Immoral science: Bioethics from the point of view of ordinary people
New Scientist Magazine: scientists have forgotten about the social responsibility of science
Dmitry Tselikov, "Kompyulenta"
What would our ancestors have said about "test tube babies", microwave ovens, organ transplants, cable TV and the iPhone? Could they have imagined that people would be able to spend a weekend on another continent, meet their future spouse on the Internet, fix their genome and give their last money for an MP3 version of the soundtrack of their favorite movie? For the most part, we consume innovations without thinking. At the same time, some achievements of science and technology are considered unacceptable by people from a moral point of view.
This is not about the denial, for example, by Christian fundamentalists of evolution. New Scientist magazine has published a list of scientific problems, the disputes around which are conducted from the position of a priori ethics, not heuristics.
In the past, spears were broken about nuclear weapons, eugenics and animal experiments, but in recent years the list of "immoral" areas of research has grown exponentially. Reproductive biology and medicine cause particularly fierce disputes — it is enough to recall cloning, "designer children", stem cell research, human-animal hybrids, and so on. Other "unpleasant" topics include nanotechnology, synthetic biology, genomics and genetically modified organisms.
There are irrational imperatives in generally accepted ethics, which are commonly called common sense, writes New Scientist.
These include, for example, the statements "you can't play God" or "you can't interfere with nature." On the one hand, they are intuitively correct, on the other hand, they lead to an unwillingness to understand the positive aspects of scientific discoveries.
Take, for example, the widespread rejection of genetically modified foods. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard professor and adviser to Barack Obama, notes that people treat them negatively, considering them unnatural, and therefore morally unacceptable. In this regard, the scientist recalls an essay written more than a century ago by the British philosopher John Stuart Mill "On Nature", which says literally the following: "The concept of the natural is the most malicious source of false taste, false philosophy, false morality and even false law." These words can be applied to modern times: most people are in the false belief that natural food is healthy and safe. At the same time, people underestimate the carcinogenicity of some natural products and misjudge pesticides, cloning of livestock and genetically modified products. The a priori idea that the unnatural is bad is false, the professor claims.
Society treats reproductive technologies even more negatively. In vitro fertilization and genetic testing make it possible to study the genes of the embryo's cells before transplanting it into the uterus in order to avoid congenital diseases. And this is just the beginning — in the future, parents will be able to choose the child's height, hair and eye color, even, perhaps, body proportions, intelligence level and character traits. In other words, the natural genetic lottery will be put to an end.
Lewis Wolpert, a biologist at the Medical College of the University of London, believes that in this matter ordinary people show an extreme degree of misunderstanding of the essence of the scientific problem. "This is not about ethics, but about banal security," the scientist says. — Genes are not toys. Instead of the desired result, you can get monstrous deviations from the norm. Therefore — and only for this reason — embryo design is now impossible and unacceptable." In addition, no one is going to introduce forced in vitro fertilization.
The scientist advises moralists to pay more attention to children, not fetuses. According to the British Society for the Protection of Children from Abuse, at least a quarter of Her Majesty's young subjects suffer from emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
Many scientists do not take into account the objections of moralists: science by definition is morally neutral, so an ethical view of a scientific question for them is tantamount to ignorance. And yet, such a position, writes New Scientist, is like avoiding the problem of social responsibility of science. The journal believes that scientists themselves are to blame for the current situation. They need to talk more about their work, rather than retire to an ivory tower. Ordinary people have the right to fear that morally blind science may one day harm them.
Prepared based on the materials of New Scientist (Dan Jones, Immoral advances: Is science out of control?
09 January 2009).
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru14.01.2009