The Danger of Science Uncurbed by Conscience
10 Jan 2006
My wife is notorious for taking jokesters seriously. Her serious responses to the jokes she is told are often more laughable than the jokes themselves. Like my wife, our world is increasingly taking jokes seriously. Take for example Korean stem-cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk. Before he was proven a fraud and his research a joke, the scientific community seriously believed Hwang was about to open up a people factory and cure all of our world’s diseases. Now, however, even Hwang’s best friend—his alleged cloned dog—may prove to be a hoax.
Unlike my wife taking an innocent joke seriously, there is nothing funny about our world taking stem-cell researchers like Hwang Woo-suk seriously. Advocating the taking of a life in order to provide spare parts for the repair of another is definitely no laughing matter. It is a deadly blow—pardon the pun—to the sanctity of life, not to mention a reduction of the human race to the level of brute beasts.
Liberals attempt to defend stem-cell research by demonizing all of its opponents for putting ideology before science and being indifferent to the sufferers of incurable diseases. Yet, as we all know, science uncurbed by conscience is a monster whose mien the world can ill afford. The rightness and wrongness of things is not determined by science’s ability to perform them. Just because science can, doesn’t mean it should, nor does it mean that it will prove to be good for science to do so. Don’t forget, science gave the world all of its weapons of mass destruction.
Suppose a man needing a liver transplant murders someone for their liver. Would he not be roundly condemned by society? Yet, society would be unarguably putting ideology before science in its condemnation of the murderer, since everyone knows medical science is now capable of performing liver transplants. Still, no sane person would advocate murdering innocent people for their organs, nor would anyone opposed to such murders be seen as indifferent to the suffering of those in need of organ transplants.
The argument for stem-cell research, like stem-cell research’s leading scientist, is proven jocular by close scrutiny. Thus, one cannot help but wonder how stem-cell research can be taken seriously or argued for with a straight face? If men continue to take stem-cell research seriously, the joke, in the end, will be on us all. And believe me, there won’t be anything funny about it.
Don Walton
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