Unit 10 Is Science Dangerous?
Lewis Wolpert
Does society need protecting from scientific advances? Most emphatically not, so long as scientists themselves and their employers are committed to full disclosure of what they know.
1. The idea that knowledge is dangerous is deeply embedded in our culture. Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from the biblical Tree of Knowledge, and in Milton’s Paradise Lost the serpent addresses the Tree as the ―Mother of Science‖. The archangel Raphael advises Adam to be ―lowly wise‖ when he tries to question him about the nature of the Universe. Indeed, Western literature is filled with images of scientists meddling with nature, with disastrous results. Scientists are portrayed as a soulless group, unconcerned with ethical issues.
2. But is science in fact dangerous, and do scientists have special social responsibilities? It is essential to recognize that reliable scientific knowledge has no moral or ethical value. Science tells us how the world is: that we are not at the center of the Universe is neither good nor bad, nor is the possibility that genes could influence our intelligence or behavior. Moral Obligations
3. Dangers and ethical issues come into play when scientific research is done in practice, for example in experiments involving humans and other animals or when science is applied to technology, or in issues related to safety. There is thus an important distinction between science and technology: between knowledge and
understanding on the one hand, and the application of that knowledge to making something, or using it in some practical way, on the other.
4. Science produces ideas about how the world works, whereas the ideas in technology result in usable objects. Technology is much older than science and, unaided by any science, it gave rise to early crafts such as agriculture and metalworking. I would argue that science mad virtually no contribution to technology until the nineteenth century – even the great triumphs of engineering such as the steam engine and Renaissance cathedrals were built with imaginative trial and error, virtually without any impact of science.
5. Whatever new technology is introduced, it is not for scientists to make moral or ethical decisions about its use, as they have no special rights or skills in this regard. There is grave danger in asking scientists to be more socially responsible if they would also be given the right and authority to make such decisions on their own. The social obligations that scientists have, as distinct from those responsibilities they share with all citizens (such as supporting a democratic society and taking care of the rights of others), come from them having access to specialized knowledge of how the world works that is not easily accessible to others. Their obligation is to make public any social implications of their work and its technological applications, and to give some assessment of its reliability. In most areas of science it matters little to the public whether a particular theory is right or wrong, but in some areas, such as human and plant genetics, it matters a great deal.
6. When the facts are examined dispassionately, it is not easy to find cases where
scientists have behaved unethically in relation to the public. Contrary to some claims, there is no evidence that they did so either in the case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the United Kingdom and elsewhere or in the AIDS blood scandal currently reverberating in France, for example.
7. The most clear case of immorality in scientific research was the eugenics movement. The scientific assumptions behind this were crucial: that most human attributes (desirable and undesirable) are inherited. The scientists concerned completely failed to give an assessment of the reliability of their ideas or sufficiently to consider their implications. On the contrary, and even more blameworthy, their conclusions seem to have been driven by what they saw as desirable social implications. In contrast, the Allied scientists who built the atomic bomb behaved morally, and fulfilled their social obligations by informing their governments about the implications of atomic theory. The decision to build the bomb was taken by politicians, not scientists. Should scientists on their own ever be entitled to make such decisions? For the German eugenicists, there should have been a conflict between their responsibilities as scientists and as citizens.
8. How, then, should scientists behave when faced with a conflict between their responsibilities as researchers and their responsibility to those for whom they work? Should a scientist in government employment allow his or her superiors to keep the dangers of eating certain foods secret from the public? Similarly, what is the ethical position of a scientist working for a chemical company who believes a product is dangerous, yet whose employment contract requires confidentiality about the nature of
the research? In both cases, one should not underestimate the problems in hazard assessment, in itself a complex business. The problem is no different to that of anyone, for example an accountant, who discovers corruption: if no action is taken after reporting the matter to his or her superiors, the individual must make a very difficult decision. Scientists, just like everyone else, have to try not to become the unquestioning tools of their employers. Genetic Pornography Genetic Pornography
9. The very term ―genetic engineering‖ conjures up the image of Frankenstein and his monster – Mary Shelley was the unintentional evil fairy godmother of genetics – a tradition well-known in literature (Brave New World, The Island of Dr Moreau and so on), and most recently manifested by the likes of Jurassic Park and Godzilla. The media are aware of this and often report what I regard as genetic pornography – reports dressed up to titillate and frighten. A nasty example was a widely disseminated picture of a mouse with a ―human‖ ear on its back – not a human ear at all but a piece of cartilage-like material. Newspapers print sensational and unjustified headlines, such as the ―Frankenstein foods‖ idiocy surrounding genetically modified organisms in the United Kingdom.
10. To apply genetic engineering requires considerable knowledge and, even more importantly, money, which in many cases is hard for scientists to come by. Indeed, for the public sector the expense of the applications of genetics and molecular biology can open up difficult choices: new medical treatments, requiring complex technology, cannot be given to all. There has to be some principle of rationing, and this poses
serious moral and ethical dilemmas much more worthy of consideration than those of genetic engineering and the like. Dangers of Genetics
11. So what dangers does genetics pose to society? ―Bioethics‖ is a growth industry that purports to address this question, but one should regard this field with caution, as bioethicists have a vested interest in finding difficulties. Nevertheless, it has made some valuable contributions, including advice on experiments on human embryos in the United Kingdom and on the rights of fetuses. But advances in genetics raise few new ethical issues – there are no new ethical issues in relation to the current hysteria over cloning.
12. Some of the common fears about cloning are little more than science fiction at present, for example the danger of producing enormous numbers of genetically identical individuals. It is amusing to watch moralists swing from denying that genes have an important effect on intelligence or behavior to saying that a cloned individual’s behavior will be entirely determined by the individual’s genetic make-up. At present, the risk of human cloning leading to abnormalities is high and so it should not be attempted, and I hope no mother would be so unwise as to become involved. Gene therapy – introducing genes to cure a genetic disease such as cystic fibrosis – has risks, as do all new medical treatments. There may well be problems with insurance and testing, but are these any different from those related to someone considered to be at increased risk of contracting AIDS or cancer?
13. Genetically modified foods have raised extensive public concern, and there seems
研究生公共英语教材阅读B第3、4、10、11、14课文原文及翻译
