Acting ethically, responding culturally: Framing the new reproductive and genetic technologies in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The spread of new reproductive and genetic technologies to the developing world stimulates reflection on the ethical issues they generate. The 'built-in-ness' of assumptions about personhood and relationality within these technologies means that local professionals must, perforce, engage with attempts to make sense of new technology with reference to local meanings and traditions or take positions which reject them. This paper explores such attempts to indigenise bioethics in contemporary Sri Lanka with reference to ethical/ cultural conflicts surrounding two practices: donor insemination and consanguinity counselling. The former is discussed in relation to the now defunct practice of polyandry and the latter in relation to matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. The final discussion takes up the consequences of this detailed parsing of local relationality for the larger project of rendering bioethics in some sense comparative.