Is the serious deficit of ethics in business and public life in Ireland endemic? Will gene therapy lead to new social divisions? These are some of the questions which a new research centre at NUI Galway aims to address.
The Centre of Bioethical Research and Analysis has been established within the university's department of philosophy, under the directorship of Dr Richard Hull. He has identified the two main areas of special interest as bioethics and professional ethics, and says the centre will become a national resource for the public, professionals and scholars alike.
In relation to bioethics, Dr Hull says there is a need to promote academic and public debate on ethical questions posed by the application of biology and medicine.
Specifically, he identifies what he calls "traditionally problematic areas" such as "abortion, euthanasia, patients' rights, confidentiality and age limits for publicly funded healthcare".
The centre will start off as a website of useful resources and links, but will develop an archive of journals and studies particular to Irish cases in these areas.
Debating any of the subjects involves a knowledge of ethical theories and the training and capacity to deal with them in a "philosophically competent" manner; familiarity with relevant data from the professional areas concerned, and a thorough knowledge of international literature on professional ethics research.
The centre will organise seminars and public lectures. Dr Hull has written on the subject of disability in relation to the patenting of a technique to genetically alter sperm. He says if physical impairment is eradicated, there is the risk of excluding the birth of potential geniuses such as Beethoven.
He urges caution on such genetic intervention. "This is partly because if we work towards 'improvement' or 'betterment' in any sense, we need a very coherent idea of what improvement or betterment actually is," he writes.
"While that may be relatively uncontentious with regard to some medical conditions, as soon as we start to wander from the medical into the social, as we do in the cases of disability and designer babies, our notion of improvement must be seriously ethically questioned."