Biotechnology and the Creation of Ethics

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The Gruter Institute Working Papers on Law, Economics, and Evolutionary Biology

AUTHOR:
Raymond Coletta

TITLE:
Biotechnology and the Creation of Ethics

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Raymond Coletta (2001) "Biotechnology and the Creation of Ethics", The Gruter Institute Working Papers on Law, Economics, and Evolutionary Biology: Vol. 1: Article 5.
http://www.bepress.com/giwp/default/vol1/iss1/art5

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ABSTRACT:
Biotechnology promises to change the course of evolution. Rather than patiently waiting as natural selection channels the forces of biology into contouring the nature and character of the organisms that populate our world, biotechnology allows humans to directly manipulate the basis of life itself. By allowing the deliberate reorganization of the genetic programs of organisms, biotechnology affords the greatest revolution in scientific and cultural understanding in history. It also is beginning to severely strain our established concepts of right and wrong and to require us to rethink most of our basic moral assumptions.