Ethics of re-membering and remembering: considering disability and biotechnology.

Abstract

Encompassed within forecasts offered by proponents of biotechnology about cures and control of disease and disability, are also predictions of an enhanced society. However, if the citizenship of our society is to be 're-membered' in the future with processes of elimination being employed on some potential lives deemed not worth living, deep ethical scrutiny is required. Hence, this discussion contends that when considering ethical decisions impacting upon the membership of future societies, there also exists an imperative to seek insight and wisdom by looking to past actions. The experiences and narratives of many people with disability and their families attest to some of these past actions whereby agendas of elimination have been impaired by practices founded upon both moral and socio-political exclusion. When considering 're-membering' in this context, a deliberation upon the imperative to remember will utilise the proximal text of a conference venue to contend that ethical reflection in this biotechnological era must embrace a process of anamnesis of past practices, rather than the more common approach of amnesia.