Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung Elektronische Publikation
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Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung Elektronische Publikation
Alexander Bogner,
Wolfgang Menz
doi:10.1553/ita-pa-AB-10-01 SAGE
Abstract: Science, Technology & Human Values, 2010, 35: 888 Over recent years, science and technology have been reassessed increas- ingly in ethical terms. Particularly for life science governance, ethics has become the dominant discourse. In the course of this ‘‘ethical turn’’ national ethics councils were set up throughout Europe and in the United States to advice politics in ethically controversial issues such as stem cell research and genetic testing. Ethics experts have become subject to traditional warnings against expertocracy: they are suspected to unduly influence political deci- sion-making. However, any reliable ethics expertise has to reflect societal disagreements in moral issues. Therefore, expert dissent is a normal feature of legitimate ethics expertise. Based on theoretical considerations we argue that in principle, expert dissent does not cause problems for political legiti- macy; rather, it enhances the salience of politics: obviously decisions on ethical issues cannot be taken on the basis of expert knowledge alone. We therefore conclude that expert dissent, not consent, supports politics. Focussing on Germany and Austria, we show how politics deal with expert dissent in practice. While in Germany politics acknowledge dissent and use it to foster a fundamental political debate, Austrian politics attribute authoritative power to ethics expertise and try to construct an overall consensus. This illustrates how the drawing of boundaries between politic and expertise differs. Published Online: 2013/08/26 11:14:30 Document Date: 2010/08/26 11:14:00 Object Identifier: 0xc1aa5576 0x002ed5ea Rights: . Fallweise veröffentlicht das Institut für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung zu Themen der Technikfolgen-Abschätzung in elektronischem Format. |
epub.oeaw – Institutionelles Repositorium der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften epub.oeaw – Institutional Repository of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
A-1011 Wien, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2
Tel. +43-1-515 81/DW 3420, Fax +43-1-515 81/DW 3400 http://epub.oeaw.ac.at, e-mail: epub@oeaw.ac.at |