Greely Henry T
Stanford Law School, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
Center for Law and the Biosciences, Stanford, CA, United States.
Front Genet. 2023 Dec 11;14:1270590. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2023.1270590. eCollection 2023.
Science fiction can be useful to those who analyze ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) in genetics and the biosciences more broadly. It can provide examples of possible technological changes, which are occasionally valuable as predictions of the future but more often helpful as indicators of the likely social consequences of such technologies. This "what-if" approach to science fiction can also provide a good pathway to exploring such issues. Science fiction can also allow a more distant, less realistic, and non-culture-specific context for exploring deep questions about humanity, ethics, and other major issues. At the same time, science fiction also has some negative effects on such analysis or its reception as a result of the need for fiction to hold its audience by providing drama through conflict. This necessity for successful fiction often leads to technological or cultural changes being portrayed as catastrophic and dystopian, much more often than beneficial or utopian. This imbalance can predispose public opinion against innovations unfairly, in part by providing "examples" from fiction of similar innovations, leading to bad outcomes. ELSI researchers should keep this fiction-induced bias in mind in their work.
科幻小说对那些更广泛地分析遗传学和生物科学中的伦理、法律及社会问题（ELSI）的人来说可能是有用的。它可以提供可能的技术变革示例，这些示例偶尔作为对未来的预测很有价值，但更多时候作为此类技术可能产生的社会后果的指标很有帮助。这种科幻小说的“如果……会怎样”方法也可以为探索此类问题提供一条很好的途径。科幻小说还可以为探索关于人性、伦理和其他重大问题的深层次问题提供一个更遥远、不那么现实且非特定文化的背景。与此同时，由于小说需要通过冲突提供戏剧性来吸引读者，科幻小说对这种分析或其接受也有一些负面影响。成功小说的这种必要性常常导致技术或文化变革被描绘成灾难性和反乌托邦的，远比描绘成有益或乌托邦的情况要多。这种不平衡可能会使公众舆论不公平地反对创新，部分原因是通过提供小说中类似创新导致不良后果的“示例”。ELSI研究人员在工作中应牢记这种由小说引发的偏见。
