Biomedical subjects
Fabrice Jotterand
Publications and source records attributed to Fabrice Jotterand.
The politicization of science and technology: its implications for nanotechnology.
The development of nanotechnology intensifies challenges to the traditional understanding of how to pursue scientific and technological knowledge. Science can no longer be construed simply as the ideal of the quest for truth (i.e., "pure science"). Science has become the source of economic power and political power. In this paper, I argue that nanotechnology is a cardinal exemplar of "this politicization." At the same time, I assert that this new scientific ethos offers the possibility of a better integration of ethical and philosophical reflections at the core of scientific and technological development.
The Hippocratic oath and contemporary medicine: dialectic between past ideals and present reality?
The Hippocratic Oath, the Hippocratic tradition, and Hippocratic ethics are widely invoked in the popular medical culture as conveying a direction to medical practice and the medical profession. This study critically addresses these invocations of Hippocratic guideposts, noting that reliance on the Hippocratic ethos and the Oath requires establishing (1) what the Oath meant to its author, its original community of reception, and generally for ancient medicine (2) what relationships contemporary invocations of the Oath and the tradition have to the original meaning of the Oath and its original reception (3) what continuity exists and under what circumstances over the last two-and-a-half millenniums of medical-moral reflections (4) what continuity there is in the meaning of professionalism from the time of Hippocrates to the 21st century, and (5) what social factors in particular have transformed the medical profession in particular countries. This article argues that the resources for a better understanding of medical professionalism lie not in the Hippocratic Oath, tradition, or ethos in and of themselves. Rather, it must be found in a philosophy of medicine that explores the values internal to medicine, thus providing a medical-moral philosophy so as to be able to resist the deformation of medical professionalism by bioethics, biopolitics, and governmental regulation. The Oath, as well as Stephen H. Miles' recent monograph, The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine, are employed as heuristics, so as to throw into better light the extent to which the Hippocratic Oath, tradition, and ethics can provide guidance and direction, as well as to show the necessity of taking seriously the need for a substantive philosophy of medicine.
The precautionary principle: a dialectical reconsideration.
This essay examines an overlooked element of the precautionary principle: a prudent assessment of the long-range or remote catastrophes possibly associated with technological development must include the catastrophes that may take place because of the absence of such technologies. In short, this brief essay attempts to turn the precautionary principle on its head by arguing that, (1) if the long-term survival of any life form is precarious, and if the survival of the current human population is particularly precarious, especially given contemporary urban population densities, and (2) if technological innovation and progress are necessary in order rapidly to adapt humans to meet environmental threats that would otherwise be catastrophic on a large scale (e.g., pandemics of highly lethal diseases), then (3) the development of biomedical technologies in many forms, but in particular including human germ-line genetic engineering, may be required by the precautionary principle, given the prospect of the obliteration of humans in the absence of such enhanced biotechnology. The precautionary principle thus properly understood requires an ethos that should generally support technological innovation, at least in particular areas of biotechnology.
Neither Convention nor Constitution--what the debate on stem cell research tells us about the status of the common European ethics.
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Bioethics and the coming age of thresholding.
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