 10-29-2005, 3:55 PM
|
Michael Sarver
 
Joined on 02-16-2005
A Special Place
Posts 149
|
|
|
Every time a new theory or technology makes it's way into the spotlight, there begins (Especially in American circles) the discussion of just how "ethical" it is.
I'm not "Playing Devil's Advocate" here... I'm just going to speak my true feelings on the subject of science and ethics.
Simply put; Ethics has no business mixing with science.
Now for the long-hand version (for all the tree-huggers, PETA freaks, and technophobes wringing their hands and yelling at the computer screen).
First of all... Lets separate the idea of "ethics" from "morality".
Morality has absolutely no business being practiced anywhere but within the confines of one's own personal space or in designated areas such as home and church.
Morality is a personal choice.
Ethics is what is practised in the public eye or in business... Unless an NDA has been signed by your employees which gives you the power to do just about anything to them without recourse.
Ethics is what people chose to stay sociable or out of jail.
Quite obviously, some people find vivisection immoral. They need not bother getting involved in this discussion because we are talking "ethics".
The ethical banter concerning vivisection and human-testing is a sticky bunch of rhetoric.
I don't even feel that ethics need be applied to scientific research; It muffles the discussions and colors the findings.
Why is that?
Opinion and cultural bias are pivotal to ethics, and therefore render ethics detrimental to the scientific process of discovery.
DaVinci's medical examination of cadavers was obviously immoral. Many Italians and officials would have found his work to be unethical.
The necessity of discovery and the value of that work shows quite cleary that ethics has absolutely no business dictation what the scientific community does.
Not at all.
The only thing that should dictate what our Technicians, Doctors and Professors do is logic...
Pure and simple logic.
Forget objectivity as well.
Logic is the only mantra that is necessary for the act of discovery.
Obviously... It is illogical to break the spines of cats to help in the research for human car-crash victims because the spinal-structure (and purpose of that structure) is so different that the data is almost completely useless.
That is not to say that ALL animal testing is illogical.
Sending chimps into space or hazardous environments is a glaring, logical alternative to sending a human member of a small, under-funded research team (unless for some strange reason there are scores of humans willing to die for that research voluntarily).
I like apes. I prefer their company to most human primates and I don't like to see them suffer...
But there are people who could switch that emotional identification off if there were some knowledge to gain from the event.
Those people have a purpose and that purpose is science.
Their hands shouldn't be bound by a whisper of intangible ideals called "ethics".
Some would say that there should be a code of ethics dealing with how the data itself (the only REAL valuable asset in research) is handled and manipulated.
To this, I would say that faking or padding results isn't logical either.
"I did something naughty again..."
|
|
|
|
|
Report
|
|
|
|