Search

MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT AND AUTONOMY: THE RISK OF A VISUALIZED GOOD // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 254-267

The aim of this article is to map the issue of moral bioenhancement in two ways: (1) to show the basic premises and connotations of the conflict between traditional and biotechnology-oriented processes (using the problem of reducing subjective autonomy as an example); (2) to demonstrate how metaphorical visualization of the good allows one to transfer the conflict of interpretations of the good and autonomy into the space of the ontological conflict of autonomy and the good. Personal autonomy is one of the dominant ideas of modern biomedicine. Technoscience as the most significant trend in building relations between a scientist, a doctor and society is based on the idea of an active subject interested in shaping their own lifestyle and turns to the subject’s autonomy as a source of the legitimacy of the good. Meanwhile, personal autonomy is also a source of risks associated with actions, the consequences of which can be extremely destructive and completely unpredictable. The precautionary principle, whose functionality is determined by distinguishing between critical and non-critical risks, demonstrates its inefficiency in the context of an engineering and technological society. The development of neurotechnologies and brain research, as well as the active development of genetics, gives reason to believe that many behavioural strategies that can be regarded as ethically correct or ethically deviant are biologically determined. The problem of moral biologization arises on a ready-made substrate, as a process of involving neurotechnologies into solving social problems. Modern biotechnology thus somewhat goes beyond the boundaries of traditional moral and ethical discourses on autonomy and the good. With new explanations of such processes as the tendency and the possibility of moral behaviour, the predisposition to one or another type of activity, predicting a possible tendency to certain diseases in advance with high certainty, biotechnologies force us to look at a person from a certain angle: to look for the biological causes of social and moral behaviour. Despite the fact that a biotechnological commentary is considered only as an auxiliary tool for ethical norms, which explains how autonomous choice is influenced by certain biological factors, the biologization of social space is a real philosophical challenge, the essence of which is to rethink what moral choice is, how it arises and what modern autonomy and the good that flows from it are. Moral bioenhancement is a constructivist approach to morality whose task is to biotechnologically transform autonomy for the good. In this regard, it ignores the already existing discourses of autonomy and the good and, on the other hand, needs to use a metaphor for self-identification and identification of contradictions with the existing discourses of autonomy and the good. The article concludes that moral bioenhancement problematizes autonomy and, in fact, can be regarded as a form of biotechnological paternalism.

Keywords: autonomy, benefit, visualization, metaphor, human occupation by technologies, moral bioenhancement, technoscience

DELAYED RISKS: HOW THE IDEA OF INFORMED CONSENT IS CHANGING UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF BIOBANKS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 3 (29). P. 39-54

Taking into account standpoints of visual semiotics, the concept “delayed risks” is proposed. The concept fixes the basis (1) for analyzing the situation caused by the development of new forms of biomedical research, primarily genetic, on the platform of biobanks; and (2) for searching for a form of warning the participant of the experiment about risks with no evidence of an immediate danger to health, but in the distant future potentially conflicting with the participant’s personal ideas about the good. The problematic situation is formed by the specificity of studies in biobanks, which technically do not allow requesting informed consent for each specific study. The article provides an overview of the emerging solutions to the problem. These solutions are associated with new forms of consent for participation in biomedical research – extended forms that are given for multiple studies, without informing the biobank donor about each specific biomedical research for which his/her bio-samples are used. However, the relevance of such forms of consent is controversial, stimulated by the precedents mentioned in the article, as well as hypothetical circumstances. The article provides arguments in favor of rethinking the actual health risk connected with the form of conventional informed consent as a delayed risk correlated with sociohumanitarian value intentions that are associated with the idea of the relationship between autonomy and welfare. The transition from a specific risk to a value risk delayed in time by its effect can be represented by public mechanisms. The actions of these mechanisms are controlled by the institutions of sociohumanitarian expert examinations and bioethics, which are responsible for legitimizing the change in the pragmatics of informed consent. But in this “buffer zone” between the interests of technoscience, which includes biobanks, and participants in biomedical experiments, there remains a place for the positions of paternalism. The potentials of visual semiotics make it possible to distinguish these positions (both in social optics and in individual optics). The “new ethic” serves to understand the direction of optical instrument development by establishing multiple angles for considering the configuration of delayed risks. Visualization of delayed risks is achievable on the basis of semiotic diagnostics of the value intentions of participants in biomedical experiments, which will make it possible for biobank donors to control the occurrence of contradictions between their beliefs and the use of their biomaterials, and, in a broad perspective, this serves as the basis for trust in the institution of biobanks. The need for visualization of delayed risks determines the emergence of new types of research with human participation (the transition from single biomedical studies in humans to multiple biomedical studies on human biomaterials), as well as the emergence of new types of risks: from specific health risks in a single study to the large-scale socio-humanitarian consequences of possible unethical research in the framework of multiple studies based on biobanks.

Keywords: delayed risks, visualization of delayed risks, semiotic diagnostics, biobanks, autonomy, informed consent, technoscience, autonomy