Article Text
General ethics
High hopes and automatic escalators: a critique of some new arguments in bioethics
Abstract
Two protechnology arguments, the “hopeful principle” and the “automatic escalator”, often used in bioethics, are identified and critically analysed in this paper. It is shown that the hopeful principle is closely related to the problematic precautionary principle, and the automatic escalator argument has close affinities to the often criticised empirical slippery slope argument. The hopeful principle is shown to be really hopeless as an argument, and automatic escalator arguments often lead nowhere when critically analysed. These arguments should therefore only be used with great caution.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
-
Competing interests: None declared.
Other content recommended for you
- Transhumanism, medical technology and slippery slopes
- Fallacies in the arguments for new technology: the case of proton therapy
- Is a consensus possible on stem cell research? Moral and political obstacles
- Should selecting saviour siblings be banned?
- Embryonic stem cell research is not dehumanising us
- Social determinants of health and slippery slopes in assisted dying debates: lessons from Canada
- Just diagnosis? Preimplantation genetic diagnosis and injustices to disabled people
- The inference from a single case: moral versus scientific inferences in implementing new biotechnologies
- Moral uncertainty and the farming of human-pig chimeras
- Preventive detention must be resisted by the medical profession