CRISPR and Anticipatory Bioethics and Biomedical Ethics Part 1

CRISPR Cas 9 (or “Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats”) has already changed the nature of how biomedical engineers and clinicians think about human disease and human health. The nature of CRISPR technology is changing as rapidly as it can be developed and put into practice. From the perspective of human health and business enterprises that can be developed from biomedical engineering research developments, CRISPR replaces earlier methods of genetic modification and gene editing so that a much greater degree of precision is achieved in the editing of DNA. What affect will CRISPR have on medicine and society? To address this question requires an interdisciplinary approach that recognizes the importance of each of the stakeholders affected by the technology. When we focus on CRISPR, as related to non human animals (including insects) we are in the arena of bioethics in general. Each of these areas has its own methodological approach and potentially unique set of ethical principles that apply. Ethical issues related to CRISPR and humans fall into the discipline of biomedical ethics. To understand and anticipate the problems that may arise for bioethics and biomedical ethics each stakeholder perspective needs to be examined from the perspective of how CRISPR will be encountered and used from each of these perspectives. In this analysis (part 1 of 2 parts) we discuss issues related to CRISPR and biomedical ethics and develop an anticipatory ethical analysis of areas where CRISPR may create problems related to areas already of concern in traditional bioethics.

[1] Seay p. 9