BIOTECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH
ETHICAL CHALLENGES FOR INDIA
Keywords:
BIOTECHNOLOGY, HEALTH, ETHICAL CHALLENGESAbstract
There is no universally accepted definition for the term
Biotechnology. In this paper, I will refer to it in a fairly broad way as
outlined by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which
referred to the term as “any technological application that uses
biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make
or modify products or processes for specific use.”1 An alternative
definition, also broad, which lends itself to more easy interpretation
is “the processes and products (usually of industrial scale) offering
the potential to alter and, to a degree, to control the phenomena of
life—in plants, in (non-human) animals, and, increasingly, in human
beings.”2 The second definition goes on to explain some terms more
explicitly by giving examples of the processes (e.g. recombining
genes) and products (e.g. new drugs or vaccines).
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