On Saturday our Assistant Director Peter Mills was in Washington, DC, to present at the AAAS Annual Meeting on Global Science Engagement. The following is a transcript of his talk from the session on Precision medicine and bioethics. 

I want to preface my remarks by saying something about what I see as the work of bioethics in relation to the emergence of precision medicine. Bioethics is often seen, wrongly, as impeding science and innovation: an unnecessary subterfuge that distracts from the ‘vital’ work of science and raises obstacles in the path of progress. I want to recall that what drives developments in bioscience and biomedicine – and the funding of science and scientists – is a profoundly moral impulsion to improve human health and wellbeing. Bioethics is not against but on the side of this impulse. It recognises, however, that to achieve its ends this impulse has to find expression in a more complex moral and social reality. (more…)