Página 279 - Dimensiones éticas de las regulaciones en salud

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cloning as a means of fertility treatment, for example, would be a good
use of human reproductive cloning; and that human reproductive cloning
for the purposes of vanity or creating a designer baby, on the other hand,
would be bad uses.
Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction
In what follows, I will employ the second definition, which falls at the in-
tersection of the first and third definitions, of ‘dual use’ described above
–because this is the sense it which it is used in most contemporary debates
about the dual-use dilemma in the life sciences. The dual-use dilemma is es-
pecially salient in the life sciences at present because recent advances in the
life sciences and biotechnology and/or genetic engineering give rise to un-
precedented means for the making of biological weapons of mass destruc-
tion. According to the CIA, for example, recent advances in biotechnology
enable to production of “biological agents ... worse than any disease known
to man”(1) . The situation of the life sciences at present is thus similar to that
of nuclear physics early in the twentieth century when key discoveries that
enabled production of the first atomic weapons were made.
There are numerous reasons why the dual-use dilemma has been a centre
of controversy in recent years. One reason is that the events of 11 Septem-
ber 2001 and the anthrax attacks that followed in the United States drew
increased attention to dangers of bioterrorism. Another reason is that a
number of recent experiments have highlighted dangers associated with
recent rapid growth in the life sciences. In one experiment, Australian sci-
entists used genetic engineering techniques to insert the IL-4 (interleukin)
gene into the mousepox virus. Their hope was that the altered virus might
lead to mouse infertility and thus serve as an infectious contraceptive that
would effectively control mouse plagues (which are a serious pest prob-
lem) in Australia. To their surprise they found that the altered virus killed
both mice that were naturally resistant to, and mice that had been vac-
cinated against, ordinary mousepox. They published these findings, along
with description of materials and methods, in the Journal of Virology in