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Academic Freedom and Academic-Industry Relationships in Biotechnology
- Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 16, Number 2, June 2006
- pp. 129-149
- 10.1353/ken.2006.0013
- Article
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Commercial academic-industry relationships (AIRs) are widespread in biotechnology and have resulted in a wide array of restrictions on academic research. Objections to such restrictions have centered on the charge that they violate academic freedom. I argue that these objections are almost invariably unsuccessful. On a consequentialist understanding of the value of academic freedom, they rely on unfounded empirical claims about the overall effects that AIRs have on academic research. And on a rights-based understanding of the value of academic freedom, they rely on excessively lavish assumptions about the kinds of activities that academic freedom protects.