This article, by Yuval Levin was posted on the Washington Post of Tuesday, 10 March, 2009. It presents the issue of President Obama's move to facilitate stem cell research through public funding as a case against moral and ethical standards. This move, Yuvel warned, signals a 'dangerous temptation in Science policy". Yuvel takes issue with President Obama's apparent refusal in taking a moral stand on the issue, and instead, mentioning that it will be bound by a code of ethics that a certain scientific community would work out. Yuvel takes issue with the fact that when it is politics that should draw guidelines on public issues based on public feedback and sentiments and the good of the nation, the president had left the scientific community to arbitrate.
We are once again faced with the dilemma in science: Is science amoral and value-free? Will the scientific community be able to draw up ethical guidelines on the issue of the stem cell research.
Yuvel's concern presupposes some questions:
1) Will scientists be in a position to advance their take on moral and ethical issues?
2) Are scientists incapable of making measured judgments over the issue of stem cell research and make their proposal a fair representation of what the society they are a part of wants and not only what the scientific community aspires for.
It would be a good idea to gather information on what exactly the scientific community thinks of this controversial topic. It is the values that scientists hold that would enable them to make well informed, collectively beneficial decisions on controversial issues. And scientists, being human, operate through values.
I recently read a thought provoking article by a NUS student Goh Zhaojing, in which he quotes a Princeton molecular biologist Dr Lee M Silver who has analyzed clashes between spirituality and science in his book "Challenging Nature" by defining an East-West divide in global bio technology policies . He says that in the Judeo-christian-islamic tradition, God is the master creator who gives out new souls to each individual human being , and hence an embryo is a human being with a soul and it is wrong to use cloning to create human embryos or destroy embryos.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast" playing God" has no meaning in cultures molded by eastern spirituality where there is neither a Master or the Universe nor a Master Plan and each spirit is eternal and evolving and is ruled by karma
This is why the author says cloning and other controversial technologies has had a smoother sailing in the east rather than west.
Will pass on the article to you .
The same article also said that the motivation of the act is very important for Buddhists . In the 10th Mind and Life conference in Oct 2002, the Dalai Lama stated "that the general line of demarcation in ethics from a Buddhist perspective was based mainly on the long term consequences , and if research results could be used for the betterment of mankind, the work could ultimately be justified. The author of the article adds Given that one goal of science is to make discoveries to improve human life, there is hence little objection and indeed even a sort of moral obligation to pursue modern bio technologies .
ReplyDeleteInteresting comments Sudha. Yes, because of the predominance of the theory of Karma in the culture of the East, science is better embraced and because the western mind has has reasoned its way into moral and ethical codes, it questions everything according to a fixed edifice and hence makes a ride rough, sort of. The concept of the evolving spirit makes for, in some ways, "anything goes". But if we were to balance it out, I wonder if anything actually "goes". In the East, a certain state of resignation to the forces of nature may also have taken over, which may appear as complacency and may account for the dire state of affairs in certain quarters, for example in the tussle between the state and unrecognised schools on state lands in India and the consequent effect on the children caught in these schools, or the neglect of self created dumping grounds.
ReplyDeleteThough we can see a East West divide in the approach towards science, we still have to admit that the west still appears to churn out the highest scientific innovations. Interesting.
Very true.The brightest and best scientists are in the west.
ReplyDeleteHere are some luminous lines from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri
Earth's brooding wisdom spoke to her still breast;
Mounting from mind's last peaks to mate with gods,
Making earth's brilliant thoughts a springing board
To dive to cosmic vastnesses,
The knowledge of the thinker and the seer
Saw the unseen and thought the unthinkable,
Opened the enormous doors to the unknown,
Rent man's horizons into infinity.
A shoreless sweep was lent to the mortal's acts,
And art and beauty sprang from the human depths;
Nature and soul vied with nobility
Ethics the human keyed to imitate heaven;
The harmony of a rich culture's tones
Refined the sense and magnified its reach
To hear the unheard and glimpse the invisible
And taught the soul to soar beyond things known,
Inspiring life to greaten and break its bounds,
Aspiring to the Immortal's unseen world.
Brilliant lines those. Tks Sudha!
ReplyDelete