{"title":"‘Are You Playing God?’: Synthetic Biology and the Chemical Ambition to Create Artificial Life","authors":"J. Schummer","doi":"10.1142/9789811233548_0016","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Throughout history chemists have faced the accusation of ‘playing God’ or similar devilish associations, overshadowing all moral judgments of chemistry. The paper provides an ethical analysis of the accusation with focus on Craig Venter’s 2010 announcement of having produced the ‘first selfreplicating cell’. Against the deeper historical background of the ambitious projects that came to be known as ‘synthetic biology’, I describe Venter’s actual research and its international media reception. Then I analyze both the ethical and theological implications of creating living beings in the laboratory. In conclusion I argue that the Venter case, like many others cases from chemistry before, is a case of unfortunate science-public interaction that mislead both ethics and science.","PeriodicalId":55039,"journal":{"name":"Hyle","volume":"1974 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Hyle","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811233548_0016","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
Throughout history chemists have faced the accusation of ‘playing God’ or similar devilish associations, overshadowing all moral judgments of chemistry. The paper provides an ethical analysis of the accusation with focus on Craig Venter’s 2010 announcement of having produced the ‘first selfreplicating cell’. Against the deeper historical background of the ambitious projects that came to be known as ‘synthetic biology’, I describe Venter’s actual research and its international media reception. Then I analyze both the ethical and theological implications of creating living beings in the laboratory. In conclusion I argue that the Venter case, like many others cases from chemistry before, is a case of unfortunate science-public interaction that mislead both ethics and science.
期刊介绍：
HYLE is a double blind peer reviewed international journal dedicated to all philosophical aspects of chemistry. Articles deal with epistemological, methodological, foundational, and ontological problems of chemistry and its subfields; the peculiarities of chemistry and relations to technology, other scientific and non-scientific fields; aesthetical, ethical, and environmental matters in chemistry; as well as philosophically relevant facets of the history, sociology, linguistics, and education of chemistry.
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