The ethics of protocells : moral and social implications of creating life in the laboratory /
Bedau, Mark.
Parke, Emily C.
Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press,
©2009.
Contributors explore the potential benefits, risks & ethical aspects of protocell technology, which creates simple forms of life from nonliving material.
Description based upon print version of record.
Contents; Series Foreword; Preface; 1 Introduction to the Ethics of Protocells; I Risk, Uncertainty, and Precaution with Protocells; 2 New Technologies, Public Perceptions, and Ethics; 3 Social and Ethical Implications of Creating Artificial Cells ; 4 The Acceptability of the Risks of Protocells; 5 The Precautionary Principle and Its Critics; 6 A New Virtue-Based Understanding of the Precautionary Principle; 7 Ethical Dialogue about Science in the Context of a Culture of Precaution; II Lessons from Recent History and Related Technologies
8 The Creation of Life in Cultural Context: From Spontaneous Generation to Synthetic Biology9 Second Life: Some Ethical Issues in Synthetic Biology and the Recapitulation of Evolution; 10 Protocell Patents: Property Between Modularity and Emergence; 11 Protocells, Precaution, and Open-Source Biology; 12  The Ambivalence of Protocells: Challenges for Self-Reflexive Ethics ; III  Ethics in a Future with Protocells; 13 Open Evolution and Human Agency: The Pragmatics of Upstream Ethics in the Design of Artificial Life ; 14 Human Practices: Interfacing Three Modes of Collaboration
15 This Is Not a Hammer: On Ethics and Technology16 Toward a Critical Evaluation of Protocell Research; 17 Methodological Considerations about the Ethical and Social Implications of Protocells; About the Authors; Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contributors explore the potential benefits, risks & ethical aspects of protocell technology, which creates simple forms of life from nonliving material.
OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
Artificial cells
PHILOSOPHY/Ethics & Bioethics