Scare-mongering and the anticipatory ethics of experimental technologies

Scare-mongering is a persistent hazard of anticipatory bioethics (Hall and Carter 2007). In striving to anticipate all potentially adverse consequences of emerging technologies, bioethicists run the risk of highlighting implausible and unlikely adverse effects. This is often, in part, an understandable response to proponents exaggerations of the likely benefits of the technologies. The target article by Duggan and colleagues (2009) on the ethics of trials of stem cell-based interventions (CBIs) is an instructive example.