What’s in a Question?

1. What’s in a Question? Environmental Science Bioethics

2. What are bioethical questions? • 1. Should there be limits to how much people modify the natural world using technology? • 2. Should all students be required to have vaccinations? • 3. Should scientists clone pets or animals for food?

3. Bio-Ethical questions • 4. Whom should scientists test new medicines on? • 5. Should doctors provide fatal medicines to terminally ill patients who want to end their lives? • 6. Should donated eggs be fertilized by sperm in the lab to create embryos for stem cell banks?

4. Ethics… A sense of what a person should do, or the best course of action and provide reasons why. It also helps people to decide how to behave and treat one another, and what kinds of communities would be good to live in.

5. Bioethics consist of… • 1. Moral values: worth ex: women, children, slaves were treated as property long ago & not today. • 2. Moral Extensionism: we gradually extended our sense of moral value to a wider and wider circle. ex: Children not treated as property, pets have legal protection against cruel treatment and can extend to include forests, inanimate objects or the earth as a whole.

6. You will be affected by bioethics!! How? • New inventions • New medicines • New biomedical procedures • New types of tests for diseases • Artificial organs

7. Bio-Environmental Ethics? Ethical questions will arise with respect to not only biological advances but with many environmental issues.

8. Environmental issue Ethical ?’s • 1. Should we store used nuclear waste deep in the Nevada mountains? • 2. Should industrial companies be allowed to dump a percentage of their waste into local lakes, rives, or oceans? 3. Should golf courses be allowed to use synthetic fertilizers to “green” up the golf areas?

9. Environmental Ethical ?’s • Should fishermen be allowed to take as much fish as they want from oceans and lakes? • Should forests be cut down to make way for farming or industry? • Should industrial companies be allowed to bury/dispose of their toxic wastes anywhere?

10. Environmental Ethics ?’s • Should we continually mine for natural resources by destroying the land? • Should cattle ranchers be allowed to keep cattle in “feedlot situations” to fatten cows before slaughter? • Do we continually inject chickens with antibiotics before slaughter to reduce salmonella contamination to the public?

11. Environmental Ethical ?’s 10. Should crop seeds such as corn and soybean be “genetically modified “ to provide larger crops without the use of pesticides or fertilizers?

12. How bioethics can affect the environment?

13. 4 Key Questions to Explore Bioethics: • What is the ethical question? 2. What are the relevant facts? 3. Who or what could be affected by the way the question gets resolved? 4. What are the relevant ethical considerations?

14. What is the ethical question? 1. Skill called moral sensitivity (ability to detect there are ethical concerns) • Red flag-conflicts with personal and/or moral beliefs, religious beliefs, etc. Key Fact when E.Q. arises—individuals or groups might be harmed, disrespected or unfairly disadvantaged.

15. 2. Relevant Facts 1. Scientific facts are important that provide link between bioethics and biology. • Know the research is on the issue!

16. Relevant Facts (con’t) • 2. Social science facts are equally important. • Psychological • Sociological • Historical • Economics • Anthropological facts and concepts

17. Who or What will be Affected by the Outcome? • Think about the range of individuals who are affected by this question. • What are physical, emotional and economical impacts on the individual?

18. Other relevant considerations? • 1. Respect for persons-is it ethical to kill one human to save 5 with his/her organs? • 2. Harms and benefits – promote positive consequences by balancing. First—DO GOOD! • 3. Fairness – All voices heard! • 4. Authenticity-Genuine and trustworthy • 5. Responsibility