Lean Christopher Hunter
ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Synth Biol (Oxf). 2024 May 23;9(1):ysae008. doi: 10.1093/synbio/ysae008. eCollection 2024.
Synthetic biology has immense potential to ameliorate widespread environmental damage. The promise of such technology could, however, be argued to potentially risk the public, industry or governments not curtailing their environmentally damaging behavior or even worse exploit the possibility of this technology to do further damage. In such cases, there is the risk of a worse outcome than if the technology was not deployed. This risk is often couched as an objection to new technologies, that the technology produces a moral hazard. This paper describes how to navigate a moral hazard argument and mitigate the possibility of a moral hazard. Navigating moral hazard arguments and mitigating the possibility of a moral hazard will improve the public and environmental impact of synthetic biology.
合成生物学在改善广泛存在的环境破坏方面具有巨大潜力。然而，可以认为这种技术的前景可能会使公众、行业或政府面临风险，即它们不会减少其破坏环境的行为，甚至更糟的是，利用这项技术进一步造成破坏。在这种情况下，可能会出现比不采用该技术更糟糕的结果。这种风险通常被表述为对新技术的一种反对意见，即该技术会产生道德风险。本文描述了如何应对道德风险论点并降低道德风险发生的可能性。应对道德风险论点并降低道德风险发生的可能性将改善合成生物学对公众和环境的影响。
