Greenflame
Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
Category: Bioethics/Biotech
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Various links related to convergent technologies (nano-, bio-, information technologies and cognitive science): Biosingularity – Techno-progressive blog that tracks new developments in bio- and medical technologies. (More on singularitarianism at Greenflame: Pondering the Singularity (Again)). The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines – Alternatives to the big four search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com. The…
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Just erased and reinstalled everything on the iBook to get over the wobbles it was developing at the end of the thesis writing. In the process found these links I’d saved earlier. Ashley X links: WIRED Blogs: Bodyhack – Brain-Damaged Girl Will Stay Young Forever Parents defend decision to keep girl a child – World…
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Listened to James Hughes’ recent Changersurfer Radio podcast yesterday where he interviews Lee Silver (author of “Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning will Transform the American Family“, and more lately “Challenging Nature: The clash of science and spirituality at the new frontiers of life“.) It’s an interesting interview because both Hughes and Silver sketch…
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A conscience vote in the Australian House of Representatives passed legislation opening the door to human embryonic research (particularly therapeutic cloning) in Australia. See Embryo cloning gets the go-ahead – National – smh.com.au. It’ll be interesting to see how that shapes discussion in NZ over the same issue.
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Today I’ve been adding in some footnotes to articles about food aid to developing countries being linked with the requirement to accept genetically modified foodstuffs or crops. And also the attempts by some governments who supply aid for other problems (e.g. malaria) to make acceptance of GM crops as a condition for receiving that aid.…
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Still thinking about beneficence and technology. Some random quotes from that process. Peterson, James C. Genetic Turning Points: The Ethics of Human Genetic Intervention Critical Issues in Bioethics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. The question for any technology is, how can we develop this to best love God and our neighbors? Asking that question is not…
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I’ve been editing some material at the end of the thesis that looks at how the theme of ‘beneficence’ (the doing of good) interacts with technological development. The theme of actively doing good, rather than just not doing evil, is a significant one in religious reflection upon technological use. Indeed, the moral imperative to do…
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Back in July the Bioethics Council started a process of public discussion on and engagement with the theme of human embryo research (see Greenflame: New Zealand discussion of human embryos in research). Now, they have started to make some of the results of that process including video and audio content from public seminars, and later…
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The pro-nanotechnology website of the Foresight Nanotech Institute has a brief review of the World Council of Churches report on the convergent/emergent technologies of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive sciences. You can read their slant on the WCC document over at Nanodot: Nanotechnology News and Discussion » Blog Archive » Nanotechnology: World Council of…
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Mark over at Reflections… wanted some more details about last Friday’s talk. So here are some links to related things: The introduction to my talk is here – Cyborg-Intro.pdf. It’s pretty rough and ready as I read it, rather than have others read it. I used the ASB Bank “Streamline” TV commercial as an example…