Threats to the individual

Abstract

The development of large numbers of bio-medical interventions within a relatively brief period of time presents both promise and peril. This paper is a brief comment upon some of the ways in which newly-found technologies threaten certain time-honored values and protections which, in Western culture, have attented individuals and groups. New knowledge and new technical capability sometimes are in conflict and competition with old warrants for intervention and old notions of human well-being. Who will decide whether a given intervention is good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, full of promise or full of peril? And on what predicates will these assessments be made? Enlarging proficiency in technologic intervention makes control of our species life possible; incremental accomplishment in interventions makes control of our technology necessary.