Nouveaux objets, nouveaux acteurs, nouveau enjeux éthiques : les interfaces entre biologie, nanotechnologie et informatique

With the launching of “bench to bedside” programs which aim to establish bridges between clinics and life science laboratories, it becomes increasingly important to associate specialists in ethics and basic scientists to analyze the vision of mankind underlying fundamental research programs in biology. In a first part, a survey of 25 years of research on cancer will illustrate the rise and the limits of molecular approaches to human multifactorial diseases. The second part will present how new technologies recruited for the sequencing of the human genome and for the description of molecular events in living cells led to a shift of the interest from gene to regulatory networks, from genetic determinism to the importance of noise in the emergence of robust development programs. The last part intends to discuss how philosophy and ethics are needed to recognize the limits of the experimental approaches of the living and to think its complexity, between marveling, suffering and protesting.