DCU’s Institute of Ethics –inaugural lecture
4 June 2009

Prof Bert Gordijn, Director of DCU's Institute of Ethics (centre) speaks to Prof Ferdinand von Prondzynski, DCU President, and Mr David Byrne S.C., Chancellor of DCU, before his Inaugural lecture entitled 'Ethics: current and future challenges'

Professor Bert Gordijn, Director of DCU's Institute of Ethics and a leading international expert in bioethics, gave his inaugural lecture.

The Institute was established in 2009 and is the first institution of its kind in Ireland to be concerned with ethical issues across a wide range of disciplines, including business, technology, politics, media, healthcare and life sciences.

His talk gave a historical overview of the ‘birth’ of ethics from the time of Socrates in the 5th century BC to the present time, and focused on some of the ethical issues which are of relevance to us today.

Speaking at the launch, DCU President Ferdinand von Prondzynski said that the launch of the Institute was an important moment in the life of the university.  “Professor Gordijn has a distinguished international background in ethics, and his appointment is a major contribution to the debate on ethics in this country”.

Mr David Byrne, Chancellor of Dublin City University and former EU Commissioner and Attorney General said that our sensitivities are now heightened by recent events in financial organisations and religious institutions. “Leadership from the top is important as it permeates throughout whole institutions.  Ethical behaviour should be reinforced through transparency”, he said.

In his lecture, 'Ethics: current and future challenges', Professor Gordijn spoke about the ethical challenges facing us today in religious organisations, corporations, healthcare organisations and the media. The development of power in these institutions has not always been accompanied by a similar development of ethics.

What we see today is institutional power without adequate responsible behaviour and sufficient transparency. One of the challenges is to improve the ethical behaviour within our institutions", he said.

He went on to address the problem of the explosive growth of technology in the world today and how ethics must shape our response to that growth and steer it in desirable directions. “The rapid growth of technology has created fundamentally new engineering capabilities, both in terms of our capacity to change the material world surrounding us as well as in terms of our power to technologically change ourselves as human beings", he said.

"30 years ago we believed mobile phones, iPods, email and the web were the stuff of science fiction. However, they are very real today, influencing our life significantly on a daily basis. What is science fiction today might be science fact tomorrow. Therefore, we should we be aware of the changes that are already on their way in geo-engineering and in the engineering of human beings and their implications for the planet and the future of human life", he said.

He pointed out the explosive growth in the area of human enhancement technologies, which are used for the optimization of traits of healthy individuals.  “Within medicine we are not only curing disease anymore: increasingly we are also improving characteristics of perfectly healthy people. This is evident in the increase of cosmetic surgery and dentistry, performance-enhancing sports medicine and developments in psychopharmacology. This development might trigger a one sided focus on technological fixes when it comes to self-improvement. It might also lead to a neglect of more traditional means of improving ourselves such as physical exercise and intellectual study. While we should not fear technological development, we must ensure the ethical dimension", he said.