The use of biotechnology requires careful consideration

Christine Nellemann is no stranger to heated debates. Throughout her career, she has, for example, worked to find alternatives to animal testing and to ensure optimal use of laboratory animals, and she has conducted research into levels of exposure to chemicals food and consumer products that are considered safe.

In the spring, Christine Nellemann became a member of the Danish Council on Ethics, where she can draw on her experience in discussing sensitive topics when, along with the rest of the Council, she tackles ethical issues related to new biotechnologies and genetic technologies that affect the lives of human as well as our nature, environment, and food products.

What ballast does your DTU background give you?

As Director of Institute at the National Food Institute, I have worked with and gained good insight into the use of biotechnology and genetic technology in all parts of the food sector through many years. I think it’s incredibly exciting to be allowed to use this experience on the Danish Council on Ethics and participate in looking at the use of biotechnologies and genetic technologies in health, nature, and food products.

What diagnostic and treatment options do we have at our disposal? What can new technologies be used for—and should we use them? The Danish Council on Ethics was set up precisely to assess the ethical perspectives of technologies and nuance the debate.

And it’s exciting for me, coming from a technical university, to bring obviously a certain amount of technology optimism, but also knowledge of the limitations and uncertainties of these technologies, and then discuss it with people who come from many different backgrounds.

As researchers, we rarely step forward to say that something is either black or white—and I’ve learned from my extensive experience in providing scientific advice to food and environmental authorities that we must look beyond our own research and gather the available knowledge when assessing a case. Experience with the scientific advice and risk assessments provided by the National Food Institute generally provides a good basis for assessing new technologies.

What topics are on the agenda?

We’re currently discussing the ethical aspects of how late in pregnancy women can have an abortion when there are no medically or socially aggravating circumstances. When are women’s rights the deciding factor—and when should consideration be shown for the life of a foetus? And what about other considerations?

We also need to make the debate on euthanasia more nuanced again. It’s a ‘Council on Ethics Classic’, but that doesn’t make it less relevant to contribute to the debate once again. 

Then there is the question of the intersection between robots, humans, and artificial intelligence, in relation to how we will use artificial intelligence in the healthcare sector. What does it do to us as humans—to our thinking—if, for example, we have a consultation with an artificial intelligence instead of with a doctor?

Studies show that some artificial intelligences are almost more empathetic and patient than a doctor, and they certainly have more time. In this context, there are also major issues concerning responsibility and transparency—and here we will probably work together with the Danish Data Ethics Council.

There is also the whole green transition issue—which is one of my key concerns, and where the Danish Council on Ethics has just published a report on the ethical aspects of new food technologies that can accelerate the transition.

We must basically maintain that a food is only a food if we can eat it without getting sick and if we get good nutrition from it. But there will also be a need to weigh ethical considerations against production, so that the green transition becomes powerful enough to really benefit people. For example, are we willing to eat steaks from meat cultivated in the laboratory using stem cells from a cow, or only steaks cut from the cow?