Are morals a barrier to progress?

I'll start with a fairly simple argument, on a controversy scale of 1 to 10 it's probably 2ish...

Stem Cell research. Every year some incredible number of babies are aborted. This is sad and unfortunate, but it's reality. Their stem cells could save lives.

The Bush administration, in keeping with the Conservative Christian leanings, banned such research not because doing so made any scientific or medical sense, but simple because it was immoral. The idea was ugly.

Yah, well I don't like it either, but if I get some mysterious cancer and some baby being tossed in the trash heap anyway can save me - I'm diving in that trash heap to dig it out!!

Okay, that's a fairly innocuous one. But how about this:

Weeding out the genetically weak is beneficial to the species.

Now, I don't personally believe this, but I'm playing devil's advocate to prove a point: Science and Technological Progress really can, and often do infringe upon the boundaries set up by our morals.

So back to the argument: less healthy people would starve to death, fewer people would be poor, and we would all enjoy a relatively higher standard of living if we ceased to waste precious resources on those with genetic conditions that make them undesirable.

This may include any number of genetic anomalies from Epilepsy (I'm Epileptic, by the way), Muscular Dystrophy, even the increased risk of developing Breast Cancer - all of these errant genes could be eliminated from the population within a few generations, say 100 years or so, simply be destroying babies whose genomes contain these flaws.

Okay, so it would be hard to deny that this makes some scientific sense: obviously the practice of providing medical care to people who would otherwise have perished only serves to perpetuate these mutations and eventually pollute the gene pool.

It is only a few steps of logic from there to Concentration Camps and extermination of the weak in the name of progress.

So where do we draw the line?

It has been suggested by fairly reputable scientists that simply allowing women to have reproductive freedom would significantly mitigate many of the social and ecological problems related to overpopulation. Why not allow women to enjoy sex without the worry of having an unwanted child?

:shrug:

But where do you stop?

Would not a society which genetically analyzes each new child and rejects those whose DNA contains errant mutations progress more quickly?

Discuss.

 

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It is a boundary to progress; however,a necessary boundary.

 

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Necessary, but who sets the boundary?

And should the boundary be fixed, or shall we allow it to move once in a while?

We have done just that; it's now acceptable for a homosexual to come on radio and TV and say, "My partner and I..."

..and that's great. But it's an indication that the moral boundary has shifted. Ten years ago that wasn't possible.

But a caveat to the whole cultural/social openness, mutual respect thing is you have to accept some f'd up people sometimes. A group in Japan likes to raise bear cubs then kill them to honor their gods.

Our infinitely accepting, open and all-loving society..

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..tells us we have to accept them, but what about the bear-killing thing? What about the fact that the Japanese continue to hunt whales to the brink of extinction?

Can't talk about that.

Gays are accepted, that's good (in my opinion). But at the same time we are expected to accept crap like shark fin soup.

...and Darfur for that matter. China's great!

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See what I mean?

 

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Gently Passing i surpose it depends on which kinds of ethics your looking at the Cartwright Inquiry then this was a FAILURE of bioethics in monumental ways. For instance lack of concent (at all let alone informed concent), "resurching" things which had already been previously established conclusivly at the cost of peoples lives (cant find the exact number). read the section in the link on medical ethics

Then we can look at the gross abuses which happened in mental health facilities where pts were involentaly detained and had apsolutly no control over there lives, were subjected to horendious invasions of there privacy (like being forced to strip naked and then line up for the showers), where pts were just locked up for ever with little to no treatment and an expectation that this was there life for ever now. They were like black holes which just sucked people into nazi concentration camps

however if we are looking at the way that religion has been used to abuse the POLITICAL proccess then you do have a point

 

You're confusing means and ends. Science is a tool, it is a way to achieve that which we desire. Our morals help us to decide what it is that we want.

Throw away your morals, and what are you left with? What's to guide you? Do you really want to see humanity reduced to a mere variable in an equation?

 

Morals are what define us, while science, like madanthonywayne said is something we use.

 

The boundary is already set. And it is and should be fixed.

IMO that is a decline in morality

All of these things are declines in morality, not shifts. It's immoral to be gay, but people dont' care anymore.

 

OK, as long as we are being devil's advocates....

Most notions of progress are barriers to morals.

An example: China's industrialization and the environment.

Another: forcing 'free' trade on certain countries or sub-populations therein.

And in science: gene modification of animals.

 

No, that is not correct.

This is a common misconception. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) cannot be isolated from the tissue of an aborted foetus. ESCs exist only during a narrow window of embryonic development – the blastocyst stage. A blastocyst is a very early stage pre-implantation embryo that is essentially a hollow ball of cells. Once an embryo has developed beyond the blastocyst stage and implanted, ESCs no longer exist. They have further differentiated into various lineage restricted stem cells (aka “adult” stem cells).

I do not know whether lineage restricted stem cells can be isolated from the tissue of aborted foetuses. But even if they could they are of far less (potential) utility than ESCs.

 

State enforced genetic screening is intolerable to me, while I think that parents have the right to avoid giving birth to a handicapped child. Note that this can be done via abortion or via test tube fertilization using selected sperm & ovum. As medical technology advances, the latter option is likely to become easier & less harmful.

Once politicians are given the power to regulate an activity or enforce some law, unintended bad consequences can become intolerable within a few decades of their getting the power, & it becomes very difficult (often almost impossible) to take the power away from them. Check the history of the Federal income tax.

It is much easier to fix problems due to unintended consequences of individual actions once considered acceptable.

I think that a Jeffersonian concept should have been written into the constitution and strictly adhered to.

• The state should not be allowed to take any action not explicitly described in the constitution, while an individual should be allowed to taker any action not explicitly prohibited.
  
  Furthermore, the state should not be allowed to create new powers by using extreme interpretations of the constitution. For example, there is one phrase in the constitution giving the Federal government the right to regulate interstate commerce. This clause phrase has been used to allow the federal government far more control than ever intended by those who wrote & initially ratified the constitution.

BTW: I have seen families destroyed by the burden of caring for a severely handicapped child. Aside from the financial burden, there are often serious psychological consequences. The burden of caring for a hancicapped child are seldon considered by those who want to impose their notions of morality on the potential parents.

 

Where would America be if we hadn't stripped the land of coal and lumber, taken it from the Indians, diverted rivers, worried about factory pollution, etc. We became a world power through immoral acts.
China is now doing it.

 

Everyone has something to contribute to society, unless they're an unconscious vegetable.

 

I'm knocking neither progress nor morality, simply pointing out the potential for harm from both.

Agriculture led us to create societies which expanded, often violently, and exercised a variety of means of assimilation. Native tribes intermixed with the more powerful society, often through rape or sexual slavery, religious practices were forbidden and replaced with the dominant religion. So on and so forth.

From the standpoint of an individual in the context of survival this is good as we have a better shot at living longer and having control of more resources during our lives.

But what is the result?

Is war not simply the expression of repressed conflict between ethnic or religious groups? I can think of no better example than Iraq circa 2006.

Eliminate the bully that's beating them into submission and suddenly that same exact carnage over resources ensues. Is that civilized?

And some have predicted (accurately or not) that our civilization is headed for a mass die-off, which is what?

That's just the bar tab coming due.

Seems to me the tribes had it right - I'd rather be left under a tree with a bit of water to die of exposure than be basically imprisoned in an institution, left drooling into a bowl of soggy Cheerios, pissing my pants and wishing I was dead anyway.

I've often thought of death in terms of just walking far enough into the wilderness that I just can't make it back. That sounds pretty good to me. When my health is such that my life is just getting to burdensome, let some wolf eat my guts, or whatever.

What's wrong with that? :shrug:

 

morality should not hold back science at all. Science should be allowed to be pursued without thought to whether it is "moral". I offer only this caveat-science should not be allowed to test on unwilling subjects. If I want to allow experimental brain surgery on myself, I should be allowed to volunteer myself for it.

 

Civilization has led to a hierarchy of wealth, with the rich living posh lives of comfort and excess and unthinkable poverty on the other side of the spectrum.

War happens because the poor don't like being poor, they want to survive and have little choice but fight, commit crime, etc.

 

Jesus tap-dancing Christ. For this one essential piece of information, Hercules, I forgive you for every time that you have treated me like dirt.

 

Well I've got no problem with that "harvest". But Abortion past the about 4-5 months is fucking disgusting.