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EV 2ESO - 14 Challenges for science - Contenido educativo

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Subido el 22 de octubre de 2020 por César Pedro P.

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How is science connected with ethics?

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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. 00:00:00
Science and technology are two different areas. 00:00:12
Science tries to understand how the world is. 00:00:14
That's, for example, what physicists do when they try to explain why the sun shines. 00:00:18
Technology, on the other hand, tries to invent machines, objects that help us. 00:00:25
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. 00:00:30
that's the use of live cells for scientific and technological purposes but not everything 00:00:51
that we can do in science and technology is positive and good that's why we must establish 00:00:59
limits to what scientists and engineers can do let me give you an example imagine a doctor has 00:01:06
invented a new medicine and wants to try it on his patients so he uses it without informing 00:01:13
them of course this is unethical immoral this shouldn't be ever done this should be forbidden 00:01:20
that's why we must establish limits and when i talk about limits i refer to both legal limits 00:01:28
and moral limits legal limits imply that we should pass a legislation that determines what is 00:01:35
forbidden what kind of actions must never be done in science and technology so that we can 00:01:43
punish people who break this law but there must also be moral limits meaning that every individual 00:01:50
should be aware of what is correct and incorrect and should stop doing what is morally incorrect 00:01:57
One very interesting case that shows us the connection between science, technology and ethics is a moral dilemma. 00:02:05
A moral dilemma is a difficult situation when we have to decide between two possible options. 00:02:18
Both options are difficult, both options have disadvantages, so it's not easy to decide what is the best thing to do. 00:02:25
Let me give you an example taken again from medicine. Imagine we have a patient that's very 00:02:34
ill because he's suffering a strange disease. If we don't do anything, he may die. So the doctors 00:02:40
are trying a new surgery with him. They have invented a new procedure. They can try to operate 00:02:47
this patient, but there is a high risk that the patient dies in the operation. Should the doctors 00:02:55
operate him or not if we don't operate the patient he might die because of the 00:03:02
disease if we operate him he might also died because of the operation so it's 00:03:08
tricky it's not easy to decide what is the best option what would you do here 00:03:14
is where medical ethics can help us medical ethics tries to give us some 00:03:19
clues in order to decide what's the best thing to do in cases like this medical 00:03:27
ethics is based on four basic principles the principle of autonomy the principle 00:03:34
of beneficence the principle of non-maleficence and the principle of 00:03:41
justice the principle of autonomy means that the patient has to approve to 00:03:45
accept to give permission to all the things doctors are doing there the 00:03:52
principle of beneficence means that everything doctors do must be used to 00:03:58
help the patient the principle of non-maleficence means that doctors 00:04:03
should never do anything that could harm the patient we must avoid harm and the 00:04:09
fourth principle the principle of justice means that we must treat all 00:04:16
patients fairly and also treat each individual case separately taking into 00:04:20
account the peculiar circumstances of every individual biology and medicine 00:04:27
are two fascinating areas of research but they also raise important ethical 00:04:35
questions some of the most difficult and interesting ethical issues raised by 00:04:41
biomedicine are those that are linked with assisted reproduction stem cells 00:04:47
cloning and eugenics assisted reproduction reproduction has helped 00:04:53
many infertile couples to have children but it has also produced a lot of spare 00:05:00
fertilized eggs in order to improve the chances of a pregnancy a lot of eggs are 00:05:06
fertilized in an assisted reproduction process those which are not used are 00:05:13
stored frozen and nobody knows what to do with them the problem is that these 00:05:18
eggs can potentially develop and create a human being so what should we do with 00:05:26
them is it correct to destroy them is it correct to use them in order to do 00:05:32
scientific research is it correct to keep them frozen stored in a building 00:05:38
forever so that's a difficult a tricky ethical debate stem cells are cells that 00:05:45
are found in embryos and that can transform into different types of cells 00:05:54
for example muscle cells or nerve cells so they are very useful and scientists 00:05:59
are very interested in getting to know more about them because they could potentially be 00:06:07
used to produce different tissues and eventually create organs that can be used to cure diseases 00:06:12
the problem is that these stem cells that come from embryos produce a debate an ethical debate 00:06:19
is it more correct to use an embryo to take stem cells from them and later use these cells to 00:06:29
cure another person the problem comes because the embryo can potentially be transformed into 00:06:36
a person so if we destroy the embryo to use the stem cells we are stopping this natural development 00:06:44
that makes the embryo into a person nevertheless today scientists can also produce stem cells 00:06:53
with different ways not using embryos so that can be somehow solved cloning is a 00:06:59
technique that is used to reproduce exact copies of an organism cloning has 00:07:11
been used to produce identical copies of animals like the famous Dolly sheep and 00:07:20
some people fear that if we continue our research with cloning scientists might 00:07:27
eventually produce human clones creating an identical copy of a human being 00:07:34
raises tremendous ethical issues it is a big big problem so some people are very 00:07:41
afraid of this and they thought they think that a cloning human cloning 00:07:49
should be totally forbidden nevertheless some scientists think that cloning can also be used 00:07:56
to produce organs and tissues that could help us to cure diseases that today cannot be treated 00:08:03
so they talk about therapeutic cloning therapeutic cloning is different to human cloning because the 00:08:11
idea in therapeutic cloning is to use cloning techniques to cure diseases not to create copies 00:08:18
of human beings and it's important that you make this difference and you understand it properly 00:08:25
finally let's talk about eugenics eugenics is a technique used to select organisms 00:08:31
in order to improve this species so the basic idea consists in encouraging the reproduction 00:08:44
of some organisms that are considered superior and to make difficult or stop the reproduction 00:08:54
of organisms that are called inferior in order to improve the race this is exactly what the nazis 00:09:03
did the nazis used these two types of eugenics what we call positive and negative eugenics 00:09:11
positive eugenics means encouraging people in this case that were considered 00:09:18
genetically superior or racially superior to have a lot of children and negative eugenics 00:09:26
is about making as much as possible to stop people who were considered inferior from reproducing 00:09:32
as you know what the nazis did was to kill a lot of people that were considered 00:09:40
rationally inferior and also to sterilize people they didn't want to reproduce for example people 00:09:44
that were mentally ill of course today we think about these practices as highly unethical immoral 00:09:51
and unacceptable because they violate human rights nevertheless some people are afraid that a new 00:09:58
type of eugenics might develop in the future for example if we develop genetic engineering 00:10:05
and in the future is possible to decide the traits of your children imagine that in a few decades 00:10:13
biomedicine has developed so much that we can offer our parents to create children 00:10:22
with their traits the characteristics that they prefer this could be done selecting the embryos 00:10:29
selecting the engineering that can make them for example tall or blonde or intelligent or with blue 00:10:37
eyes what kind of world would be living if this was possible there would be some children that 00:10:45
have been selected or designed by their parents while there would be other children that were 00:10:53
born like you and me so wouldn't it be a world where naturally born children would be discriminated 00:11:00
it would probably lead to a society that is hierarchically divided into superior people so 00:11:10
people that were engineered and inferior people people that were born naturally so a lot of people 00:11:18
are scared about that and they think cloning should be also regulated and some practices 00:11:26
forbidden in order to stop the darkest side of this kind of research. 00:11:31
Idioma/s:
en
Autor/es:
César Prestel
Subido por:
César Pedro P.
Licencia:
Reconocimiento - No comercial - Compartir igual
Visualizaciones:
78
Fecha:
22 de octubre de 2020 - 17:43
Visibilidad:
Público
Centro:
IES CERVANTES
Duración:
11′ 39″
Relación de aspecto:
1.78:1
Resolución:
1280x720 píxeles
Tamaño:
597.78 MBytes

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