Ethical guidelines needed before human research in commercial spaceflight is ready for liftoff | Science & Technology

The proposed ethical guidelines were released Friday in a policy paper published in Science and are the result of a workshop held at the Banbury Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory funded by the Translational Research Institute for Space Health, or TRISH, at Baylor College of Medicine.

“With commercial companies taking more people each year to space, opportunities for human space travel are rapidly expanding,” said Seidler, a professor of applied physiology and kinesiology at UF, “and it’s important that experiments taking place in space are as safe and productive as possible.”

About 30 individuals participated in the workshop, most of whom were health policy experts, scientists with expertise in bioethics, government regulators, and representatives from private spaceflight companies, Seidler said.

“We outlined potential ethical concerns facing the future of commercial space research and established guidelines for those who are traveling to space on their own dime,” she said. “We made our recommendations, and hopefully that will kickstart conversations.”

While there are many government-sponsored research missions in space that operate under clear ethical guidelines, few guidelines and best practices exist for conducting responsible research in the commercial sector, said Dr. Vasiliki Rahimzadeh, first author of the paper and assistant professor at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor.

“Now is the time to develop that ethical framework, and it must be a multidisciplinary effort across the private and public sector,” she said.

In the paper, the team proposes ethical guidelines for commercial space…

Ad Amazon : The reality of UFOs and extraterrestrials is here for those with the courage to examine it. We are not alone! We are only one of many different humanoids in a universe teeming with other intelligent life?