Congratulations to PhD alumnus and UW Assistant Professor in Bioethics & Humanities Tim Brown on winning the 2021 David Roscoe Award for an Early-Career Essay on Science, Ethics, and Society from the Hastings Center. His essay “Moral Bioenhancement as Potential Means of Oppression” in the Neuroethics Blog of Emory University argues that moral bioenhancements – e.g., pharmaceutical interventions designed to significantly increase prosocial behavior or remove overly negative affect – may actually have an immoral effect. Brown writes that, “arguments in favor of moral bioenhancement, however, fail to consider how marginalized people have been (and still are) accused of being less moral than their oppressors. Many of the behaviors that moral bioenhancements would dampen are the behaviors that marginalized people make use of for survival: distrust, disobedience, and—yes—anger.”
Read more about his award at The Hasting’s Center’s website.