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The Bioethics of Space Exploration provides a comprehensive discussion of the possible bioethical issues and challenges that may arise when considering future long-term space missions. Because of numerous threats within the space environment, many consider the concept of radically modifying humans to be a serious and perhaps even necessary option. Konrad Szocik presents what types of ethical and bioethical challenges may await participants on commercial, scientific, and colonizing missions, and provides a new perspective into the potential for radical biomedical technologies.
List of contents
- 1. Introduction: The place of space bioethics in the philosophy and ethics of space missions
- 2. Introduction to human health risks in space and the methodology of space bioethics
- 3. Biomedical human enhancement
- 4. Germline gene editing and embryo selection for future long-term space missions
- 5. Justification of human enhancement versus rationale for space missions
- 6. Is the bioethics of space missions different from bioethics on Earth?
- 7. Moral bioenhancement in long-term space missions
- 8. Space Bioethics, Population Ethics, and Space Colonization
- 9. Conclusions
- 10. Appendix 1. Bioethics of space missions in the light of futures studies
About the author
Konrad Szocik is a visiting fellow at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and an assistant professor at the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow, Poland. His research interests include philosophy, ethics, and bioethics of space exploration, human enhancement, feminism, and selected issues on the border of futures studies and technology.
Summary
The first book devoted to the bioethics of the space-mission environment, The Bioethics of Space Exploration explores the ethical status of possible biomedical challenges in future long-term space missions. Konrad Szocik thoroughly examines arguments favoring and opposing human enhancement, accompanied by somatic and germline gene editing, methodology of space-mission bioethics, and moral bioenhancement. In particular, the three main types of space missions--scientific missions, commercial missions, and space colonization missions--prompt different bioethical discussions and levels of human involvement. Szocik also considers whether the possibility of saving humanity through space colonization is compatible with ethics of quality of life and the philosophy of antinatalism. Presented from an issue-driven and case-driven perspective, The Bioethics of Space Exploration highlights the utility of different normative systems for philosophers, ethicists, and social scientists alike. For any reader interested in the broader humanistic and social approach to space missions, these insightful discussions provide a new perspective into the future of space missions and the potential for radical biomedical technologies.
