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- Munthe, Christian, 1962
(författare)
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Precaution and Ethics: Handling risks, uncertainties and knowledge gaps in the regulation of new biotechnologies
- 2017
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This volume outlines and analyses ethical issues actualized by applying a precautionary approach to the regulation of new biotechnologies. It presents a novel way of categorizing and comparing biotechnologies from a precautionary standpoint. Based on this, it addresses underlying philosophical problems regarding the ethical assessment of decision-making under uncertainty and ignorance, and discusses how risks and possible benefits of such technologies should be balanced from an ethical standpoint. It argues on conceptual and ethical grounds for a technology neutral regulation as well as for a regulation that not only checks new technologies but also requires old, inferior ones to be phased out. It demonstrates how difficult ethical issues regarding the extent and ambition of precautionary policies need to be handled by such a regulation, and presents an overarching framework for doing so.
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| 2. |
- Lehrman, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Shaping our food – an overview of crop and livestock breeding
- 2014
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- You may not have thought about why tomatoes look the way they do, why our pets and farm animals are so calm and friendly, or how it is possible to get a watermelon without any seeds in it. Although the breeding of plants and livestock have shaped more or less everything we eat, few people know about the scientific achievements and the tedious work that results in the food we see on our plates every day. With this book we wish to give an overview of the background of domestication and breeding, from the beginning of farming more than 10,000 years ago to the molecular work of today. We present the basics of the structures and functions of genes, describe why and how different breeding methods are applied to crops and livestock, and give some insight into legislation surrounding the use of biotechnology in breeding in the EU and in Sweden. We also provide an overview of different products produced through genetic modification, a summary of the economic impact of such crops, and some ethical issues related to breeding in general and to genetic modification in particular.
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| 3. |
- Munthe, Christian, 1962
(författare)
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The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk
- 2011
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since a couple of decades, the notion of a precautionary principle plays a central and increasingly influential role in international as well as national policy and regulation regarding the environment and the use of technology. Urging society to take action in the face of potential risks of human activities in these areas, the recent focus on climate change has further sharpened the importance of this idea. However, the idea of a precautionary principle has also been problematised and criticised by scientists, scholars and policy activists, and been accused of almost every intellectual sin imaginable: unclarity, impracticality, arbitrariness and moral as well as political unsoundness. In that light, the very idea of precaution as an ideal for policy making rather comes out as a dead end. On the basis of these contrasting starting points, Christian Munthe undertakes an innovative, in-depth philosophical analysis of what the idea of a precautionary principle is and should be about. A novel theory of the ethics of imposing risks is developed and used as a foundation for defending the idea of precaution in environmental and technological policy making against its critics, while at the same time avoiding a number of identified flaws. The theory is shown to have far-reaching consequences for areas such as bio-, information- and nuclear technology, and global environmental policy in areas such as climate change. The author argues that, while the price we pay for precaution must not be too high, we have to be prepared to pay it in order to act ethically defensible. A number of practical suggestions for precautionary regulation and policy making are made on the basis of this, and some challenges to basic ethical theory as well as consumerist societies, the global political order and liberal democracy are identified
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