Ethics envisions science: a proactive approach.

ETHICS ENVISIONS SCIENCE: A PROACTIVE APPROACH. Leonard W. Ortmann, National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL 36088.

The project to map the human genome established a new acronym to characterize science's broad impact on our lives, namely. ELSI. Originally. ELSI referred to the ethical, legal and social implications of the human genome project. However, the acronym increasingly has been used to describe the implications of a variety of other bioethical issues. This use captures two important features of bioethics: its gradual extension beyond the sphere of health to issues in emergent science and its reactive relation to emergent science. This first feature hints at the topic of how science and ethics have historically related to each other. The second raises the question of why bioethics' stance toward science largely involves reactions to its implications. In thus reacting, bioethics typically combines a pragmatic risk assessment of the science with guidelines for preventing potential ethical or practical fallout. This reactive stance partly follows, but ultimately falls short of, historical precedents. To address its shortcomings, I propose the notion of a proactive ethics that morally embeds emergent science within a future vision of humanity.