Bioethics™

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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. ‘From Work to Text’. (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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