Abstract
What happens in the world’s most advanced life sciences laboratories, why those activities are important, and whether and how they can be brought under a uniform governance framework might be considered exquisitely esoteric matters in the context of the great geopolitical questions of our time. Nonetheless, the emerging issues in biotechnology—the use of living organisms to create new products and especially in the control of the human genome—represent a useful stress test for the future of the norms inherent in the liberal international order (LIO). My case study will be the nearly universal public outrage following the announcement by a Chinese scientist that he had engaged in the first gene editing of several embryos that survived to birth, an episode that has created an opportunity to assess the global consensus about the ethics of biotechnology with regard to human DNA. Although not as explicit or well understood or enforced as weapons treaties, trade arrangements, or monetary institutions, the norms around biotechnology are very much a product of the post-World War II liberal consensus.
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Notes
- 1.
This manuscript was prepared before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I consider the implications of this episode for my argument in subsequent publications.
- 2.
Although the questions of guilt or innocence of the 23 defendants did not turn on the ethics of human experiments, the defense lawyers did succeed in calling attention to questionable experiments that were a matter of public record. The first proposition of the Code, that “[t]he voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential,” as well as provisions concerning legal capacity and professional responsibility, have shaped virtually every national and international document on the subject. This is true despite continuing disagreement about the legal status or precise reference of the Code. The Code was not of course addressed to modifications of human cellular material, but it implicitly established the notion that the international community could set ethical rules for medical science.
- 3.
The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR 2006) states, “human rights constitute the tangible elements for achieving … freedom, and therefore, peace as progress, as transformation and as deepening in dignity, equality, and freedom of all human beings”. The UDBHR established a wide range of principles (bioethicists love principles), including personal autonomy, consent, privacy, equality, and benefit sharing. Two UNESCO entities, the International Bioethics Committee and the World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology have published reports on such topics as non-discrimination and non-stigmatization, bioethics and refugees, and adaptation to climate change. The Council for International Organizations of Medical Societies, established by UNESCO and the World Health Organization (WHO), publishes specific ethics guidance documents on topics like drug promotion.
- 4.
In the years since Splicing Life international governmental organizations such as UNESCO, including guidance documents on the human genome and human rights (1997) and human genetic data (2003), reflect similar topics, principles, and concerns.
- 5.
A scientist has published a book about CRISPR that included data from the experiment obtained through his communications with Dr. He: Kiran Musunuru, The CRISPR Generation: The Story of the World’s First Gene-Edited Babies (BookBaby, 2019).
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Moreno, J. (2023). Genopolitics: Biotechnology Norms and the Liberal International Order. In: Zima, T., Weisstub, D.N. (eds) Medical Research Ethics: Challenges in the 21st Century. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 132. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12692-5_3
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