Bioethics as an academic field emerged in response to rapid changes in medical technologies and the need to regulate biomedical research. The first American government bioethics commission was established as a result of research scandals in the 1960s and 1970s, when scientists experimented on people without informing them about it.

'The task of bioethics is not only to expand knowledge, but also to present recommendations to researchers, policy makers and the public on issues related to the challenges of biotechnology and biomedical research', explains Tomasz Żuradzki, PhD, head of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University.

In the first decade of the 21st century, biomedical discussions increasingly began to include issues related to 'human enhancement', transhumanism, and the development of genetic engineering.

However, to what extent are current bioethical discussions on this topic actually based on real scientific achievements? Researchers from the Jagiellonian University: Tomasz Żuradzki, PhD, Piotr Bystranowski, PhD, and Vilius Dranseika, PhD, analysed this issue.

In a study covering almost 20,000 articles published in seven leading bioethics journals since 1971, they analysed thematic trends, tracked citation patterns, and analysed their contexts in detail. The results of their work were published in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics.

'We found something surprising: a large part of the bioethical discourse on human enhancement does not necessarily reflect the latest scientific research. At first glance, the numbers seemed promising: almost half of all citations in debates on human enhancement referred to natural sciences and engineering journals. This suggested a strong scientific basis for bioethical discussions on this topic. However, upon deeper analysis, using quantitative methods, and analysis of the citation context, a less optimistic picture emerged', Żuradzki comments.

The analysis shows that many bioethical discussions on 'human enhancement' are based on speculative scenarios, futuristic possibilities, drawing on images, metaphors and science fiction literature plots.

Only a small percentage of citations refer to scientific texts presenting new empirical findings. Often, even if the citation referred to experimental work, it was not to a specific scientific discovery, but, for example, to the justification of a very general claim (not necessarily expressed in the cited work) or a conceptual distinction.

The mere citation of a scientific study does not necessarily indicate actual intellectual engagement with its content. Scientists cite for various reasons: to strengthen rhetorical arguments, to align with specific academic networks, or simply to signal familiarity with key literature.

The most cited empirical study in the analysed corpus came from 2015 and reported the first experiments with the genome editing method CRISPR/Cas9 on early human embryos.

"'However, despite the groundbreaking nature of this work, at least from an ethical perspective, it was cited only 18 times in the corpus - a surprisingly low number for such an important study. Moreover, many of these citations merely confirmed the existence of the work, without engaging with the deep ethical or regulatory implications of this experiment', Żuradzki says.

According to the authors of the publication, contemporary bioethical discussions encourage, for example, imagining a future in which parents can enter a clinic and, via a simple genetic procedure, design a child with an IQ of up to 200, Olympic-level athleticism, and moral perfection. However, these discussions largely ignore current scientific reality. Intelligence, physical fitness, and moral behaviour are influenced by thousands of genes interacting with environmental factors. As a result, such traits remain far beyond the reach of contemporary genetic engineering.

'Of course, we do not deny the value of speculative discussions. Predicting future trends and imagining the consequences of not-yet-existing technologies can help identify potential problems and even inspire new directions for scientific research. However, when bioethical debates consistently favour extreme hypothetical scenarios over empirical reality, they risk distorting public and political discussions about real ethical and regulatory challenges', the researcher concludes.

PAP - Science in Poland, Ewelina Krajczyńska-Wujec

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