Start from an ethical debate

The Ethics sections under each main heading (accessed by the side navigation) discuss some of the debated ethical issues and provide activities to explore these ideas further. These student activities involve consideration of issues that are important for public interest in, or concern about the use of, biotechnology.

The section called Issues and values in this Teaching Guide provides suggestions on the use of these issues-based activities, and includes notes on:

• aspects of effective issues analysis and values development

• types of activities through which issues can be explored

• different types of questions which can be used as a starting point for discussion of five issues in biotechnology.

In the process of exploring an issue, it may become clear that students have limited understanding of much of the science that underlies biotechnology techniques and applications. Teachers can then direct students to an appropriate information section of this web site, starting with the sections referred to in the teacher notes for each activity.

An example

Start with the activity Who or what would you clone?

Once discussion of specific applications of cloning begins, students can be directed to Biotechnology Online sections such as Cloning, What is DNA? and What is a gene? in the section What is biotechnology?; and to Cloning humans? in Human uses. Information in these sections can help students find answers to questions such as:

• What is a clone?

• What does 'genetically identical' mean?

• What is the genetic code?

• What are the similarities and the differences between cloning cells, cloning tissues and cloning whole organisms in terms of their current and potential issues?

• Are there current regulations on the types of cloning experiments that can be carried out?