Abstract
New techniques for modifying the genomes of agricultural organisms create difficult ethical challenges. We provide a novel framework to replace worn-out ethical lenses relying on ‘naturalness’ and ‘crossing species lines.’ Thinking of agricultural intervention as a ‘negotiation’ of ‘integrity’ and ‘agency’ provides a flexible framework for considering techniques such as genome editing with CRISPR/Cas systems. We lay out the framework by highlighting some existing uses of integrity in environmental ethics. We also provide an example of our lens at work by looking at the creation of ‘cisgenic’ (as opposed to ‘transgenic’) potatoes to resist late potato blight. We conclude by highlighting three distinct advantages offered by the integrity framework. These include a more fitting way to look at the practice of scientific researchers, a more inclusive way to consider ethics around agriculture, and a more flexible way to provide the ethical grounds for regulation in different cultural contexts.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 21-41 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Environmental Ethics |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 1 2021 |
Funding
* Christopher J. Preston is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana in Missoula and author of The Synthetic Age (MIT Press, 2018). He is an international advisor on the ReWrite Project. E-mail: [email protected]. Dr. Trine Antonsen is a Research Scientist at GenØk Centre for Biosafety and Associate Professor at UiT—The Arctic University of Norway. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Oslo (2017). Antonsen is a researcher and manager of the ReWrite Project. The project is funded by The Research Council of Norway's SAMKUL Programme on the Cultural Conditions Underlying Social Change. E-mail: [email protected]. The authors wish to thank two anonymous referees and Eugene Hargrove for comments on an earlier draft.