RU1: Foundational questions
There are at least two ways of addressing biomedicine and clinical practice from a philosophical perspective: one is more attentive to the philosophical side and one more attentive to the scientific side. Concerning the former, we are interested in the conceptual analysis both of terms belonging to biomedical research or clinical practice (gene, susceptibility, disease, therapy, cancer, stem cell, model organism, etc.) and of terms that may be explicated by means of biomedical knowledge (life, death, individuality, organism, etc.). Regarding the latter, we propose a philosophy that has a real impact on science, both at research and at clinical level. For example, i) we are developing a formal language that should permit to write intra- and infra-cellular processes as computable theorems; ii) we are working on bio-ontologies, which, in these years, have a great relevance relatively to the elaboration, storage and retrieval of the enormous bulk of data coming from the lab and from the clinical research.
RU2: Individual and public ethical questions
Each step of the chain from the scientist’s lab bench to the patient’s bedside raises a host of ethical issues, both at the individual level and at the collective level. Our research focuses on some of these, for example those raised by biobanks, consent, clinical trials, human embryonic stem cells, patient stratification, and so on. Our aim is to improve the quality of the public discussion on these important issues as well as to promote responsible individual choices and effective public policies (we touch issues such as democratic legitimation of public policy concerning health matter, responsible and active citizenship in the health domain, freedom of choice and expression in relation to research and treatment, etc.). Our research is characterized, i) at public level, by an emphasis on deliberative practices to improve collective choices on ethical issues concerning biomedicine and clinical practice; ii) at individual level, on the establishment of a good ethical counseling to really empower patients in front of any diagnostic or therapeutic action needing an ethical decision.
RU3: Societal questions
In our Science and Technology Studies (STS) approach we focus on the mutual shaping of epistemic and normative orders that arise at the interface of biomedicine and society. The momentous developments of molecular biomedicine are unfolding in a space of experimentation that is not only technical and epistemic but also, and importantly, social. In its steep acceleration the production of biomedical knowledge is also being redistributed to a host of new sites that extend well beyond academia, and all the while the public space is itself changing rapidly, evolving new institutions and accommodating new relationships among citizens along with new distributions of power. From cells to sequences, from regulatory agencies to patent offices, we pay attention on the objects and sites of contemporary biopolitics, and harness STS to trace their implications for health care policy.