The ethical obligation to use emergent technologies to alleviate human suffering falls particularly on those privileged by accident of birth.

Focus on: Global Challenges
Science and society: Opposition to transgenic technologies: ideology, interests and collective action frames

Ronald J. Herring

Abstract

Genetic engineering has enabled significant, accepted innovations in medicine and other fields. In agriculture, however, a global cognitive divide around 'genetically modified organisms' (GMOs) has limited the diffusion and scope of this technology. The framing of agricultural products of recombinant DNA technology as GMOs lacks biological coherence, but has proved to be a powerful frame for opposition. Disaggregating the concept of the 'GMO' is a necessary condition for confronting misconceptions that constrain the use of biotechnology in addressing imperatives of development and escalating challenges from nature, especially in less-industrialized nations.

Perspective in Nature Reviews Genetics 9, 458-463 (June 2008) | doi:10.1038/nrg2338

Quote

The Nuffield Council in the United Kingdom rightly stressed the ethical obligation to use emergent technologies to alleviate human suffering wherever possible. This obligation falls particularly on those privileged by accident of birth. If aid programmes and INGOs from the wealthy world are to press their preferences in low-income countries, they have an obligation to get the empirics right, particularly when information about places remote from their experience is filtered through frames that rely on brokers with strong interests. Conscientious citizens of the 'first world' must understand that our political preferences have powerful influences on decisions in parts of the world where the options are fewer and less attractive.

Ron has recently written:
Herring, R. J. (ed.) Transgenics and the Poor: Biotechnology in Development Studies (Routledge, Oxford, 2007).