Página 278 - Dimensiones éticas de las regulaciones en salud

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Dual-use dilemmas, national regulations and
ethics
Michael J. Selgelid
The Multiple Uses of ‘Dual Use’
Given all the recent debate about “dual-use” science and technology, it is
important to note that there are multiple uses of the expression ‘dual use’.
The expression was originally/traditionally used in a non-normative way
to refer to technologies that could be used for both military and civilian
purposes. Conceived in this way, dual-use technologies might sometimes
be considered a good thing by policy makers–i.e., a way of killing two
birds with one stone by pursuing a particular path of scientific/technologi-
cal development. However, such technologies could give cause for con-
cern in the context of trade–i.e., policy makers would be worried about
exporting dual-use technologies to (not so friendly) countries their own
country would not want to ship weapons to.
Today the expression ‘dual use’ is most often used in a normative manner
to refer to technologies that can be used for both good purposes and bad
purposes–where the bad purpose is one which involves the making or use
of weapons–and weapons of mass destruction in particular.
A third use of the expression ‘dual use’ would be to refer to a technology
that could be used for good purposes and bad purposes–where the bad
purposes do not necessarily involve weapons at all. In this sense, we might
think of human reproductive cloning or human enhancement as dual-use
technologies if there are both good and bad purposes for which such tech-
nologies might be employed. One might think that human reproductive