While I _do_ believe that overall science is as valid a source for morality
as is religion, there _are_ several areas in which that morality is lacking
(the same holds true of religion as well, of course, as witness the
Inquisition, Islamic Fundamentalism, the suffering caused by the Roman
Catholic Church's prohibition on birth control in underdeveloped nations,
etc.--to cite only religions of Judeo-Christian roots). Here are some
examples where scientific "morality" is less than admirable:
====================================
Experiments on People Have Been Abusive
BY LEE SIEGEL
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
The recent history of medical experimentation on people is
punctuated by debate over ethics, failure of protections for patients, and
abuses ranging from Nazi barbarities to fraud.
-- 1943-1945: Jews and other prisoners in Auschwitz and
other concentration camps are subjected to gruesome experiments by Nazis
under
the supervision of physician Josef Mengele, who sent more than 400,000
people
to their deaths. The experiments later lead to establishment of the
Nuremberg
Code principles requiring informed consent.
-- 1972: An infamous Tuskegee, Ala., study is halted after
revelations that treatment was withheld from black men with syphilis so
researchers could study the disease.
-- 1974: In Tuskegee's wake, the U.S. government enacts
rules to protect people participating in federally funded or regulated
research
studies. Research volunteers must give their informed consent, and
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) must be established to review the ethics
and
safety of studies.
-- 1976 to 1988: Sixty-two women in India develop cancer
after participating in a clinical trial in which precancerous lesions in the
cervix are left untreated even though they could easily be removed.
-- 1993: The Boston Globe reveals dozens of teen-age boys at
the Fernald State School for the Retarded were fed oatmeal with low levels
of
radioactive calcium during human digestion experiments from 1946 to 1956. It
is
one of many radiation experiments conducted without consent during the
Cold War, then exposed decades later.
The National Institutes of Health halts a clinical trial of an experimental
drug to combat hepatitis B after five of 15 study participants die and two
require liver transplants.
-- 1994: The Chicago Tribune reports a Montreal researcher
faked data for 90 patients, casting a pall on a multihospital study
indicating lumpectomy was as effective as mastectomy for early breast
cancer.
-- 1996: The national Centers for Disease Control and the
Kaiser Permanente HMO admit they erred by giving an experimental measles
vaccine to 900 mostly black and Latino children in Los Angeles during
1989-1991
without obtaining parental consent.
-- 1997: The Public Citizen Health Research Group criticizes
U.S.-funded studies in Africa aimed at preventing transmission of the AIDS
virus from mother to fetus. Criticism focuses on the use of placebos, which
allegedly allowed the virus to be passed to about 1,000 fetuses by mothers
who
got a placebo instead of a drug. Defenders say the experiments are
legitimate
because the standard treatment for AIDS-infected women in Third World
nations
is no treatment at all.
Physician Robert Fiddes and associates in his Southern
California Research Institute agree to plead guilty to fraud charges for
massive falsification of experimental drug studies.
-- 1998: The inspector general of the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services says IRBs that oversee human clinical trials are
overwhelmed by so many research proposals they cannot review them
adequately,
and many IRB members are inadequately trained in ethics.
Ethical questions are raised over experiments in which
late-stage Parkinson's disease patients have fetal pig cells implanted in
their
brains through a hole drilled in the skull. Controversy centers on drilling
skulls of patients who do not get the fetal cells as a way to distinguish
the
effects of the cells and the surgery.
-- 1999: Federal officials halt 500 human and animal
experiments at Veterans Affairs hospitals in Los Angeles because of
inadequate
safeguards.
The National Institutes of Health suspends for five days all
2,000 government-funded clinical trials at Duke University Medical Center in
North Carolina for inadequate protection of human subjects.
The New York Times reports that drug companies pay doctors
thousands of dollars per patient to recruit their private-practice patients
into clinical trials of drugs.
http://www.sltrib.com/1999/jun/06061999/utah/110695.htm
www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/8084
==================================
Clearly, if scientists wish to argue that science is a just and fair
arbitrar of morality, it has some serious housecleaning to do first.
Rick
--
Rick Adams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Social Sciences
Jackson Community College, Jackson, MI
"... and the only measure of your worth and your deeds
will be the love you leave behind when you're gone."
Michael Callen, the Flirtations, "Everything Possible"
