Institutionalization of (Bio)Ethics in Science Policy: Delineation of the Problem
Institutionalization of (Bio)Ethics in Science Policy: Delineation of the Problem

Summary/Abstract: During the past decades we have been witnessing a progressive process of incorporation of ethics in the very production of scientific knowledge. One of the characteristic expressions of this process is the institutionalization of ethics in the scientific and technological politics and specifically the establishment of committees of (bio)ethics entitled to regulate the even more dra-matic problems stemming from scientific research and its applications. This paper is an initial presentation of a ongoing large scale comparative international investigation of the actual process of institutionalization of ethics in a number of European countries. In its focus is the analysis of the variety of existing practices and patterns in this sphere and in particular the structure, functions and role in society of the ethical committees. On the basis of the first data gathered the paper the paper makes assumptions about the institutionalization of ethics in science policy as a reflection of key characteristics and collisions in the different phases of the unfolding of late modernity.

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