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Reconciling research and ethics

Plato and Socrates never had to deal with ethical dilemmas like salmon genomics and genetically modified foods. You can also bet that their philosophical efforts never took public opinion into account.

Ethics has tended to exclude the public, relying instead on expert opinion. However, as public policy looks to ethics for advice on new regulatory fields, it has become more important to make ethics inclusive.

Enter Peter Danielson and Michael Burgess of the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of B.C. These ethicists are working with methods of ethical analysis that investigate how the public makes decisions when faced with a range of information. They also aim to stimulate public involvement in debates on topical issues.

Danielson and Burgess hope that by encouraging dialogue between scientists, policy makers and the public, it will be possible to better integrate the “public” in public policy decisions.

For more information, please visit http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/.

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