1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wish this had been part of my curriculum, October 14, 2009
This review is from: Ethics of Emerging Technologies: Scientific Facts and Moral Challenges (Hardcover)
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This book closely resembles (and perhaps is intended to be) a textbook. For someone without interest in the topic, the text and layout may seem a bit dry. Ethics is an interesting, and often overlooked subject.
For anyone with an interest in the topic (which should be many, many people), it is great. I have an engineering degree and graduate degree, and yet was never required to take an ethics course (nor was one even offered). This book made me realize a lot of the ethical challenges that the scientific community faces.
Highly recommended for science, engineering, and technology majors, along with a host of other people whose lives/jobs/decisions are influenced by emerging technologies. (Even if *not* required as part of your degree program...)
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
informative and valuable, July 17, 2009
This review is from: Ethics of Emerging Technologies: Scientific Facts and Moral Challenges (Hardcover)
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In the days of stem cell research and cloning and online maps with pictures that show private citizens and residences, one wonders if a text like this should be mandatory reading for everyone in science and technology.
As other reviewers have noted, this textbook, being a textbook, is a bit dry, and a bit neutral. It focuses on giving information, not livening it up for a lay audience. Anyone considering this for recreational reading should probably think twice, unless they're an academic who reads this sort of material all the time.
My own two complaints about the book are as follows:
1) They really, really strained to get their Four As. It'll be hard for students to remember at first, because they're not all verbs or all nouns, and frankly it just feels clumsy.
2) Some of the example ethical quandaries aren't quandaries at all, but more shooting fish in a barrel. It makes it easy to find at least one thing to castigate the characters for, but it also detracts from the reality.
Despite those complaints, i do wish that this had been the text for a business ethics course i took a few years ago.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Exhaustive. Lists myriad issues on a wide variety of situations. Should be required reading for all aspiring professionals, September 16, 2009
This review is from: Ethics of Emerging Technologies: Scientific Facts and Moral Challenges (Hardcover)
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Exhaustive and detailed. Excellent as a reference too. Most situations are not black-or-white. Instead they require asking the right and often difficult questions, and answers may not always be straightforward. Technology can often help, but exacerbate the issues at hand at times.
While the Preface states that the book should be useful for just about anyone interested in pursuing a "career in various areas of the engineering, medical, chemical, and biological sciences", the presentation and organization of the book is academically oriented and should not be confused with a pulp-business thriller.
The title of the book is "Ethics of Emerging Technologies", and it is the last chapter in the book which actually deals with such fast emerging areas in technology as Nanotechnology, Neuroenhancements, Deep Brain Simulators, Brain-Computer Interfacing, Psychopharmacalogy, Human Space Exploration, and even a section on "Ethics in Colonization of the Moon and Mars". These can be considered the "emerging" technologies even within the broader category of "emerging technologies".
So what are the earlier chapters all about then?
There is an introduction, where the authors lay out their framework using which solutions to ethical issues and issues prevented: "Acquire Facts", "Alternatives", Assessment", and "Action". Then there is a chapter on the general ethical issues surrounding scientific research, "Responsible Authorship", "Stealing and Copyright", "Conflicts of Interest, etc...
The other chapters are devoted to Information Technology Ethics, Business Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Ethics of Genetically Modified Organisms, Medical Ethics, Human Experimentation, Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Stem Cell Technologies, and Enhancement Technologies.
To take two examples:
In the chapter on medical ethics, the following are discussed:
- conflicts of interest can arise in several situations. The three specific areas the authors outline are opportunity for personal gain beyond ordinary reimbursement, when "providing care for patients who are undergoing research procedures when the physician has an interest in the outcome other than that of acquiring unbiased scientific data...", and "between a physician's goal of providing the best care and the goal of the health care organization to make the most profit"
- ethics of futile care, where the treatment is "unlikely to result in the improvement in the condition of the patient"
- patients' right to information: where informed consent is considered a must
- issues of confidentiality, and the resultant laws passed in the US to protect patient data, or ownership of patient data
- refusal or treatment, where questions that arise are whether coercion should be an option, the patient's family should be involved, whether manipulation is ok, and so on.
A controversial chapter may well be the one on animal experimentation. Why? Because attitudes towards animal experimentation, at least in some parts of the world, have been informed for millennia by religious beliefs. Sample this:
"Controversy in this area dates back to biblical times and the story of creation:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. .... replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." [page 289]
The utility of animal experimentation cannot be denied under certain circumstances, but in other cases the "knowledge gained does not warrant this malfeasance." [page 290]
Today, federal laws (in the US and elsewhere) have been drafted since 1966 to regulate the use of animals in research, and ameliorative options such as animal imaging, transgenic animals, mircoarrays, etc...
The chapter on Information Technology ethics has a sort of a blooper, on page 82. An email joke has been doing the rounds for several years now that starts off with a customer trying to order a pizza over the phone. Since the pizza chain has access to all sorts of information about the customer, including his eating habits, medical history, his brushes with the law, etc... the joke is on how a lack of information privacy has intruded into peoples' lives. This email is fictional, but all that the book describes it as is "Anonymous e-mail".
Other areas covered in the chapter are invasion of privacy, loss of confidential data, poss of privacy as a result of monitoring, selling and other unauthorized uses of personal information, ethics of camera surveillance, misuses of intellectual property, hacking, hoaxes, fraud, censorship, spam, and more. One topic that could have been covered is the ability available now to stalk someone as a result of programs like those offered by Google to allow users to publish their locations via cell phones on to the net. Working in this industry, while I felt the information on this topic could have been more detailed, I also realize that this topic is perhaps worthy of a separate book(s) itself.
This book is written in a very accessible manner, and should be required reading for graduate students.
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