Bioethics™
Life, Politics, Economics
edited by Joanna Zylinska
Introduction: Bioethical Mutations in the Age of Capital
Bioethics is a serious business, in every sense of the word. A sub-domain of philosophy which deals with issues concerning life and health, it has to arbitrate not only over practical matters regarding patient care and medical experiments, but also over the very ontology of ‘life’: its manufacturing, patenting and redefinition in and by the biotech industry. Since bioethics functions as a node in the complex nexus of social, political and economic forces, it is perhaps not surprising that technocapitalism does not want to leave it just to philosophers. Instead, it mobilises a whole army of experts: morality salespeople, ethics technicians, value mathematicians, to help us decide on the price of life. Consequently, bioethics increasingly abandons its more daring ambitions and responsibilities -- such as exploring the metaphysics of life or the politics of everyday survival -- to serve instead as just a ‘technical discourse about values clarification and choice’ (Haraway, 2007: 109). Its methods of working are thus principally procedural, akin to ‘facts and hypothesis testing’ in science (Haraway, 2007: 109). Feminist thinker Donna Haraway points out that medical ethics ‘is now a literal industry, funded directly by the new developments in technoscience. Ethics experts have become an indispensable part of the apparatus of technoscience-production’ (2007: 109). To put it crudely, bioethics’ role is often to get biotech corporations off the hook -- although, of course, it has the potential to be much more than that. Indeed, in its engagement with life in both a metaphysical and material sense, bioethics is conceivably one of the most exciting areas of philosophical interrogation and artistic experimentation today. (more)
The Business of Bioethics
- Carl Elliott
- American Bioscience Meets the American Dream
- Jocelyn E. Mackie, Andrew D. Taylor, David L. Finegold, Abdallah S. Daar, Peter A. Singer
- Lessons on Ethical Decision Making from the Bioscience Industry
- Carlos Novas
- What Is the Bioscience Industry Doing to Address the Ethical Issues It Faces?
- Ezekiel J Emanuel, Trudo Lemmens, Carl Elliott
- Should Society Allow Research Ethics Boards to Be Run As For-Profit Enterprises?
The Commercialization of Medical Research and Patient Care
- T Lemmens, PB Miller
- Regulating the Market in Human Research Participants
- Aaron S. Kesselheim, Michelle M. Mello, David M. Studdert
- Strategies and Practices in Off-Label Marketing of Pharmaceuticals: A Retrospective Analysis of Whistleblower Complaints
- Adriane J. Fugh-Berman
- The Haunting of Medical Journals: How Ghostwriting Sold “HRT”
- Ben Goldacre
- The True Purpose of a Drug Trial Is Not Always Obvious
- Marcia Angell
- The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? and The Illusions of Psychiatry
- David Henry
- Doctors and Drug Companies: Still Cozy after All These Years
Biomanufacturing and Biopatenting
- Antony Taubman
- The International Patent System and Biomedical Research: Reconciling Aspiration, Policy and Practice
- Arti Rai, James Boyle
- Synthetic Biology: Caught between Property Rights, the Public Domain, and the Commons
- Paul Rabinow, Gaymon Bennett
- Synthetic Biology: Ethical Ramifications 2009
- D G Gill
- “Anything you can do, I can do bigger?”: The Ethics and Equity of Growth Hormone for Small Normal Children
- Joanna Zylinska
- Playing God, Playing Adam: The Politics and Ethics of Enhancement
The Body as Property, Commodity and Gift
- Tarif Bakdash, Nancy Scheper-Hughes
- Is It Ethical for Patients with Renal Disease to Purchase Kidneys from the World's Poor?
- Mark Schweda, Silke Schicktanz
- The "spare parts person"? Conceptions of the Human Body and Their Implications for Public Attitudes towards Organ Donation and Organ Sale
- Antonia J Cronin, David Price
- Directed Organ Donation: Is the Donor the Owner?
- Howard Wolinsky
- The Thousand-Dollar Genome. Genetic Brinkmanship or Personalized Medicine?
Global Health Inc.
- Robert Mitchell, Catherine Waldby
- National Biobanks: Clinical Labor, Risk Production, and the Creation of Biovalue
- Kammerle Schneider, Laurie Garrett
- The End of the Era of Generosity? Global Health amid Economic Crisis
- Jacquineau Azétsop, Stuart Rennie
- Principlism, Medical Individualism, and Health Promotion in Resource-poor Countries: Can Autonomy-based Bioethics Promote Social Justice and Population Health?
- Stuart Rennie, Bavon Mupenda
- Living Apart Together: Reflections on Bioethics, Global Inequality and Social Justice
The Art of Life Between Speculation and Appreciation
- Ionat Zurr, Oron Catts
- Big Pigs, Small Wings: On Genohype and Artistic Autonomy
- Adam Zaretsky
- The Workhorse Zoo Art and Bioethics Quiz
- Critical Art Ensemble
- The Flesh Machine
- Joanna Zylinska – If It Reads, It Bleeds; 3' video, 2010
Attributions
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