ABSTRACT
Science and technology are expected to provide generalized social benefits and to be respectful of human dignity and well-being and, increasingly, the dignity and well-being of animals and the nonhuman world in general. Medical science has progressed at an astonishing pace since World War II, from antibiotics to kidney dialysis, from organ transplants to tissue regeneration. In agriculture, thanks to genetic technologies, new kinds of pesticides and herbicides have been produced, new species have been created and existing species have been cloned. Technologies that deploy algorithmic calculation are becoming ubiquitous, from biometric profiling to ‘data-driven’ research. Nanotechnology offers the possibility to improve the performance of materials (for example, in cosmetics, antibacterial materials based on nanosilver) and to target drugs to specific parts of the body. In these and many other fields, unprecedented opportunities have opened up which reconfigure humans' relationships with one another, with nonhuman entities and with themselves, raising important ethical questions. Resonant dilemmas are posed, for example, by the utilization of human cells and tissues for research purposes, or by the storage and use of sensitive personal data. Long-debated issues, such as volunteer informed consent or animal involvement in experiments, become increasingly salient.
