1. Bohdana Telyatnikova 5^C
Bioetichs and limits of science
Science is a process to gain understanding of the natural world, is a way of thinking,
while nature is the origin from which discovery of phenomena proceeds.
Frankestain, a charachter from Mary Shelley’s novel, create a human being by joining
parts selected from corpes and through the use of electricity and chemistry, without
respecting the rules of nature, so he overcomes the limits of science.
Man has many questions, and one of them is whether science has limits.
Science cannot answer everything, infact this discipline can’t help us with questions
about all those things that are beyond the natural (the supernatural), doesn't make
moral judgments, and there's no way to scientifically determine value.
This is why scientists can never help to solve the debate over abortion, they can tell you
what is going on as a fetus develops, but the question of whether it's right or wrong to
terminate those events is determined by cultural and social rules, in other words by
morality.
Bioetichs is a branch of knowledge that deals with all those moral questions that are
related to scientific research in the fields of biology and medicine but also in philosophy.
Today it’s possible to act on vital phenomena that once depended only on the laws of
natural evolution. With bioethics the very meaning of life and death, of disease and
health has been called into question.
The most discussed issues of bioethics are the abortion, euthanasia, eugenics and
human cloning.
Abortion is the removal of a fetus or embryo from a woman's uterus resulting in the
termination of a pregnancy. The controversy over abortion is actually a greater
discussion over when life truly begins. Pro-choice bioethicists place emphasis on the
ability of a woman to have power over her own body while anti-choice supporters
believe life begins at conception.
Euthanasia refers to the act of purposefully ending a life to eliminate untreatable
suffering. The opponents view life as sacred and fear a slippery into allowing treatable
patients to die their own well, while supporters see euthanasia as a relief from
unnecessary suffering.
Eugenics is a type of DNA manipulation that creates selective breeding to improve the
human race. Bioethicists who support gene selection obviously want to see the
advancement of the species along with the extinction of certain genetic diseases. But
since eugenetics has been associated and discredited by the Nazis radical experiments
to achieve Aryan race, opponents debate that eugenics could lead to discrimination
against certain people and disabled individuals.
Human cloning is the scientific production of an identical cell, tissue, or entire body.
Bioethicists that support human cloning see the benfits of regenerative medicine in
2. terms of organ or tissue donation. This woulld eliminate the risk of a body rejecting a
transplant and the issue of scarcity of organs and tissues to be donated. Critics fear that
cloning humans for their body parts will produce human farming and the killing of
clones for their vital organs.
Personally I think that thanks to the biomedical revolution, bioethics is a hope for a
more modern society and is a step forward for a new historical era.
I believe that decisions should only be made by those who are living the moment, such
as in the case of euthanasia: the pain and suffering that a person experiences can be
incomprehensible to a person who is not in that condition and therefore the decision
belong only to those who live it. The same is true in the case of abortion. As for eugenics,
I think that on the one hand we would have a human species with a better quality of life,
but on the other hand, sometimes are the imperfections that create sensitivity and new
discoveries. Regarding human cloning, I agree only if it were limited to that of organs for
transplants or tissues to treat diseases, but it’s also true that a person who is produced
with embryonic duplication, despite lacking his genetic uniqueness, will not be lacking
of its individual uniqueness, just as in the case of homozygous twins.
Bioethics, therefore, gives me hope and confidence in progress, but at the same time
fascinates and scares me of how science is able to overcome the limits of nature.
