Sorry, your browser doesn’t support embedded videos. Stories Project Stories 12.09.2024 Should selling your own kidney be allowed? The MyBioethics app explores ethical dilemmas MyBioethics The MyBioethics mobile app has been developed in close cooperation with the Finnish Institute of Bioethics. The project to develop the app received funding from Kone Foundation in 2020. Project team The MyBioethics team includes Heikki Saxén, PhD, Joel Janhonen, PhD student, MSocSc, BEng, and Mikko Värttö, PhD. They were interviewed for this story. Share: The MyBioethics app offers a new way to study bioethics and reflect on bioethical topics. What exactly is bioethics about? “Classic topics in bioethics include issues such as euthanasia, abortion, and animal testing. They often provoke strong emotions and conflicting opinions. Bioethical issues are particularly present in the daily lives of medical and health professionals, but often these cannot be resolved by professional knowledge alone. For example, can a doctor be asked to carry out euthanasia if their conscience tells them otherwise? The field of bioethics seeks to extend these discussions beyond the specialist community and its perspectives. Bioethics is also linked to the development of biotechnology. When new technical expertise is applied, ethical choices must be made. It is usually impossible to get everything: for example, the benefits of a new treatment must be weighed against the economic costs of the treatment and the available resources. MyBioethics is an application for learning and research that allows users to delve deeper into bioethical issues. Users are presented with different bioethical dilemmas where they have to choose between two options. Some of the dilemmas illustrate concrete ethical problems that pharmaceutical and health science professionals face in their work. Other dilemmas put the user in the position of a patient or a family member and challenge them to take a stance. The app has been used, for example, in a course at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology at the University of Tampere but is intended for anyone interested in the subject. The free mobile app has been downloaded and the dilemmas answered all over the world.” So, what is the app used for? “The app does not provide users with ready-made answers to dilemmas but helps them to become aware of the ethical considerations involved and to increase their ability to deliberate on ethical issues. Heikki Saxén. Consensus on bioethical questions is very rarely found. In some dilemmas, the cast votes are split almost exactly in half. Even if the respondent feels sure of their answer, they may struggle to put into words why they think the way they do. According to current understanding, these differences in voting may not primarily be an outcome of rational disagreements but differing ethical intuitions. According to this view, our “analytical mind” merely constructs a convincing explanation for what the “intuitive mind” has already decided. The aim of the app is to encourage the users to reflect on these intuitive factors behind their judgements. Once the user has answered the dilemma, they will see how others have replied, as well as arguments for opposing opinions. This will encourage them to reflect on their own answers. If the notion of intuitive ethical decision-making is true, understanding bioethical disagreements requires trying to identify the personal factors behind the answers that lie ‘deeper than reason’. We seek to bring the hidden factors influencing the users’ decisions to the surface for them to evaluate themselves.” Joel Janhonen. Based on the response data, what observations have you made so far? “The data collected has revealed tentative links between moral dilemmas and personal tendencies. MyBioethics currently includes tests for five factors that may influence bioethical decisions. These are presented in more detail on the app’s website. ”There are many ethical disagreements that we should take seriously. They can and should be debated” For example, some of the findings seem to suggest that a higher degree of nature relatedness makes users more likely to vote against an option that they perceive as unnatural or a “violation” of the natural order of things. An individual’s moral compass would thus be somewhat comparable to taste preferences, which are notoriously difficult to argue about. However, this does not mean that these preferences or individual differences in them cannot be explained. On the other hand, there are many ethical disagreements that we should take seriously. They can and should be debated. Identifying and articulating disagreements is often difficult, but we wish to encourage users to critically assess their feelings. What intuitive factors could help explain why we feel that something is right or wrong? How much do our feelings influence our ethical choices and how much weight should we give them? In our published article, we outline a research methodology that invites users to participate in bioethical research and to discover a deeper agency and their unique voice.” How app users have responded Below you can see a few of the dilemmas presented in the app and the answers given by users until now. For more dilemmas and answers, visit the MyBioethics app. Should researchers who study the safety of new medicines in humans subject themselves to the risks of their work? 39% When researchers subject others to risks, they should also voluntarily subject themselves: 39% of respondents. ”I think it would be a moral ideal for researchers to participate in the same tests they subject other humans to. If you don’t feel that the test is safe enough for yourself, why would you say it’s safe enough for others? Practically, however, making this a requirement might slow down scientific progress due to time investments.” ”Researchers are trying to develop something to make other people’s lives better, so I don’t think it is automatically their mission to subject themselves. Of course, if there is nobody willing to take part, the researchers have to either subject themselves or quit their research.” “If the experiment goes wrong and the study subject dies, the researcher might be able to determine what went wrong and fix the problem but if the researcher had been a study subject themself, no one else might be able to fix the problem and the study would be a failure. So, whose life would rather be sacrificed in this case: a normal person’s or the researcher’s?” Should selling non-vital organs be allowed if it would help transplant recipients and the decision to sell would be made without coercion or manipulation? 41% Selling of non-vital organs should be allowed: 41% of respondents. An activist group is planning to illegally release animals from a struggling goat farm. Is the farmer’s right to property more important than freeing the goats from poor living conditions? 60% Freeing the animals should be supported: 60% of respondents. The MyBioethics mobile app has been developed in close cooperation with the Finnish Institute of Bioethics. The project to develop the app received funding from Kone Foundation in 2020.The Finnish Institute of Bioethics advances the field of bioethics in Finland.