In Case of Emergency Only: The Difficult Role of Ethics in Small Biotechnological Companies

Abstract

The paper concerns the role of biomedical ethics in the process of product development in small start-up companies in the field of tissue engineering. It is based on two surveys sent to companies and research institutions in this field. The role of ethics - as a systematic reflection on the moral dimension of human practice - still seems very unclear, both for companies and for parts of the research community. Appeals to ethics are used only in case of emergency, when ethical concerns are strong enough to provide a serious obstacle to product development. In all other cases companies seem to disregard the need for ethical reflection. They claim to be fully informed about ethical questions, and express no need for further discussion. The problems that start-up companies face, however – which they tend to attribute only to technical, economic or legal causes - have to be seen at least partially as ethical problems. In the case of the acceptance of tissue engineered products by the larger public, ethical reflection is necessary for the assessment of the legitimate interests of all stakeholders, and to determine how these can be best accommodated in the translational process. Ethics should be seen as a tool that accompanies and guides technological innovations from their very first planning stage to their practical application.