Thursday, September 30, 2004
Critic article up online
An article I wrote for Critic about the formation of the NZ bioethics council right back at the start of the year is now part of the website's archive. For whatever reason they seem to have cut off the lead-in paragraph so I'll include that here:
Today the ethical questions surrounding scientific research are more open to public scrutiny than they have ever been.
Watchers of the evening news could hardly escape anti-vivisectionists protesting, weird Italian doctors and weirder American cults claiming to have cloned human beings and the apparently dyslexic group MADGE (Mothers against Genetic Engineering) removing their shirts and shouting in parliament’s debating chamber.
But with issues as contentious as the current bioethical debates can the public’s views be reflected in policy, and even if they can should non specialists’ opinions carry any weight?
There, if that interests you enough you can read the rest of it too