Forensic genomics now enables law enforcement agencies to undertake rapid and detailed analysis of suspect samples using a technique known as massively parallel sequencing (MPS), including information such as physical traits, biological ancestry, and medical conditions. This article discusses the implications of MPS and provides ethical analysis, drawing on the concept of joint rights applicable to genomic data, and the concept of collective moral responsibility (understood as joint moral responsibility) that are applicable to law enforcement investigations that utilize genomic data. The widespread and unconstrained use of this technology without appropriate legal protections of individual moral rights and associated accountability mechanisms, could potentially not only involve violations of individual moral rights but also lead to an unacceptable shift in the balance of power between governments and the citizenry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Med Philos
December 2022
In this article, I undertake three main tasks. First, I argue that, contrary to the standard view, moral injury is not a species of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) but rather, on the most coherent conception of moral injury, PTSD is (in effect) a species of moral injury. In doing so, I make use of the notion of caring deeply about something or someone worthy of being cared deeply about.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenomic data is growing in importance as scientific knowledge and technology develop, and in availability, as direct-to-consumer genomic health testing and recreational genealogy services become more widely utilized. Access to genomic data needs to be considered in light of individual privacy. Cross-sector use of genomic health and ancestry data, and by law enforcement in particular, raises ethical questions and requires appropriate regulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiometric facial recognition is an artificial intelligence technology involving the automated comparison of facial features, used by law enforcement to identify unknown suspects from photographs and closed circuit television. Its capability is expanding rapidly in association with artificial intelligence and has great potential to solve crime. However, it also carries significant privacy and other ethical implications that require law and regulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has infected millions around the world. Governments initially responded by requiring businesses to close and citizens to self-isolate, as well as funding vaccine research and implementing a range of technologies to monitor and limit the spread of the disease. This article considers the use of smartphone metadata and Bluetooth applications for public health surveillance purposes in relation to COVID-19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Eng Ethics
December 2019
There is a need to provide an appropriate normative conception of the modern university: a conception which identifies its unifying purposes and values and, thereby, gives direction to institutional role occupants, governments, public policymakers and other would-be institutional designers. Such a conception could admit differences between modern universities; differences, for example, between so-called universities of technology and other universities. Indeed, it is preferable to frame the issue at the level of higher education or university systems rather than at the level of individual universities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have two aims in this paper. The first is negative: to demonstrate the problems in Bernard Gert's account of common morality, in particular as it applies to professional morality. The second is positive: to suggest a more satisfactory explanation of the moral basis of professional role morality, albeit one that is broadly consistent with Gert's notion of common morality, but corrects and supplements Gert's theory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe dual-use dilemma arises in the context of research in the biological and other sciences as a consequence of the fact that one and the same piece of scientific research sometimes has the potential to be used for bad as well as good purposes. It is an ethical dilemma since it is about promoting good in the context of the potential for also causing harm, e.g.
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