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In this unit we will talk about science, technology and ethics, and we will refer especially to medicine and the moral challenges that it implies.

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Science and technology are two different areas. Science tries to understand how the world is.

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That's, for example, what physicists do when they try to explain why the sun shines.

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Technology, on the other hand, tries to invent machines, objects that help us.

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For example, when engineers invent a new car. Nowadays, science and technology are together, so we talk about technoscience. For example, that's what happens in medicine. Medicine today has evolved so much that it has created a new area of research called biomedicine.

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that's the use of live cells for scientific and technological purposes but not everything

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that we can do in science and technology is positive and good that's why we must establish

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limits to what scientists and engineers can do let me give you an example imagine a doctor has

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invented a new medicine and wants to try it on his patients so he uses it without informing them

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Of course, this is unethical, immoral. This shouldn't be ever done. This should be forbidden.

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That's why we must establish limits. And when I talk about limits, I refer to both legal limits

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and moral limits. Legal limits imply that we should pass a legislation that determines what

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is forbidden, what kind of actions must never be done in science and technology, so that we

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can't punish people who break this law. But there must also be moral limits, meaning that every

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individual should be aware of what is correct and incorrect and should stop doing what is morally

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incorrect. One very interesting case that shows us the connection between science, technology,

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and ethics is a moral dilemma. A moral dilemma is a difficult situation when we have to decide

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between two possible options both options are difficult both options have

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disadvantages so it's not easy to decide what is the best thing to do let me give

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you an example taken again from medicine imagine we have a patient that's very

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ill because he's suffering a strange disease if we don't do anything he may

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die so the doctors are trying a new surgery with him they have invented a new procedure they can

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try to operate this patient but there is a high risk that the patient dies in the operation

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should the doctors operate him or not if we don't operate the patient he might die because of the

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disease if we operate him he might also die because of the operation so it's tricky it's

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not easy to decide what is the best option what would you do here is where

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medical ethics can help us medical ethics tries to give us some clues in

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order to decide what's the best thing to do in cases like this medical ethics is

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based on four basic principles the principle of autonomy the principle of

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beneficence the principle of non-maleficence and the principle of justice the principle

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of autonomy means that the patient has to approve to accept to give permission to all the things

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doctors are doing there the principle of beneficence means that everything doctors do

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must be used to help the patient the principle of non-maleficence means that doctors should

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never do anything that could harm the patient we must avoid harm and the fourth principle

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the principle of justice means that we must treat all patients fairly and also treat each

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individual case separately taking into account the peculiar circumstances of every individual