Ethical challenges for the life sciences

In this book we will first discuss broader issues of ethics of the life sciences, which enable us later on to focus on the more specific issues. Therefore, we begin with two contributions on the ethical issues of working in organizations. A fruitful side effect of this start is that it gives a good insight into business ethics, a branch of applied ethics that until now is far ahead of ethics for life scientists. In the second part, ethics of activities directly connected with doing scientific research are discussed, like experimenting with animals and human beings, publishing, patenting, getting funds and selecting one’s research theme. Thirdly, we discuss the topic of animal ethics, which in the life sciences in particular requires discussion on the use of animals in experiments. Fourthly, several authors present their view on the relationship between science and society, i.e., the societal impact of the life sciences, like genetic, agricultural and food research. Fifthly, we discuss the issue of the impact of this applied field of ethics for academic ethics in general. We will finish with some new problems with which the life sciences are confronted