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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.

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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

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them 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 is

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

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punish people who break this law but there must also be moral limits meaning that every individual

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

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One very interesting case that shows us the connection between science, technology and ethics is a moral dilemma.

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A moral dilemma is a difficult situation when we have to decide between two possible options.

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Both options are difficult, both options have disadvantages, so it's not easy to decide what is the best thing to do.

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Let me give 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 die. So the doctors

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are trying a new surgery with him. They have invented a new procedure. They can try to operate

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this patient, but there is a high risk that the patient dies in the operation. Should the doctors

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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 died because of the operation so it's

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tricky it's not easy to decide what is the best option what would you do here

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is where medical ethics can help us medical ethics tries to give us some

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

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

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

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justice the principle of autonomy means that the patient has to approve to

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accept to give permission to all the things doctors are doing there the

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principle of beneficence means that everything doctors do must be used to

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help the patient the principle of non-maleficence means that doctors

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

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fourth principle the principle of justice means that we must treat all

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patients fairly and also treat each individual case separately taking into

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account the peculiar circumstances of every individual biology and medicine

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are two fascinating areas of research but they also raise important ethical

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questions some of the most difficult and interesting ethical issues raised by

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biomedicine are those that are linked with assisted reproduction stem cells

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cloning and eugenics assisted reproduction reproduction has helped

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many infertile couples to have children but it has also produced a lot of spare

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fertilized eggs in order to improve the chances of a pregnancy a lot of eggs are

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fertilized in an assisted reproduction process those which are not used are

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stored frozen and nobody knows what to do with them the problem is that these

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eggs can potentially develop and create a human being so what should we do with

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them is it correct to destroy them is it correct to use them in order to do

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scientific research is it correct to keep them frozen stored in a building

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forever so that's a difficult a tricky ethical debate stem cells are cells that

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are found in embryos and that can transform into different types of cells

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for example muscle cells or nerve cells so they are very useful and scientists

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are very interested in getting to know more about them because they could potentially be

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used to produce different tissues and eventually create organs that can be used to cure diseases

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the problem is that these stem cells that come from embryos produce a debate an ethical debate

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is it more correct to use an embryo to take stem cells from them and later use these cells to

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cure another person the problem comes because the embryo can potentially be transformed into

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a person so if we destroy the embryo to use the stem cells we are stopping this natural development

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that makes the embryo into a person nevertheless today scientists can also produce stem cells

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with different ways not using embryos so that can be somehow solved cloning is a

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technique that is used to reproduce exact copies of an organism cloning has

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been used to produce identical copies of animals like the famous Dolly sheep and

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some people fear that if we continue our research with cloning scientists might

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eventually produce human clones creating an identical copy of a human being

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raises tremendous ethical issues it is a big big problem so some people are very

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afraid of this and they thought they think that a cloning human cloning

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should be totally forbidden nevertheless some scientists think that cloning can also be used

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to produce organs and tissues that could help us to cure diseases that today cannot be treated

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so they talk about therapeutic cloning therapeutic cloning is different to human cloning because the

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idea in therapeutic cloning is to use cloning techniques to cure diseases not to create copies

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of human beings and it's important that you make this difference and you understand it properly

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finally let's talk about eugenics eugenics is a technique used to select organisms

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in order to improve this species so the basic idea consists in encouraging the reproduction

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of some organisms that are considered superior and to make difficult or stop the reproduction

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of organisms that are called inferior in order to improve the race this is exactly what the nazis

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did the nazis used these two types of eugenics what we call positive and negative eugenics

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positive eugenics means encouraging people in this case that were considered

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genetically superior or racially superior to have a lot of children and negative eugenics

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is about making as much as possible to stop people who were considered inferior from reproducing

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as you know what the nazis did was to kill a lot of people that were considered

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rationally inferior and also to sterilize people they didn't want to reproduce for example people

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that were mentally ill of course today we think about these practices as highly unethical immoral

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and unacceptable because they violate human rights nevertheless some people are afraid that a new

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type of eugenics might develop in the future for example if we develop genetic engineering

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and in the future is possible to decide the traits of your children imagine that in a few decades

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biomedicine has developed so much that we can offer our parents to create children

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with their traits the characteristics that they prefer this could be done selecting the embryos

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selecting the engineering that can make them for example tall or blonde or intelligent or with blue

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eyes what kind of world would be living if this was possible there would be some children that

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have been selected or designed by their parents while there would be other children that were

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born like you and me so wouldn't it be a world where naturally born children would be discriminated

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it would probably lead to a society that is hierarchically divided into superior people so

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people that were engineered and inferior people people that were born naturally so a lot of people

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are scared about that and they think cloning should be also regulated and some practices

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forbidden in order to stop the darkest side of this kind of research.