Abstract
In this chapter, we analyze the current production of bioartefacts derived from synthetic biology, and their ethical and societal consequences. In addition to the socio-economic problems and growing technological gap between North and South, synthetic biology raises new environmental and biological risks, triggering a global challenge. Such risks are also beginning to worry some scientists, philosophers and civil society organizations, because the use of new synthesized organisms extends their long-term effects and increases the risk of bioterrorism and ‘bioerrorism’. However, the principal and most profound implications of synthetic biology will occur in the global economy, in biomedical and pharmaceutical research, and in the food and biofuels industries, fomenting and intensifying social and ethical controversies regarding the development of biotechnology, its capacity to determine the future of technological civilization, and its essential relationship with all the ecosystems on Earth.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Recombinant DNA was the invention of Paul Berg, Herbert Boyer and Stanley Norman Cohen, in Stanford 1971 (Venter 2013).
- 3.
Nowadays, Genentech has obtained nearly “20,000 patents worldwide covering the innovations made by its researchers, as well as its engineering and manufacturing operations.” Genentech is one of the most prolific patent owners in the biotechnology industry (Genentech 2016).
- 4.
Vid. Science, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6280/aad6253. Accessed August 20, 2016.
- 5.
In the Spanish philosophy of technology, Ana Cuevas Badallo (2008) first formulated the concept of the bioartefact.
- 6.
Vid. Aristotle (2008), Physics, B, 1, 192b13-24. We can attribute, in part, the same characteristics of natural beings to bioartefacts.
- 7.
Keekok Lee denominates this period of the production of biotic artefacts the “Mendelian genetics and hybridization”. Vid. K. Lee (2005, chapter 3).
- 8.
A degree of artefactuality implies that an entity has been modified by human technical action; a degree of artificiality implies that an entity has been produced or manufactured by human technical action to mimic or replicate some other natural (unmodified) object or process. Up to now, artificial things have been made with non-biotic materials; e.g., artificial hearts, artificial intelligence, ‘artificial respiration’, artificial satellites, and artificial flavors. However, bioartificial plants do not yet exist, nor do living artificial organisms or living artificial cells. Vid. Negrotti (2012).
- 9.
This is the case of bioartefacts resulting from assisted reproductive techniques.
- 10.
Transgenic corn, for example, has had its genome modified to perform in a new way: it produces a toxin that defends it from plagues. A transgenic animal may have a(n) (unnatural) technical capacity, or new modalities of action or function. For example, a rabbit may be fluorescent to certain types of light because of jellyfish genes transplanted into its genome; such as the rabbit Alba created by bioartist Eduardo Kac in collaboration with French geneticist Louis-Marie Houdebine.
- 11.
In principle, it would be possible to design, e.g., an organism with a predetermined lifespan. Although mortality is substantial to all living entities, a precise lifespan is not predetermined. A new end could be assigned as scheduled, precisely specified mortality, with an ‘expiration date’. Like the Nexus replicants, bioartificial cyborgs, in the cult science fiction film Blade Runner (Ridley Scott 1982), from the original novel of Philip K. Dick: Do androids dream of electric sheep? (1968).
- 12.
K. Lee argues at the beginning of her book The natural and the artefactual, “The threat then posed by modern homo faber is the systematic elimination of the natural, both at the empirical and ontological levels, thereby generating a narcissistic civilization” (Lee 1999, p. 2).
- 13.
“The geological characteristics of […] the chemical composition of the water bodies of Cuatro Cienegas have created a niche that has allowed the survival of life forms that were once common on earth and now survive only in few places in the world. In the waters of this valley there are still archaic organisms whose main function in the planet’s history was the modification of the primitive atmosphere by the first known form of photosynthesis and subsequent production of oxygen […] In the current context, stromatolites are a component of vital importance to the pools of Cuatro Cienegas, because they are true oxygen tanks for living beings that exist there” (Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas 2016).
References
Aristotle. (2008). Physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boldt, J. (2013). Creating life: Synthetic biology and ethics. In G. Kaebnick & T. Mrray (Eds.), Synthetic biology and morality: Artificial life and the bounds of nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Church, G., & Regis, E. (2012). Regenesis. How synthetic biology will reinvent nature and ourselves. New York: Basic Books.
Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas de México. (2016). Área de protección de flora y fauna Cuatrociénegas. http://cuatrocienegas.conanp.gob.mx/biodiversidad.php. Accessed 28 June 2016.
Cuevas Badallo, A. (2008). Los bioartefactos: viejas realidades que plantean nuevos problemas en la adscripción funciónal. Argumentos de Razón Técnica, 11, 71–96.
Echeverría, J. (2003). La revolución tecnocientífica. Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Genentech. (2016). Genentech a member of the Roche Group. http://www.gene.com/40th/patent-then-publish. Accessed 15 July 2016.
Kaebnick, G. E., & Murray, T. H. (Eds.). (2013). Synthetic biology and morality: Artificial life and the bounds of nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lee, K. (1999). The natural and the artefactual. The implications of deep science and deep technology for environmental philosophy. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Lee, K. (2003). Philosophy and revolutions in genetics: Deep science and deep technology. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan.
Linares, J. E. (2008). Ética y mundo tecnológico. México: UNAM-FCE.
Linares, J. E., & Arriaga, E. (2016). Aproximaciones interdisciplinarias a la bioartefactualidad. México:UNAM (in press).
Mitcham, C. (1994). Thinking through technology: The path between engineering and philosophy. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Negrotti, M. (2012). The reality of the artificial. Nature, technology and naturoids. Dordrecht: Springer.
Ortega y Gasset, J. (1939). Meditación de la técnica (p. 2015). Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva.
Oye, K. A., & Wellhausen, R. (2009). The intellectual commons and property in synthetic biology. In M. Schmidt, A. Kelle, et al. (Eds.), Synthetic biology: The technoscience and its societal consequenes (pp. 121–140). Dordrecht: Springer.
Presidential Comission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. (2010). New directions: The ethics of synthetic biology and emerging technologies. In Presidential comission for the study of bioethical issues. june de 2010. www.bioethics.gov. Accessed 20 Aug 2016.
Schmidt, M. (2009). Do I understand what I can create? In M. Schidt, A. Kelle, et al. (Eds.), Synthetic biology: The technoscience and its societal consequences (pp. 81–100). Dordrecht: Springer.
Sunder Rajan, K. (2006). Biocapital. The constitution of postgenomic life. Durham: Duke University Press.
Sunder Rajan, K. (Ed.). (2012). Lively capital: Biotechnologies, ethics, and governance in global markets. Durham: Duke University Press.
Venter, J. C. (2013). Life at the speed of light: From the Double Helix to the dawn of digital life. New York: Penguin Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Linares Salgado, J.E. (2018). The Promises of Synthetic Biology: New Bioartefacts and Their Ethical and Societal Consequences. In: Laspra, B., López Cerezo, J. (eds) Spanish Philosophy of Technology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71958-0_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71958-0_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71957-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71958-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)