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8 Science: Bioprinting: Ethics in Bioprinting

Resources to support Year 8 Science investigation into Bioprinting.

What are "ethics"?

Ethics, also called moral philosophy, the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles.

 

How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects? If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all? And what of the more particular questions that face us: is it right to be dishonest in a good cause? Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are starving? Is going to war justified in cases where it is likely that innocent people will be killed? Is it wrong to clone a human being or to destroy human embryos in medical research? What are our obligations, if any, to the generations of humans who will come after us and to the nonhuman animals with whom we share the planet?

 

Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject consists of the fundamental issues of practical decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong.

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Will Bioprinting lead to crazy cosmetic requests?

Bioethics

Biology and medicine are sciences, but they are both sciences that deal with living beings. They have direct effects on human beings and other living species, so they quickly raise ethical and other value problems as well as scientific ones. Bioethics is the branch of ethics, or moral decision-making, that deals with the problems of biology and medicine. It requires disciplined, systematic reflection on these difficult issues.

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Resource Key

Ethical considerations in Bioprinting

LEVEL 2

LEVEL 3

The Age Newspaper: digital replica