Guiding Icarus: Merging Bioethics with Corporate Interests

While bioethicists may enjoy the most thorough appreciation of both the promise and perils of new biotechnologies, international corporations are in fact the entities generating these technologies and determining their application. An industry insider versed in the language of bioethics, Rahul Dhanda offers in Guiding Icarus: Merging Bioethics with Corporate Interests a Rosetta stone to these two camps, explaining why each needs the other, why their disparate concerns often cohere, and why an ethical business is likely a successful one.

The author develops a dialogue between bioethics and corporate interests by examining case studies of several hot-button issues, including:

• Genetically modified foods
• DNA data banking
• Personalized medicine
• Stem cell research

In each instance he provides a treatment of the particular science under consideration, a list of the benefits of the technology, a description of the ethical issues involved, an account of past industry response, and recommendations for future action. Given the expansive nature of biotechnology, ramifications in the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries are covered in depth as well. The book also features a Foreword by world-renowned bioethicist and biotechnology CEO Philip R. Reilly as well as a step-by-step discussion of the components of business and bioethical issues.

Written for a general audience, Guiding Icarus will be particularly useful to biotechnologists, regulatory affairs managers, and corporate officers of biotechnology firms, as well as bioethicists in the academic community. Dhanda's peerless text provides a unique tool for understanding and addressing the ethical dilemmas confronting society in the 21st century.