Article Text
PDFPublic health ethics
Paper
Great expectations—ethics, avian flu and the value of progress
Abstract
A recent controversy over the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity's recommendation to censor two publications on genetically modified H5N1 avian influenza has generated concern over the threat to scientific freedom such censorship presents. In this paper, I argue that in the case of these studies, appeals to scientific freedom are not sufficient to motivate a rejection of censorship. I then use this conclusion to draw broader concerns about the ethics of dual-use research.
- Technology/Risk Assessment
- Social Control of Science/Technology
- Scientific Research
- Public Health Ethics
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Biodefense and dual-use research: the optimisation problem and the value of security
- Biodefence and the production of knowledge: rethinking the problem
- US board gives green light to publication of bird flu studies it previously blocked
- Gain-of-function research and model organisms in biology
- Biosecurity and the division of cognitive labour
- Synthetic biology and the ethics of knowledge
- Biomedical conflicts of interest: a defence of the sequestration thesis—learning from the cases of Nancy Olivieri and David Healy
- Clinicians and patients' welfare: where does academic freedom fit in?
- US board says censuring research on avian flu was necessary to prevent a potential catastrophe
- The ethics of biosafety considerations in gain-of-function research resulting in the creation of potential pandemic pathogens