Ethical issues in the 21st century

‘I can see the pace of technology outstripping the pace of reflection on it,’ says Professor Julian Savulescu, Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. With colleagues in the Centre, across Oxford University and beyond, he is demonstrating how helpful it can be to employ the tools and approach of analytic philosophy in tackling such issues. Countering knee-jerk reactions and ill informed opinion with open and rational argument can offer a sound basis for moving forward.

‘I’m not a missionary who wants to convert people to my own views. My job is to take arguments into the public domain and provoke people to think about them. The primary aim of our programme is to help people think more deeply for themselves and come to a more considered and rational view,’ he explains.

The Centre was established in 2002 with an endowment from Japan from the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education. The University was an appropriate home for the Centre because in the 1970s several Oxford philosophers were pioneers in the field of applied ethics. Several now collaborate with the Centre, including Professor Jonathan Glover, who wrote the seminal book Causing Death and Saving Lives. He is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Centre and gave its first annual lecture series, on ‘Choosing Children: Genes, Disability and Design’.

The Centre is currently involved in research and public debate on the ethics of science (including technologies for human enhancement), medicine, business, the environment, political philosophy, global poverty, and conflict, among other subjects.

It is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing together people working on similar issues in different departments and institutions. For example, the Programme on Ethics of the New Biosciences, established in 2005 with funding from the James Martin 21st Century School, involves experts in medicine, philosophy, practical ethics, sociology and psychology. Together with the Uehiro Centre this is now one of the largest groups working on these issues in the world. The Centre also works closely with the Future of Humanity Institute and ETHOX (Oxford’s Centre of Medical Ethics), the Environmental Change Institute, and other institutions such as the new Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester.

Professor Savulescu, who trained as a medical doctor and worked in genetics research before becoming a philosopher, is a strong advocate of this collaborative approach: ‘What I’ve found fascinating is to look at clinical issues and scientific advances from the inside, with people who really understand them.’ As well as pursuing a long-standing interest in stem cell research, he has recently been looking at ethical issues around the potential use of performance enhancing drugs both in sport and human relationships.

He and his colleagues bridge the gap between academic and public life by writing for the mainstream media and appearing on TV and radio, as well as producing papers for scientific journals and submissions to governments. In their Practical Ethics blog, they comment on newsworthy scientific developments from an ethical perspective, and hope this lively, topical resource will draw readers in to find out more about their work.

‘My vision for the development of applied ethics is twofold: to have a greater external impact, on those who influence political decisions, and to have a greater internal impact in terms of developing links with people in the University who can contribute to our work, and to whose work we can contribute,’ says Professor Savulescu. ‘Our door is open to potential collaborations.’