Bücher der Reihe Technikzukunfte, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft / Futures of Technology, Science and Society

However, given that other germline engineering techniques like mitochondrial (mt) DNA transfer techniques are already permitted and applied, the question arises what lies at the root of the apparent social unease about the modification of the human germline by Genome Editing Techniques like CRISPR.

The present volume elucidates the scope of responsibility in science and technology governance by way of assimilating insights gleaned from sociological theory and STS and by investigating the ways in which responsibility unfolds in social processes. Drawing on these theoretical perspectives, the volume goes on to review a 'heuristic model' of responsibility. Such a model provides a simple, tentative, though no less coherent analytical framework for further examining the idea of responsibility, its transformations, configurations and contradictions.

Modern epigenetics unites scientists from life sciences, organic chemistry as well as computer and engineering sciences to find an answer to the question of how environmental influences can have a lasting effect on gene expression, maybe even into the next generations.

Martin Sand explores the problems of responsibility at the early, visionary stages of technological development. He discusses the increasingly dominant concept of innovation and outlines how narratives about the future are currently used to facilitate technological change, to foster networks, and to raise public awareness for innovations.

Assessing synthetic biology from a societal and ethical perspective is not only a matter of determining possible harms and benefits of synthetic biology applications. Synthetic biology also incorporates a specific technoscientific understanding of its research agenda and its research objects that has philosophical and ethical implications.

Today, the human future is thrown into question by emerging technologies that promise radical control over human life and elicit corollary imaginations of human perfectibility.

The aim of this book is to understand and critically appraise science-based transgression dynamics in their whole complexity. However, science is better conceived as an activity that constantly surpasses, erases and rebuilds all kinds of boundaries, either disciplinary, socio-ethical or ecological.

The book collects six articles offering key examples of this perspective, addressing ongoing issues in the governance of science and technology, including nanotechnology and responsible research and innovation.

Trotz großer Verbesserungen in der Versorgung von Menschen mit Typ-1-Diabetes (MmT1D) werden auch bei hoher Motivation und hohem Wissensstand der T1D-Grundlagen und -Therapie die angestrebten Blutglukose-Werte häufig nicht erreicht. Daher hat sich aus der Gruppe der MmT1D und ihrer Angehörigen eine Gemeinschaft zusammengefunden, die auf Basis kommerzieller Technologien sogenannte Open-Source-Closed-Loop-Systeme (OSCLS) entwickelt, welche eine automatisierte Insulinabgabe ermöglichen. OSCLS haben das Potenzial, das Management der Erkrankung zu erleichtern und normnähere Blutglukose-Werte zu erzielen. Die OSCLS sind jedoch weder offiziell geprüfte noch zugelassene Systeme. Aus dem Blickwinkel der Technikfolgenabschätzung untersucht die vorliegende Arbeit mittels leitfadengestützter qualitativer Interviews mit Nutzenden und Fachkräften vorrangig, warum sich die Nutzenden der OSCLS für die Systeme entscheiden und wie sich diese auf das Leben der Nutzenden sowie auf das Gesundheitswesen auswirken. Zudem ordnet diese Arbeit die OSCLS-Bewegung in vergleichbare aktivistische Bewegungen in Medizin und Gesundheit ein sowie in den Kontext der derzeit immer stärker werdenden Bewegung der Patient Innovation.