oa [Biotechnology and Bioethics, De monteerbare mens en de bio-ethiek]

Revolutionary progress in the life sciences and in biotechnology presents us with completely new ethical questions concerning the acceptability of individual and generic eugenics, and of the production of ‘monsters’ of different kinds (including hybrids). Cultural developments related to what is called post or late modernity create a context in which biotechnology is freely used for the realization of all sorts of extravagant desires. Bioethics which is supposed to deal with new problems in this predicament has lost contact with concrete, lived morality and seems to have become the handmaiden of progress. It is argued here that a new kind of bioethics is required which is not divorced from ordinary, common sense morality and which is guided by fundamental philosophical reflections on morality and its place in culture.