David Richard Koepsell (born 1969) is an American author, philosopher, attorney, and educator whose recent research focuses on how ethics and public policy deal with emerging science and technology. He has been a practicing attorney, been employed as an ontologist, been a university professor, and has lectured worldwide. He is a visiting professor of research ethics at National Autonomous University of Mexico, director of research and strategic initiatives at Comisión Nacional de Bioética (CONBIOETICA) Mexico, an adjunct professor at University at Buffalo and a senior fellow and education director of the Center for Inquiry Transnational, based in Amherst, New York.[citation needed]
Career
Koepsell earned his PhD in philosophy (1997) as well as his doctorate in law (1995) from the University at Buffalo, where he studied with Barry Smith.[citation needed] Koepsell currently serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction, the University at Buffalo.[1] He has lectured worldwide on issues ranging from civil rights, philosophy, science, ontology, intellectual property theory, society, and religion.[citation needed] Koepsell was appointed assistant professor of philosophy at TU Delft in September 2008 and was promoted to associate professor in September 2013.[citation needed] He is an associate editor of Free Inquiry magazine.[citation needed] He is the co-founder, with Edward Summer, of Carefully Considered Productions, an educational media not-for-profit corporation.[citation needed] He is also the co-founder of Encrypgen. Koepsell also serves on the advisory board of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom.[2].He joined the software startup spin-off from ConsenSys, ConsenSys Health as General Counsel and Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer in March, 2020.[3]
Koepsell's research interests have focused on the nexus of ethics, law, and science.[6] Specifically, while at Yale as a visiting fellow (2006–2007), he investigated ethical questions involved in the practice of bioprospecting and patenting elements of the human genome. Koepsell argues that there are two forms of commons, fiat and natural, otherwise called "commons by choice" and "commons by logical necessity." He has recently argued that DNA, like radio spectra, sunlight, and air, falls into the category "commons by logical necessity", and that attempts to own genes by patent are unjust.[7] His book on the subject, entitled Who Owns You, was published by Wiley-Blackwell in March 2009.[8] While it was endorsed by Nobel Prize winner John Sulston as a "lucid and compelling deconstruction of current practice in the patenting of human genes, exposing inherent contradictions in the process and offering practical ways to resolve them",[9] a starkly contrasting review of Who Owns You? has also been published.[10] In an interview for Singularity University, he applauded the court decision in the Myriad Genetics case that "a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated", while manipulation of a gene to create something not found in nature could still be eligible for patent protection.[11][12][13]
Regarding the intersection of religion with politics and public policy, Koepsell wrote an article for the Secular Humanist Bulletin titled "The United States Is Not a Christian Nation".[14] More recently the Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying "I think [Benjamin Franklin] would have been dismayed by religious fundamentalism in government. He was a free thinker about many things and at least a skeptic about the afterlife and the divinity of Jesus. He was a scientist, a man of letters and a man of Earth."[15]
Published books
2017 Philosophy and Breaking Bad co-edited with Kevin Decker and Robert Arp (UK: Palgrave Macmillan) ISBN978-3-319-40665-7
2016 Scientific Integrity and Research Ethics: an Approach from the Ethos of Science (The Netherlands: Springer) ISBN978-3-319-51276-1
2015 Etica de la Investigacion, Integridad Cientifica (Mexico City: CONACyT) ISBN978-607-460-506-8
2015 Who Owns You: Science, Innovation, and the Gene Patent Wars, 2d Edition (revised and expanded) (UK: Wiley) ISBN978-1118948507
2015 Bioethics: Inspire the Future to Move the World, co-edited with Manuel Ruiz de Chavez Guerrero and Raul Jimenez ISBN978-607-460-475-7
2012 Breaking Bad and Philosophy, with Robert Arp, (ed.) Popular Culture and Philosophy series (Chicago: Open Court) ISBN978-0812697643
2011 Innovation and Nanotechnology: Converging Technologies and the End of Intellectual Property (UK: Bloomsbury Academic) ISBN978-1849663434
2009 Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genes (UK: Wiley-Blackwell) ISBN978-1405187305[note 1]
2007 Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise and Moral Judgments? Co-edited with Paul Kurtz (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press) ISBN978-1591025375
2003 John Searle's Ideas About Social Reality: Extensions, Criticisms, and Reconstructions, co-edited with Laurence Moss (Oxford UK: Blackwell) ISBN978-1405112581[note 2]
2002 Reboot World (New York: Writer’s Club Press) (fiction)
2000 The Ontology of Cyberspace (Chicago: Open Court)[note 3]
^Floridi, Luciano, The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information (Blackwell, 2003) p. 165
^Koepsell, David (2010). "Back to Basics: How Technology and the Open Source Movement Can Save Science". Social Epistemology. 24 (3): 181–190. doi:10.1080/02691728.2010.499478. S2CID144537875.
^George P. Fletcher and Steve Sheppard, American Law in a Global Context (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 394