Eric Parens, Josephine Johnston and Jacob Moses ask in Nature Do We Need "Synthetic Bioethics"?
Their sensible conclusion is that inventing new sub-fields of (bio)ethics as soon as the scientists come up with a new concept might be good for job security but bad for ethics. After all, most of the questions dealt with are common to many areas and not just a particular one. Nanoethics and neuroethics should not come up with different answers just because of their names.
I had some similar sentiments a while ago about nanoethics and neuroethics. The best we can do is to use each field to focus on the questions that become really salient in the field.
Posted by Anders3 at September 18, 2008 07:36 PM