problematic situation can also be a choice, though not an ethically admissible one because it sidesteps the real point at issue: having to decide on which is the lesser evil.
Solutions to ethical dilemmas often demand compromises. Many people feel vaguely uncomfortable with this because of the negative connotations attached to the word compromise-as in an uneasy or a shoddy compromise. But qualms bring us no closer to a solution. In pluralistic societies, it is virtually impossible not to enter into compromises.
The law defines merely the ethical minimum. How minimal this is can be seen in the manifest inadequacy of the legal framework in many developing countries, for example, where as a result of institutional deficiencies or the paramount presence of political violence, the law is overridden. So even if the law does not expressly compel it, knowing better imposes the obligation to accept responsibility beyond the letter of the law.
Concretely, if a developing country has no biosafety regulation or has one but does not enforce it, it might be legal to introduce genetically improved crops, because it is not forbidden. It cannot be legitimate, however, as it would not happen with the informed consent of the authorities and farmers in the countries concerned.
Over and above innumerable examples of the ineffectiveness of laws, there also exists a clear difference between juridical and ethical accountability. Whereas the juridical is contained within precisely defined bounds, a concern for the whole enjoins that ethical responsibility should not be equally confined. In ethical perspective, not everything that is legal is desirable, and not everything that is desirable is a legal obligation.