The Socioeconomic Impacts of Emergent Biotechnology on the Next Human Age

Abstract

Modern biotechnology has progressed to unforeseeable heights, from genetic engineering to radical life extension. The rapid advent of this technology has enforced upon us a duty to contemplate the ethics surrounding it to inform our decisions. One pressing aspect of contemporary bioethics lies in medical developments that have become widely consumed resources. In modern society, big pharmaceutical companies dominate the healthcare industry, which makes them uniquely positioned to introduce new-age biotechnology as consumer resources. A "big pharma" future exemplified by the emergence of revolutionary new-age biotechnology presents severe ethical concerns. This paper describes potential scenarios where emergent biotechnology becomes a consumer resource as a result of aggressive marketing, indirect coercion, and monopoly of the "big pharma" companies. Chasing higher profitability and benefiting from their monopoly position, big pharmaceutical companies can price new biotechnologies at excessive levels, resulting in new biotechnology proliferating along socioeconomic lines. Such a development threatens to create an elite genetic class and destroy social mobility. In order to mitigate such consequences, this paper proposes a price cap mechanism to improve equal access to emerging biotechnology and promote innovations in breakthrough treatments.