On Dolly and the scandalous nature of life sciences and Where bioethics really begins

  • Gregor Becker Department of Biophysics, Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology, Jagiellonian University Kraków, Kraków, Poland

Abstract

25 years ago, Dolly the sheep and the cloning issue stood in the focus of widespread and heated societal and ethical discussions that, for the bigger part, were not rational. In the aftermath of Dolly, in Europe bioethics was established as a discipline that is hyper-sceptical critic of science. Bioethics seen from the point of view of science is nebulous to many researchers, such as Lewis Wolpert, who called bioethics "a gross load of nonsense". It appears that the image of science in bioethics and society has as much suffered and moved away from the factual truth, as the image of bioethics and society has suffered in science since the Dolly event. It is time to return to a reasonable view of science, bioethics and society - and of Dolly the sheep.

Published
2021-11-14
Section
Articles